My first 8 years of my professional life I was in the customer service industry. I had the fortunate opportunity that my employer sent me away to trainings and certifications to become a Customer Service trainer. Part of our New Employee Orientation consisted of actual customer service trainings. It didn’t matter if you were a executive level employee or a grunt part-timers. Everyone underwent the same training.
It was all part of making sure that employees focus was on one thing – our customers.
As HR professionals, it’s hard for us to lose focus of what our customer is, because, well, we’re not out in the field where the “rubber meets the road” to see it first hand. (Which I recommend every employee do once and a while.)
So who is our customer? Put simply – it’s the employees.
They aren’t some annoyance or problem that you have to deal with. They aren’t an evil enemy set out to buck every rule and policy… ok well maybe some of them are…But the point is they are your life-blood.
Just as we tell sales people that “customers are your paycheck”, guess what HR peeps, the employees are yours.
Treat them the way you want to be treated (Golden Rule). This means hearing every complaint from their perspective. Using empathy as a way to really understand that the small stuff (like the fridge being overgrown with old food that resembles scientific experiments) are important. Or the guy next to them with poor hygiene really affects their productivity level. Like customers, these things are important to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come to you.
Treat your employees like customers. Say thank you. Ask how you can help them. Be sincere and genuine. After all they are your paycheck.
Think of it this way, if your employees did a customer satisfaction survey on you… what would it look like?
HRTact 
A great post – often employees are dealing with tough issues when they approach HR, so it's important to treat them respectfully. If in doubt my motto is 'do as you would be done by'.
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