I spend a lot of time reading about corporations and I think there are some lessons to learn from them that are relevant to small companies.

Selling Product versus Building Relationships. There are many  large companies that sell products without developing relationships with their customers. In our industry the large cable and telcos come to mind. They are all rated among the worst of all corporations in delivering customer service and they even antagonize many of their customers. This works fine for them until they get competition, and then the customers who don’t like them quickly jump ship to the new competitor.

But there are large businesses that go out of their way to build customer relationships because they believe that loyal customers are their most important asset. Consider car manufacturers. They realized a long time ago that they were not going to be good at customer service, so they created a network of dealers who are local businesses with ties in each community and these dealers have built trust over generations. And there are many other companies that deliver great customer service. Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, and Google have been consistently rated among the top ten in customer satisfaction for the last few years – showing that tech firms can put an emphasis on customers and still thrive.

My most successful clients build relationships with their customers and as a result have built a loyal customer base. Many of them are or were monopolies, and there was a time when most of my clients could not tell me who their ten largest customers were. But I rarely see that today and small telcos and cable companies have learned to build loyalty through building relationships.

Growing Fast versus Growing Deliberately. Many large companies need to grow fast to be successful. Once you have taken venture capital money or gone public then the pressure is on to grow profits quickly. But growing too fast almost always changes a company in negative ways. It’s really common to see companies go into the growth mode and then forget who they are. Most tech companies, for example, started with a small core of people who worked hard as a team to develop the core company. But when it’s time to grow, and companies hire mountains of new people it’s nearly impossible to maintain the original culture that made the company a great place to work.

Growth can be just as hard for small companies. It can be as hard economically and culturally for a small company to grow from 5,000 to 10,000 customers as it is for a large company to add millions. Small companies are often unprepared for the extra work involved with growth and find that they overwork and overstress their staff during a growth cycle. Growth creates a dilemma for small companies. If you hire the people needed to staff the growth period your company will be overstaffed when growth stops.

And so a lesson about growth can be learned from large companies. They will often staff growth through temporary employees, contractors, and consultants rather than take on people that they may not need later. Companies of any size are hesitant about hiring employees that they might not need a year from now.

High-Tech versus High-Touch. A lot of large businesses are trying to feign a good customer service experience by electronically ‘touching’ their customers often. I recall last year when Comcast introduced a texting system to communicate with customers. After they sent me half a dozen text messages in the same week, I disconnected the texting function because I really didn’t want to hear from them that often. But there are large companies who are convinced that if they electronically reach out to customers often that they are engaging in relationship building and proactive customer service.

And perhaps they are with some customers. But I am more appreciative of a business where I can talk to a person when it’s needed. Not that I mind electronic communications. I like to know that AT&T has auto-billed me and I like knowing when charges hit my credit cards. But I don’t want to be bothered by a business when they aren’t passing on information I want or need.

The important point here is that you have to touch your customers sometime and whether you reach out electronically or in person it’s better than no-touch and not talking to your customers. I know telecom companies that call every customer at least once a year to ask them if they like the service and if everything is okay. Such calls are welcomed by most customers and this is a great tool for businesses to build relationships. But just be prepared that if you ask your customers how you are doing that you need to be ready to deal with negative feedback. That is how to build happy customers.