According to the 2008 Customer Satisfaction Survey by Accenture,  23% of Canadian consumers said they would quit doing business with a company immediately after a bad experience. This is twice the level of 11% in 2007.
Furthermore, 67% had moved their business to another company due to poor service, which is up sharply from 52% in 2006.

How do you keep your customers happy? What ways have you found as small business to fight against "big guys" with dedicated customer service departments?

I would say that customer satisfaction is THE core of our business.

First, like with any other business, customer satisfaction equals more business, at a much lower cost of acquisition. Repeat orders and referrals are the cheapest channels for attracting new business. Currently, they account for about 70% of our total sales.

Second, our business model relies on long term relationships. We only provide our software as a service: the client only pays a small set up fee upfront, then pays an ongoing service fee for the software components they want to use, for as long as they use them. Since we don't have minimum terms, if the client is not happy, they could take their business to another provider at any time. That makes customer satisfaction the key factor for our bottom line.

Last, but definitely not least, the main goal of all the solutions we provide to our clients is to improve the customer satisfaction of their clients. If customer satisfaction wasn't so important to most businesses, we wouldn't have much of a business.