I just woke up from a bad customer dream. I am sitting in a restaurant and I can’t get the food I ordered before I have to leave for another meeting. I wake up screaming and yelling from my sleep.

While I’m not sure what it says when a 43-year-old man dreams of bad customer service rather than more interesting subjects, it did get me thinking about how important excellent customer service is in business during these difficult times. Additionally, it also made me realize how rare it is.

Bad service so permeates American business that I do not realize how poor it is until I go into the rare place that treats its customers like kings. I did not realize the lousy service I received at Treasure Island until Trader Joe’s moved into town. Getting ice cream at Baskin-Robbins didn’t seem like such drudgery until a local store, Scooters, opened up across the street and made it fun again.

It took me two years to resolve a customer billing issue with ComEd since I couldn?t get anyone on the phone to help me. The only way the issue was finally resolved was a call to an executive I knew there. I only called him when I finally became so frustrated and they shut off my power.

When I do get good service (especially from large companies), I am overwhelmed. For example, I visited Bank One last month because an account I had long since abandoned had accrued $200 in bank fees from overdrafts when there was no money in it to pay the annual bank service fees. The overdrawn fees had accrued at a rate of $10 a day.

After a few weeks, I went in there prepared to cut my losses and pay the $200 overdraft. The manager of the department took the time to analyze the account and saw that their bank fees had caused the overdraft. She then waived all the fees, apologized and told me she hoped that my children’s accounts would remain with the bank.

I used to wear a button that read “just give me good service and no one gets hurt.” I am sure it struck fear into every business establishment I entered.

Like most people, I will pay for value and I am extremely loyal to those companies where I receive excellent service. I love the idea of tipping in restaurants since I get to give the server immediate feedback on how they did. Besides giving them a big tip, I sometimes even write glowing notes on the check back to them.

Most of us get so caught up in landing new business that we forget about the customers we already have. Our existing customers leave out the back door while we bring new ones into the front door. Overall, the company loses in this revolving door strategy.

Unfortunately, most customers suffer in silence and you will never know they are dissatisfied until they leave your business. By this time, it is too late.

Manish Patel, president of Wheeling, Ill.-based where2getit, prevents this by personally calls accounts to which he thinks his company has given poor service. He calls them and states: “I think we have given you lousy service. What do you think?” Many times, the customer agrees and then proceeds to open up to him about all the ways his company can help them. He helps a dissatisfied customer and usually gains more business from them at the same time. Patel says his actions have resulted in a 95 percent customer retention rate.

In another example, SGS Net has retained Gatorade as a client for the last seven years even though they are a fraction of the size of Quaker Oats. (Disclosure: Columnist chairs SGS Net.) Surveys have shown that if you turn around a dissatisfied client, they will become more loyal than if they had never been dissatisfied in the first place. People will retell these good and bad customer service stories over and over again.

Unless you have a monopoly like SBC, excellent customer service is one of the keys to keeping your customers and growing the products they will buy from you. This is important since it is always more expensive to acquire a customer than to retain a customer.

Pennant, a Chicago-based managed hosting company, has provided its clients with additional maintenance services. By providing more services to your clients, it also makes it difficult for them to switch to a competitor that doesn’t do everything your company does. Additionally, companies don’t want to switch. They would rather stay with what they’ve depended on and with what they know.

Finally, good customer service doesn’t mean that the customer is always right. However, in the beginning, you should assume that they are and try to resolve the situation.

If they become unreasonable and it is unprofitable for the company to retain this client, you should point them in the direction of your favorite competitor. Firing some of your customers so you can provide great customer service to the ones you truly want to keep is the way to sustain your business.