By Mikal E. Belicove|For Entrepreneur.com|June 7, 2012

There’s nothing like business travel to get you thinking about how to improve customer service.

Here are my takeaways from a recent flight home to Orange County, Calif., from the East Coast. Whether you own a landscaping business or sandwich shop, maybe you can help turn my lemons into lemonade.

Communicate issues early and often. When my connecting flight to Orange County finally lifted off, many of my fellow passengers and I did the math and realized we’d arrive at John Wayne Airport at least 90 minutes after its 11 p.m. curfew. I’m assuming the captain also knew that our flight would have to be diverted (50 miles north) to LAX. A word to passengers before takeoff — while grounded 60-plus minutes for maintenance — would have enabled us to alert family or friends picking us up on the West Coast so they wouldn’t be waiting around extra hours for us to arrive by bus from LAX.

If you need to apologize for something, be sincere. About 20 minutes before landing at a different airport, we received the standard: “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” delivered in monotone voice from the cockpit. Hardly…

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