As a business owner, it is important is to keep customers happy. Give customers what they want, and your business will thrive. As such, having a plan on how to actually provide great customer service is a must.

If you are selling online, here are the elements of an effective customer service plan:

• Contact Us section that either provides a form to allow for easy contact or email address for contacting you — and you actually respond to it
• Customer service contact telephone number (better yet, a 1-800 number) located in your homepage, or even in all your pages. If you can offer live chat capabilities, so much the better.
• List of hours when customers can contact you
• Inventory status notification – don’t put that the item is available when the customer has to wait 2 months to get the item because it is out of stock
• Quick and easy checkout process
• Privacy policy
• Clear returns policy
• Fast shipment of items, possibly between 3-to-5 business days
• Notification of status of shipment of the items via email