Because their overhead is less, if they are providing a service and labor is the largest part of the cost of what they do, they will have it over the big competitors from almost every angle…they may need more than word of mouth to help them so they need to budget for marketing.

Here’s hoping that there will be people who can afford to hire and pay them.

It is only natural that business does what is likeliest to generate the greatest immediate profit for its owners. Change is far more rapid now than it was in the past and if you think about it, many, if not most of the most important business household name names of today, didn’t exist fifty years ago – Home Depot, Wal*Mart, Microsoft, Dell, Amazon, E-Bay, Verizon, Sprint, C-Span, Staples, Bank One, CVS, Fox, Blomberg, Dwell, Burger King, Jet Blue and so forth.

Businesses are obsessed with growth and smart managers have realized that as a consequence of technology, many of their companies are unlikely to exist, at least in their present business and form by the time they are ready to retire. They’ve got to make money now. With a public that is conditioned to make purchase decisions on the basis of price above all else, the best way to increase profits is to sacrifice service and focus on being aggressively price competitive. So you make a few customers like Nancy unhappy and lose them, there’ll be enough left to make you money especially if you drive your competition out of business when you move into new markets as Wal*Mart is not alone in doing.

I consciously avoid patronizing large merchants whenever possible even though it sometimes costs me to do so. I buy food from local shops or at farmers’ markets, my hardware from the small store down the street. Our car is serviced in a one man garage. I bank at a one branch bank (and get extraordinary service at far less cost). And when the furnace breaks down, we use a furnace guy who works for himself, not the oil company. But this is harder and harder to do as there are fewer and fewer small stores and trained repairmen. The big fellows have driven most of the little fellows out of business.

When you work for a company, whether or not you wear an apron or a jacket or shirt with a logo on it, it’s you who deals with a customer or client. How can people embarrass themselves by providing poor service? When did this disconnect happen?

And on a more self-serving note, if a sales associate fell all over each customer with information and care, one of the customers is bound to recommend them for a better job either where they work or elsewhere.

Meanwhile, he/she can go home every night feeling proud of a job well done.

And when they finally did, they gave it to me for half price. I don’t even want to go into the messy details except to say the issue was resolved only after I insisted in talking to the service manager.

At most larger stores or service businesses, employees are not properly trained, not given the authority to negotiate or offer what would constitute proper customer service. And they’re not incentivized to do more than ring up a sale for you. You would think their “incentive” would be simply helping the store make a sale so they could keep their job, but most probably feel too much like a cog in a very giant wheel.

Smaller businesses have the chance to excell and win business based on outstanding customer service. It’s often their only way to compete with the giants, since they usually can’t compete on price anymore.