Customer is king!!...
This is an annoying truth you have to cope with as a small business owner. Every business is sustained by its paying customers, we can’t deny the fact that it comes with a price.
Dealing professionally with highly demanding customers is the hallmark of every small business. The money you are looking for is inside their pocket and if you must have it in your hands, then you have to learn to deal with them.
As part of planning for your small business, you must identify your niche market and be prepared to face them when they start coming. Just like my late mum used to say, “don’t open the tap for rushing water when you don’t have enough buckets to fetch it”.
One of my businesses is a Cyber Café; one of the biggest in my area in Lagos. Our customers comprise of erratic youths with little or zero tolerance for slack service such as slow network or computer system, young professionals who demand a lot of respect and are always in a hurry, computer novices who create more problems for us due to their limited knowledge of the computer, etc.
Now coping with these sets of people each day is a herculean task. Initially, I lost quite a number of customers and money because I couldn’t tolerate them. Imagine a scenario where a teenager shouts at you on top of his voice calling your attention to his cubicle due to maybe a network problem. Now this may seem normal to you but coming from my kind of background, it was a hard lesson to learn. I learnt humility, empathy and calmness. Now, I am more accommodating and have taught my staff same. So when we are faced with difficult customers, we try as much as possible to keep our cool, while pacifying the customer. Most times even when they are wrong!!!
We also ensure to use phrases like, “Sorry Ma/Sir”, “Sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused you”, etc. This works like magic. The bible reminds us that, “a soft answer turns away wrath”
Now let me quickly add this, some customers are intolerable. You can’t stand and watch a customer pose a danger to your business and keep saying, “Sorry sir”. Some of my customers are troublesome and if I try to pacify them and it didn’t work, I firmly ask them to leave the business premises. This is usually a last resort if I have tried all within customer ethics to keep a customer happy. I can also ban such customers from coming again. Now, don’t be afraid, it won’t affect the business. Rather, it is saving it. Bad apples spoil the bunch, remember?
The truth is, everybody wants quality service rendered to him. Everybody wants full value for their money. We try our best to keep dishing out top notch services to our teaming customers; and that’s why they keep coming back. We appreciate our loyal customers. Sometimes we reward them and encourage them to bring people for us. Hence the business is booming.
So customer is king. Treat them well.
Enjoy a RicherLife!

Source: http://richerlife.net/blog/how-deal-difficult-customers