I often deal with early-stage technical startups, and many of these don't have any customers yet (but wish they did), so it's not surprising they still don't think of customers as their friends. More disturbingly, others do have customers, but the customer service program consists of an informal focus on problems, rather than a proactive effort to establish a positive relationship with friends.

The right time to put a formal customer service program in place with measurements is before the first sale of your product or service to a customer. You can't manage what you don't measure, and customer satisfaction these days is one the most critical success factors to every business.

A while back, I saw a great article on the Focus website, titled 12 Lessons From The Best Customer Service Companies (http://www.comparebusinessproducts.com/fyi/12-lessons-best-customer-service-companies). It summarized some practical lessons that I recommend from companies...