Do you really, truly love your customers? Most companies don't. They pay lipservice to customers - but everything in their procedures indicates they don't mean it. You can spot this in small things - the waitress at Center Parcs who insists that drink orders must be filled before food is ordered. In the face of hungry children, she does this because it is more important to satisfy her boss than her diners. Or take the beleaguered shop assistant in the Heathrow Harrods. It takes her twenty-five minutes to do a price check - twenty-five minutes in a store full of people catching planes - because computers work slowly on Sundays and keeping the computer records flawless is more important than purchasers catching their planes. Worst of all, perhaps, is British Airways whose aggressive signage warns us not to abuse their staff - with no recognition that any desire to abuse staff derives from customers having been abused by BA in the first place! Why does BA hate their customers? Because their customers hate them. Signs cannot fix this problem.

What all these companies reveal is that they're profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of service. It's an attitude entrepreneurs aren't immune to either. Lots of people start their own businesses because they want to be in charge of their own destiny. But the truth is that if you run a company, you are not in charge: the customer is. There is only one person who brings money into the company - that's the customer. Everything else is an expense. That means you have to put the customer first - or your business won't grow.

When you fail to put customers first, you succumb to what Harvard's Shoshana Zuboff calls "managerial narcissism": paying more attention to your internal processes than to your external relationships. Managerial narcissism puts bosses and computer systems before customers. You'll detect it when, after abusing your time with oversold and delayed flights, British Airways tells you about their new uniforms. They may find such details fascinating - their customers couldn't care less. Zuboff argues that between companies and customers there lies a "chasm of despair and rage" - and who can argue with her? But in that chasm, of course, lies opportunity for small business owners. In that chasm lies margin. When customers love you, or your product, price quickly ceases to be an issue.

While it's easy to understand how, in giant corporations, process overtakes people, in smaller businesses it is - or it should be - a lot easier to keep the customer in the dead centre of your focus. Ideally, you will see and talk to your customers every day. If you don't, you should be getting feedback about them constantly. The best managers solicit this eagerly or, better still, spend at least a day a month on the front line.

While every smart business collects demographic data about their customers - gender, age, location, occupation - of greater importance is how your customers feel. The emotional profile of your customer should inform how you interact with them, what you promise and what you deliver. Because if you can make your customer feel great, you don't just grow revenues and margin - you grow your salesforce. When they love you, every one of your customer becomes an evangelist, growing your business for you as you sleep.

If you don't know much about your customer's emotional state, you can make certain safe assumptions. You can - and should - assume that she's anxious. Everyone is. Making purchase decisions is always stressful because it is complex and can go wrong. Your customer doesn't want to make the wrong decision but she doesn't have time to do enough research, she badly wants not to have to complain and she doesn't want any hassle. And that is before she walks through your door.

I say "she" because most consumer decisions are made by women. It may transform your business just to start talking about each customer as "her". But the overarching reason to think of your customer as female is this: when you satisfy women's expectations, you exceed men's expectations. In other words - aim for the women and you please everyone.

That's what the all-female team at Volvo discovered. When they designed their concept car specifically for women, the women loved it - but the men loved it too. In addressing the most demanding customer they could find, they took everyone to new levels of delight.

The chasm of rage and despair felt by most customers represents a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs - an opportunity not just to satisfy needs but to inspire devotion. That's how I feel about the London Library, Farrington's farm shop, the Wine Society. These are small businesses I actively want to support because they see me, and treat me, like a human being. But I'm surprised by how few of these there are in my life.

I think that one reason companies hate their customers is because they find the concept of service intrinsically demeaning. But when, instead, we think of service as a way of making lives better, we change the game completely. Service becomes ennobling and products inspirational. Work is no longer a grind - and customers can be our allies.