My family recently had one of those rare experiences in a small family restaurant. The food was good value, but that's not what made it memorable. What really made this meal was combination of decent food with a bright, clean environment, friendly, attentive, knowledgable staff and timely service.

Our feeling of being well looked after - of receiving fantastic service - was not delivered by one 'knock-out blow'. Rather it resulted from coming together of a whole range of small things, each delivered really well.

And that is secret ingredient in fantastic customer service: GETTING THE DELIVERY RIGHT.

No matter how good food on plate, if it had taken an hour to get to us we would not have enjoyed it. And our feeling about this restaurant would have been tarnished.

All too often businesses forget this. Larger organisations in particular seem to think customer service is about having a customer charter. Or running a public relations campaign. Or telling us that "your call is important to us". Or giving their staff title of 'customer service assistant'.

By Jennifer Bosworth http://www.internetwriters.com

Whether you own a business that sells information, services, or products, a classified ad can be just thing to generate sales and new leads.

A classified ad has two purposes: to grab interest quickly and to convince people to take next step, whether that means buying, calling, emailing, subscribing, visiting or ordering. A classified ad should call reader to action.

But before your potential customer will actually take action, you have to get their interest and make them want what your offer. Not only that, but you have to do it in 75 words or less.

Here are a few helpful hints for creating classified ads that grab reader's attention and spurn them on to action:

1. Offer something free, and put word free in caps or bold. It doesn't matter what free thing is. It could be a free string of dental floss and people are still going to read ad because it says magic word.