Every employee in the organization has the fiduciary responsibility of bringing value to the customer relationship. That is especially true of the customer-facing people.

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The fastest way to undermine your value and destroy your customer base is with unknowing, or insensitive customer-facing employees. It's impossible to keep the perpetrators locked up in the cellar. They're eventually going to get out and do some damage. The main danger in any organization is allowing poorly trained, or insensitive personnel to interact with your valuable customer base. You need to be concerned with damage prevention, not damage clean up.

A sure way to undermine a valuable customer relationship is to have:

• The sales person misrepresents the truth
• A finance staff member become intimidating, unreasonable, and arrogant
• A service or support employee fail to give outstanding service

Customers, no matter what size, like to feel important. Although disparate customer groups are not treated equally, if promoted with outward inequality, there is a definite risk of alienation. Awareness and sensitivity are what carry the top companies from being good to being great in dealing with their contrasting customer groups.

The key to keeping customers forever is understanding the difference between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Unless you bring value to your customer, even though it's a satisfied customer, there's a high probability that there will not be loyalty. If, on the other hand, there's a highly recognized value proposition, you will experience higher customer-retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.