Phantom Character Excel/CSV issues

So I have a .csv file.
We have a website that gathers customer information, and exports it out of the site into a .csv file.
We type in customer information (firstname, lastname, address, city, state, zip, etc.) into Excel and then convert to .csv (comma deliminated), and import it into another program to keep track of customers.
The file won't import properly, however.
I sent it to a friend, who opened it on notepad and noticed all these weird square characters. I opened the same file in notepad on my computer, but didn't see them, nor could I find empty spaces next to data (i.e. "Chris ").
Anybody have any idea why this is?