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If you’re a new business owner, here’s a little tip for you: your customers are people, not just your source of profit. Once you begin to fully embrace that little idea, you’ll realize that your business revolves around people, and not just your products or services. Many business owners make the mistake of concentrating all their efforts towards improving their business’ range of products and services, only to leave out an important component of the business—the customer.

If you’re thinking about getting customer service training and development for your employees, and for yourself for that matter, here are 5 tips and ideas to bear in mind in order to keep your customers happy and coming back to you.

1. Invest in your people and they will return your investment through customer service

No matter how hard you try to improve your customer service, it will only be secondary to the people who provide it to your customers. That said, don’t think you can get away with paying your workers small wages, zero benefits and zero training and development and have them provide excellent customer service. These people are directly responsible for helping your customers, so invest in them.

2. Your people are a reflection of who you are

If you treat your people in a bad way, they’d pass on that negative treatment to your customers. Are you attentive to your employees’ need? Do you greet them each day when you see them? Are you polite? Do you actually care about them? You can’t expect unhappy workers to provide good customer service.

3. Recognize your customers

Do you have an intimate knowledge of your customers? If you have a regular customer looking to do business with you, would you be able to identify them, and perhaps, even call them by their name? Customers, and people in general for that matter, appreciate being treated with importance. By simply knowing your customers names, they will feel valued and will come back to do more business with you just because of the treatment they receive.

4. Have your customers recognize you

Likewise, customers also value having a relationship with the people they do business with. Visible management is a strength any business should have. Customers are at ease knowing they can get in touch with the manager or owner when they need to.

5. Always go the extra mile

Again, customers appreciate feeling important and special. Go the extra mile by providing excellent customer service, doing things your customers don’t expect (in a good way of course). Add a special discount, escort them out of your facility, ask them questions about why they want to do business with you, and provide advice to make their experience with you unforgettable. You don’t really have to put your resources and profits at risk when going the extra mile for your customers. It’s always the smallest things that count, such as a handshake, a thank you note, a birthday card and more. There are countless ways for you to make your customers feel special through quality service.