Voice of the Customer - Do small businesses care more about their customers

[Mikael]

I deal with companies large and small. Anecdotally, from a relatively small sample, there is no difference in customer-centricity ranked by size. What DOES seem to make a difference is the efficiency of the bureaucracy in fashioning a satisfactory response to a customer query. Lots of small businessmen are clueless when it comes to making an "exception" to their normal course of business in favor of customer satisfaction.

I recall going into a small one-owner delicatessen and ordering a corned beef sandwich "with horseradish, please." The owner behind the counter said, "I don't like horseradish, so I don't offer it."
My response was. "Forget it!" and I went elsewhere. As Paul Harvey famously said, "The rest of the story" is that I passed by the store a couple of months later to see it vacant, with a "FOR RENT" sign in the window.

So, I have no facts as to why the place went out of business, but suspicions of owner stupidity top my list.

The owner could have said almost anything except that it was HIS prejudice and I might have accepted some substitute. His inflexibility lost me as a customer.


Whoever heard of a delicatessen offering corned beef that did NOT have horseradish?

What if the store was named "the non-horseradish break"?

 

[Wes Bucey]

I deal with companies large and small. Anecdotally, from a relatively small sample, there is no difference in customer-centricity ranked by size. What DOES seem to make a difference is the efficiency of the bureaucracy in fashioning a satisfactory response to a customer query. Lots of small businessmen are clueless when it comes to making an "exception" to their normal course of business in favor of customer satisfaction.

I recall going into a small one-owner delicatessen and ordering a corned beef sandwich "with horseradish, please." The owner behind the counter said, "I don't like horseradish, so I don't offer it."
My response was. "Forget it!" and I went elsewhere. As Paul Harvey famously said, "The rest of the story" is that I passed by the store a couple of months later to see it vacant, with a "FOR RENT" sign in the window.

So, I have no facts as to why the place went out of business, but suspicions of owner stupidity top my list.

The owner could have said almost anything except that it was HIS prejudice and I might have accepted some substitute. His inflexibility lost me as a customer.


Whoever heard of a delicatessen offering corned beef that did NOT have horseradish?

What if the store was named "the non-horseradish break"?

For the same reason I wouldn't go into a restaurant labeled "Vegan" and try to order a T-bone steak, I probably would NOT go in the non-horseradish restaurant in the first place. Similarly, I wouldn't expect to go into a Kosher deli and order pulled pork or carnitas, with a side of crayfish, and would be astounded if the entry sign said Kosher and the menu said "pork, lobster, crab, oysters."

 

[somashekar]

There can be lots of scenarious, why do you want to settle this, it makes no sense!?
There are millions of different businesses in different markeds, positions and types of products.

I have seen large companies with closed eyes and ears and some with open, the same for small companies.
You can have two salesmen or purchasers within the same company that handle the VOC very different.

BTW depending on how you define VOC might not be good, e.g. what if the customer is wrong...

Once I considered to write a book about the sensitive quality company/sc, the expression I prefer, but I guess I will never have the time, lol.

For me, it all comes to quality, delivery and cost of the business and delivered product.
Ok, Let me say I am a small business. I say small because my customer is a real big multinational.
What happens in my scenario ....
For quality and new product development and technical support, we have a customer team with whom we discuss thread bear all the details.
For delivery we have an other customer team who will be in the loop with the above team when deliveries are effected due to changes or issues. When no issues are open, the deliveries are constantly monitored by this team and us and we do have calls and other means of communication for major pulls or holds as they happen dynamically.
We have an other key account manager from the customer who deals with all issues of cost (both reduction, escalation) as changes keep happening dynamically.
So for me the customer is a key account manager + buying team + Manufacturing engineering team.
All these are at different location across the globe. We care for the customer as each individual customer rep or team care for us within the applied process.
Add the other teams who drive System periodic audit, sustainability initiative and RoHS declarations.
So you see, we have 6 good contacts as customer.
Ah, when your customer is organized and means ethical business, and each team show concern with us for the applied process, we begin to care for the customer as a default good business practice.
Moral : It is the big customer who can drive the small business to care for them with good business sense and practice.

 

[TPMB4]

I call that "doing the paperwork". What I mean is, our product is right for the customer, we know it is, they know it is. The price is right and all the other delivery or quality matters are right. We go through their planning process knowing that we have done this ourselves many times before for them and other customers with this product type. We can make it, make it well for the right money (for us and the customer). So we fill in the paperwork that keeps them happy.

Is that listening to the VOC?

 

[kgott]

I have a question and would like to see what other people think. I am taking a class in Costing of Quality and the discussion question came up that asks:

Do small business care more about their customers and have a better handle on the VOC (Voice of the Customer) for the products or services they offer?

These are my thoughts:

I would agree since I have worked for very large companies such as XXXX who really didn't care about the customer and XXX who seemed to bend over backwards for the customer. I think small companies have to since it is more critical to their survival and they usually have a large percentage of their business with one customer, not the best practice in the world but it happens. Where as the big companies have many more customers and yes they will cater more to the larger "more important" customer they tend to forget the little guy.

Just curious to see what others think.

Aaron

I read a business article a while back in a newspaper at work in which a banker was asked about the importance of customers and his reply was, shareholders, shareholders, shareholders and account holders.

Was he right or wrong? You decide.

 

[Wes Bucey]

I read a business article a while back in a newspaper at work in which a banker was asked about the importance of customers and his reply was, shareholders, shareholders, shareholders and account holders.

Was he right or wrong? You decide.

Pleasing customers promotes continuing business, avoids negative word of mouth, and thereby retains or improves profits.

If I wanted to please my shareholders, I think I would be MORE customer-centric.

 

[TPMB4]

Are banks a special case? With the flow of money and equity in the modern capitalist world and the institutional investors they possibly do have to pay more attention to their shareholders as if they were customers. Shareholders can go elsewhere possibly easier than customers can. Just a thought, that different sectors might have valid reasons for different levels of importance placed on different "stakeholders".