All of us provide input or have decision-making rights for selecting which suppliers we deal with daily. We’re not just talking about the world of business here either.
From the moment we wake up to the time we put down that book on our nightstand, switch the light off and drift off to sleep, our day is chock-full of sourcing decisions. From the small – where we may pick up our morning shot of caffeine from – to the big-ticket items (think car and property), life is a series of decisions that need to be taken and prioritized.
Human beings, by our very nature are a varied bunch which means there are few (if any?) guaranteed recipes for success in any area of life so opinions will vary. Some of us will be more predisposed towards purchasing from smaller organizations, while others amongst us will always make a beeline for the larger organization, that big brand, whenever and wherever possible.
Should both the complete freedom to choose and vendors of all shapes and sizes be available to us, then accepted wisdom is that it is safer to select a large vendor – or is it?
Is bigger always better?
Let’s take e-commerce. It’s easy to think that the already well-established global giants took the lion’s share of business during our COVID times, having it all their way, but at the beginning of the crisis, in particular, even many of them struggled to fulfill orders on time and – this is the key thing – paused all non-essential deliveries for a period.
Third-party companies who relied exclusively on the hardcore of e-commerce players to process and deliver for them suddenly found their goods deemed non-essential. Many lost much or all of their revenue overnight as a result. Consumers that would normally frequent the large players had to look elsewhere for their buying needs. And smaller organizations rushed to create their own websites and delivery channels to compensate. Suddenly a lot of people who would never have considered purchasing from a smaller company were doing just that and with more frequency.
How to build happy customers? Trust.
A study from Penn State Smeal College of Business found that while size and power had a large impact on how a firm was perceived, trust, reciprocity, and interpersonal relationships had greater importance.
Here at Mitto, we understand the importance trust plays in the building and fostering of our client relationships. We build tools that help businesses of all sizes compete. Small businesses, for example, often lack the developer resources to deploy an API and compete with larger enterprises on customer experience. Knowing this, we built the browser-based, no-code Conversations tool. Conversations allows any business (not just those with a large tech team!) to engage directly with users on their favorite channel (SMS, Live Chat, Chat apps) thus lowering support costs and building trust with users.
Alternatively, our campaign manager tool makes it simple for smaller companies to build those marketing campaigns that directly engage with users, leveraging the channels that go straight to where they are, their mobile devices.
A2P messaging is critically important for building out your brand story, but also showing your customers that you care. We’ve mentioned time and again that an existing customer can be up to 66% more valuable than a new one. With frequent and compelling content as part of your customer communication strategy, your users will feel valued and in turn, they will value you.
