Are you a business owner who enjoys providing customer support or one who dreads it? Personally, I love it and tend to think of it as an art form.

There are several challenges that come with giving great customer support when your business is completely web-based.

First, you don't get to see your customers face to face--many times you are on one side of the world and your client/customer is on the other. Many times your communications will be via email or some other text-based communication tool. You can't see their face or hear their voice, and they can't see or hear you. Especially if you are in a technical field, you need to work extra hard to convey warmth and helpfulness across the miles.

With that said, I think it is possible for a web-based business to give great customer support. I'd like to share some of my strategies and observations in working with clients, and I welcome any insights that you have about doing online support in your own business.

Here are my top 5 customer service tips:

1 - Each customer should be treated as an individual and not just a number. I advocate creating replies to customers that are personally tailored to suit each person. Templates can be helpful for some types of questions, but for the most part it's great to write a reply from scratch.

2 - Give customers more than they expect or ask for. Whenever someone contacts my business, we try to anticipate their next question and give them information that will help. Sometimes you may notice that there's an area of confusion by the client's question or from looking at their account (depends what type of business you have, but this is applicable to mine). Be on the lookout for ways that you can steer the customer in the right direction and offer advice even before they ask.

3 - Encourage questions! Customers should feel like they are always welcome to contact you no matter what sort of question they have. They should feel like you enjoy answering their questions.

4 - Everyone is treated as a customer. Even if a person is not currently a paying customer or gives no sign of interest in ever becoming one, it doesn't matter--their questions still get the same attention as customers do.

5 - Invest in teaching and training the general community of your niche about what you do. I consider it part of my marketing to help people interested in my niche succeed.

Here's some thing that I find very helpful: When you notice a question being asked repeatedly, create an article or blog post that addresses that issue. Then, when customers ask you that question, you can share that prepared resource with them.

Often you'll be able to re-purpose that content and use for article marketing purposes - for example, you could adapt that content as a free reprint article and fire off through an article distribution service to help boost your website's traffic.

What about you? Are you a small business owner who is hanging out in the customer support trenches? What are your strategies for providing excellent customer service?

And here's a fun question: What is the best customer service experience you've ever had in your life?