Without customers, your business doesn’t exist. How about that for an opening sentence? You can make the greatest product in the world. If nobody buys it, though, you’re going to have a lot to give family and friends at Christmas.

Therefore, you need to take care of your customers. Make sure you always go above and beyond to show them their patronage is greatly appreciated. In Do You Really Care? I discussed how the smallest touch can tell your client how much you are focused on them instead of the bottom line.

But what happens when your product is in high demand? If you’re Apple, for example, then it’s easy. You continue to create a great product that causes demand through scarcity and urgency. It keeps the customer always coming back for more and willing to wait on the next latest, greatest thing you produce.

However, there are some high-demand businesses that have forgotten part of what customer service is all about. Take the medical field, for instance. I completely understand that if I’m sick, I need a doctor. If I’ve done a bad job taking care of my weight, I probably will want to see someone about my blood pressure.

What I find annoying is the treatment of their customers by so many working in the medical field. Somehow, it has become standard to set appointments with patients, and then leave them sitting in a waiting room for potentially hours. How is that OK?

When did it become acceptable to treat someone that way? Did they forget the people in the waiting room are actually paying for the visits? Well, you don’t understand, doctors are very busy, and it takes a lot of time with each patient. Great, then schedule accordingly. If you’ve been practicing for any length of time, you have a clue how long the issue at hand should take.

What’s my point? Imagine what would happen to your business if you did the same thing to your customers. Now think of something you do that is not up to the highest standard, simply because it has become acceptable. It used to be OK to have a drive-through line a mile long. Now, businesses like Chick-fil-A are realizing it’s not good enough, so they have team members out in the parking lot taking orders to speed things up.

Why? Because they understand that without the customer, they don’t have a business. And when a patron sees a line that will take most of their lunch hour, they’ll go somewhere else. It’s that simple.

Question: What are some of the fixes you see that businesses can make?