Isn't it frustrating when you do something "wrong" and a random person tells you that you can't do it because it's against the company/school/organization's rules? This can be in reference to virtually anything -- a hotel employee or restaurant waitress tells you that you're not allowed to do something because it's against company policy. The issue being that this so called employee has no clue why the rules exist in the first place! If your company has rules in place, make sure that employees know why they exist. Make sure your employees can offer good explanations for why they exist and reasonable alternatives around them. Real life example:

1) As I write this blog post, I'm in Boston. As I was checking into my hotel, I noticed a hotel customer and hotel employee arguing over something. The hotel customer was clearly a tourist and had brought in a cooler box, when the employee stopped him. Apparently, cooler boxes weren't allowed into the hotel. What? Why? Of course, the hotel employee didn't know why. He responded by saying, "it's just against hotel policy." Now why isn't this explanation good enough? Because the customer gets even MORE aggravated. He's thinking what to do with this cooler box he just bought. What does he do with the many drinks inside? The proper response would be for the hotel employee to say something among the lines of, "You can’t bring the cooler box inside because it's against state law, but I'd be happy to hold onto your cooler box until the end of your stay." Except how many employees are trained to do this?

2) Or another example I've dealt with throughout my childhood: Teachers asserting authority by punishing kids for rules that haven't a reason to exist: I was sitting on my friend's lap when a random school aid told me not to. I got off her lap and asked the school aid why I wasn't allowed to sit on her lap. Of course, being that I'm Jessica Mah, I get accused of being an arrogant teenage brat because I'm curious enough to ask about the reasons for rules existing. Next thing I knew, I was being threatened detention and a trip to the principals office. Had it ever occurred to the school aid that it was a stupid rule that should be changed? Probably not -- it makes them feel good about themselves to assert their authority over me. In an ideal world, the school aid would tell me why I can't sit on the persons lap. If the school aid doesn't have an answer, she would tell the school principal that the rule was meaningless, and that it be removed.

The bottom line: If your customer does something that's "against the rules," be prepared to give them a good reason as to why the rules exist, and promptly propose a suitable alternative. If no alternative exists, make one, even if it isn't your fault. If my flight from New York to San Francisco is delayed, I don't care that your plane broke down and I don't care what your reimbursement policies are. I want a suitable alternative or reimbursement. Make sure your employees know precisely how to react in these "unique" situations, and what they are authorized to offer as alternatives. Better yet, tell your employees that they can do whatever they would like in order to please the customer. If customer service is your number one priority and you give employees full authorization to do whatever they want to meet that mantra, your customers will be satisfied even when they can't do something or if you're not allowed to let them do something. I promise!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

If you're going to form partnerships with other companies, please get it right! I see way too many companies forming alliances mainly for the sheer sake of forming alliances and doing "biz dev" work, but it's often a distraction from the core focus of your company. And if you decide to go forward with the partnership, it helps if the connection is seamless and that your customers are able to extract true value from that partnership.

Let's take a look at my favorite companies: airlines! Gotta love the expensive fares, the long delays, the bad food, and of course the incompetent representatives. It may sound like I write way too much about how airlines suck, but I'm just giving my honest advice!

Many of these airlines participate in mile-sharing programs. This basically means that if you accumulate frequent traveler miles with one company, you could use it with any of its partners. The plus side being that you're not scared to accumulate these miles because you have supposed assurance that you can use it anywhere. Of course, when it comes time to actually use your points on partner airlines, you may find yourself running into a brick wall.

True story: I booked my round trip airfare to Amsterdam with KLM because the FAQ's said that I can upgrade using frequent flyer miles after booking the flight in coach. Only problem being that KLM's partner, Delta, won't let me use the Delta miles for the upgrade unless I'm upgrading a Delta seat. How lame is that? Sure, it's partly my fault for not being 100% sure I could upgrade before booking my seats, but this example comes to show that the supposed partnerships these companies have between one another don't allow customers to take full advantage of their frequent flyer miles!

As for the logistics behind entering a partnership, some companies waste way too much time, energy, and money on getting a deal done only for it to fall through. The best deals I know of happen near instantly, where each company can easily help the other without changing too much. For example, I spoke to the marketing guy at Shopzilla.com, and he told me about the many partnerships the company has with media companies to exchange traffic with each other.

In a nutshell, finding partnerships can be a terrible waste of time. But if you decide to enter into a partnership, focus on the cheap and easy ones and do them right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com.

First and foremost, apologies for having slacked off on blogging for the past 2 weeks. Gosh, I've been busy being a kid!

ANYWAY, i flew Virgin America from JFK to SFO yesterday. It was my first flight with Virgin America, and they practically did everything right. I was reading a book on creating customer evangelists (for another topic) and the airline pretty much won on every point this book offered. Of course, many of those points are obvious: provide good service and create a memorable experience. It also helps not to set yourself up for complaints. Virgin only flies out of a few airports, so the logistics are much more manageable. American Airlines, on the other hand, will always have problems to worry about. In effect, they've set themselves up for more problems and more spending because of the massive growth into markets that Virgin or Southwest wouldn't dare touch.

However, Virgin could improve: I wrote about them about a month ago, and no representative contacted me or commented on my blog to note my existence. Many companies are being smart by tapping into internet conversations - take for example our friends at Serverbeach.com. Within an hour after I wrote a complaint about their downtime, a company official commented on my blog. Now THATS how you create loyal customer evangelists!

Virgin is still young and learning how to manage itself as an airline, but they're doing almost everything right. Next time you fly, go with Virgin! And once you fly with them, you too will become a customer evangelist :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.