There has never been a time when great customer care matters more than now. The economy is funky and consumer confidence is too. If you are looking to remain competitive, it's more important than ever to differentiate your company from the others and it's critical to make sure that your whole value proposition is clear and is consistently delivered to delight and even surprise your customers.

In these challenging times, it's especially important to take exquisite care of your existing customers. Here are seven things every customer-facing person needs to know:

1) Be fully present. Set out to be the best you can be at your craft. Make it a point to do a little learning about how to get better at it every day and find joy in doing your job well. Recognize and acknowledge yourself for all the wins during your day—even if, and especially if, your boss doesn't notice often enough.

2) Be proud of what you do. The experiences you provide for the customer could make or break their relationship with the company. Even if parts of the process are broken, even if the wait times are long, even if the customer is upset about some aspect of the company, a great experience with a customer-facing person can make up for a lot.

3) You have emotional genius. Being good at customer service requires a great deal of emotional intelligence (EQ). Here's the neat thing: Being in a people-oriented position gives you the unique opportunity to practice those EQ skills, which are going to help you in every relationship you have in your life.

4) The customer is not always right. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are mean, sometimes they lie and sometimes they drive you crazy. But being right or wrong is not the point. Your job is to be so skillful that even if they are wrong, angry, nasty or just having a bad day, you have the ability to turn a bad situation into a better one.

5) You work in the performing arts. Service is not like a manufactured good. It happens in the moment, as needed, and it's all about performance. Just like an actor, public speaker or trainer, there will be days when you just don't feel up to it and you will have to act as if you were. Rehearsal and visualization will help you prepare for a great performance every time.

6) You have a stressful job, but the amount of stress you take home every day is up to you. If you allow yourself to over-dramatize, catastrophize, get defensive and take everything personally, you're in for a tough time. You have the power to change how you view any situation—including your job. Find a frame that makes it less stressful and more enjoyable. 

7) You have the opportunity to make the world a better place every day. Whether you deal with 10 customers or 100 customers a day, you have the power to create positive experiences for all of them. When you give your best effort to add sincere care and appreciation to every interaction, you are infusing it with positive energy. When the customer leaves the interaction with you feeling good, they are likely to spread that positive emotion. Emotions are contagious. 

JoAnna Brandi has been teaching companies how to keep customers happy, loyalty and coming back for over 30 years. She is a certified chief happiness officer, an author, trainer and coach at returnonhappiness.com.