Who was it that said - "The customer is always right"? Well for those of you who can't get through day without knowing, it was H Gordon Selfridge, founder of Selfridges's department store in London.

The question I want answered is; did he ever work with customers on day-to-day basis and if so, was he some kind of saint? Let's face it; customers can be a real pain in neck. You move heaven and earth for them, you respond to their every whim, you give them time to pay and they still try to screw your prices down. Just when you've done all that, they leave you and start buying from one of your competitors.

Wouldn't running a business be a whole lot better if we didn't have customers? Well, as we know only too well, we do need customers and lots of them. We want them to stay with us and we want them to say nice things about us to other people. We also want them to pay us on time and accept fact that we might be a bit more expensive than others.

So how do we perform this miracle? It's dead easy really; you only have to consider two factors: be reliable and be likeable. First off, let's consider what we mean by being reliable.

Reliability is about your product or service doing what you say it will do. It comes in two parts, first part being: doing it right first time and doing it on time. If you can't get this bit right then you're going to have big problems. Customers will accept occasional mistake, but too many and you've had it, so let's look a bit closer at reliability.

We've come a long way in recent years in terms of product and core service reliability. Nowadays when people buy a product or service they expect it to work. You don't buy a computer, a washing machine or an automobile and worry that it might not work. You know that it will. You also know that if it didn't, it would be replaced without quibble. The only thing is, that if you deliver this type of reliability in your business then don't expect any brownie points from your customers, they merely take it for granted. Where you are more likely to slip up in reliability stakes (and this is second part) is in what some people still regard as minor issues:

*Failing to phone back when we said we would; *Failing to deliver when we said we would; *Failing to send information when we said we would; *Failing to include something extra when we said we would.

The ironic thing is that some customers often regard these failures as quite normal. However, these people won't stay with you, they don't say nice things about you to other people and they'll complain about your prices.

The recent state of economy, combined with increasing cost of healthcare, has made it difficult for all size employers to continue to offer same level of employee benefits. In case of health insurance, future plan modifications may be necessary over next few years.