Sorry for the hiatus and silent treatment, but it’s for exciting reasons!

One of the wonderful aspects of small business ownership is the power to service clients and offer a more 1:1 tailored experience. Boutiques and local businesses have the unique advantage and ability to cultivate intimate relationships with clients. This ultimately leads to a more proactive partnership whereby the boutique can readily anticipate and tend to the needs of a client. But the relationship must be built on mutual respect, trust and co-ownership of the engagement, and cannot be simply transactional. Typically patrons of small businesses enjoy the experience of ‘being taken care of’, and most walk away with the feeling of friendship vs. business. They know the other party truly cares about their success.

This type of bespoke service is not always something a large organization can deliver, often due to constraints such as size, bureaucracy and scalability of the expertise required to deliver outstanding customer service. A few shining stars come to mind such as Chik-fil-A, Nordstroms, and Zappos who have built their brands on service and the quality of the experience which also translates to the product(s) they create or represent. I’m sure you are thinking about a few of your favorite stores, restaurants and service providers who either exemplify excellence or have failed miserably to satisfy.

Did any of you immediately think of organizations in your working life? The vendors, partners, or clients you spend 8 or more hours a day serving and/or working with? If you’re having a hard time coming up with any in the B2B realm, you’re not alone.

You may recall that we recently did a blog on Customer Experience that cited, “Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by the year 2020.” Well, we took this statistic to heart, and for the past few months, we have worked tirelessly on our own customer experience journey in real-time. Let’s just say… reputation matters immensely!

Practice What You Preach

During the months of March, April and May, we began working with two new clients and earned three new projects from existing clients. Our goal during this quarter was to focus the majority of our effort on servicing our clients with hand-crafted experiences designed for their unique businesses. To intimately understand their objectives, obstacles, concerns and needs so that we can help them achieve success.

These past few months have been very rewarding personally and professionally. When I say rewarding, I’m not referencing revenue generation. I’m talking about the relationships and the diversity in projects we have had the good fortune to participate in. I’ve never felt so passionate about my work as I do this year, and it’s largely because we experience genuine appreciation and enthusiasm from our clients. Marketing is often misunderstood. It’s usually thought of at the last minute as an output or communication tactic.

What has made this year different, is how many of our clients have embraced the new paradigm in Marketing, and have shifted their gaze away from brand building activities. They are willingly tying their marketing effort to a business goal, and abandoning the mass communication style of their competition. It has been wonderful to witness their growth and transformation, and we’re so excited to be working together on these great initiatives.

So we apologize for the silent treatment and the dwindling communications recently. One of the tradeoffs of being a boutique is that we often are forced to choose between activities we know are helpful to our target audience and servicing our clients. We will happily continue to deliver impeccable service … it really is gratifying and we love it!

This post is dedicated to all the clients we have the privilege to serve, and for other small B2B businesses that differentiate by delivering real value to their clients through amazing customer experience.

XOXO,

Team 25|25 Marketing