Customer service
Not many businesses here can survive the competitions without providing excellent customer service. Few weeks ago, I ordered a steam cleaner from Amazon, it was shipped via ground UPS. UPS lost the package (might be mis-delivered to a wrong address). When I called Amazon, they immediately sent out a replacement for next day delivery without extra cost and apologized for the inconvenience. There is a reason why Amazon has been a successful business model for many years!
In the digital age, they are a lot more venues for disgruntled customers to blow off steam about bad service or deficient products. Anyone doing business in the current world of instant Internet feedback, whether it’s on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or via other social networks should read : Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000
After being here for a year, the employees at my favorite grocery stores here knows my name. I love the good deals they offer and their friendliness towards my coupons use. The attendants at the self checkout machines loved to see me getting stuffs for pennies and called me the ” genius who got groceries for free”. 
When I first started doing all the coupon deals last year, the employees were suspicious and checked all my coupons carefully. They were also a couple of instances, I had to call their corporate office to train them about specific coupon use. I was very impressed with their customer service. They called the store, sorted this out with the manager and had him called me to apologize each time.
Right now, they are a lot more people who are drawn to doing all the coupon deals due to the economy. The employees are much better trained, it’s usually a breeze to shop at the stores. When there is a killing deal that pays me to take stuffs from the store, the employees are used to seeing me there everyday spending 2-3 hours at the store. Some of them pulled me aside to ask for tips, they wanted to learn how to do the deals too!
Some employees don’t understand the concept of coupons and they think the store is losing by giving out all the groceries for FREE. Well, I may have gotten the groceries for free, but the store is not giving them out for free, the manufacturers are paying for them! Why the manufacturers are giving them away? The marketers are not dumb, what better way to develop brand loyalty than giving their products out for free to try, then get hooked and pay full price for it later? Fortunately, the store that I frequent has a wise manager who told them the reason they have a job is because they have customers who are happy to shop there and whether the customer pay with cash, credit card, check or coupons, the store sells the products and gets paid in the end !
