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Some customers just seem to attract problems. "It's like a restaurant," says Neil Cannon, chief executive officer of Schmidt-Cannon Inc., a distributor of promotional items in City of Industry, Calif. "The guy who gets the cold soup also gets the hamburger that's well-done when he asked for rare."

In an effort to minimize cases of double trouble, the staff developed a system for tracking orders from customers with past problems. Whenever the company receives a complaint, that customer's next order is placed in a red file folder to alert the staff to take extra care. When the folder passes through each department, the manager signs off on it personally. Later, if a problem arises, he or she talks directly with the account.

Since the system was introduced three years ago, the incidence of repeat complaints has dropped noticeably, says Cannon, who notes that Schmidt-Cannon processes about 6,000 orders per month. "Often, you get a repeat because it's a problem customer. We do everything we can to make sure they're happy. This way, we can be pretty positive that we've done our job."