This is more of a short rant than a blog post, but why do restaurants (mostly fast food) insist that they have a medium and a large drink size if there is not small. The medium simply can not exist unless there is at least one drink smaller than it and one drink larger than it. Otherwise, what are you measuring it against.

I first notice this marketing lie years ago at Steak and Shake. It was about 2am in the morning and we had been at the hospital most of the night as my wife had been ill. We pulled in and the extremely hateful lady on the other end of the microphone informed me that they did not have a small milkshake. Only a medium and a large. First off, why would she bother to tell me this. Should she not assume that I want the smallest milk shake they have? Secondly, why do they outright lie and state that the milkshake is their medium when it is obviously their small.

This was brought back into the forefront of my mind last night at Chick-Fil-A. Same scenario – only one size of milk shake – yet the girl called it a medium. If their is only one size, it really is just a milkshake. It isn’t a small, medium, or large.

Examine the pricing and marketing in your business. Do you have any of these little annoyances that can bother potential customers? Of course, at Steak and Shake the extremely hateful and rude employee on the other end that acted as if I was an idiot for ordering a small was much worse than the actual lie about the size.

Seth Godin wrote a great post about his terrible experience with Verizon during his current move. To those unfamiliar with Seth Godin, he is a bestselling author of many business and marketing books, including Meatball Sundae, The Purple Cow, and most recently, The Dip. Apparantly (to no surprise), Verizon’s customer service sucks. I find that this is not just the case with Verizon (or other large phone companies) but also with many large companies, especially banks.

Why is it that these companies have such large marketing budgets yet seem to cut corners and try to make the expense of servicing their exisiting customers so small? It is apparant that many of these companies are viewing the cost of servicing these customers as an expense – not as an investment.

If they did not view these cost as expenses, why would they farm my call out to someone in India who speaks broken English, can not understand my request, and does not have any authority to do anything about it when they do? The fact is that many of these large companies are viewing the cost of customer service as an expense and are trying to reduce it to fatten the bottom line. What ends up happening is that customers do not get the exceptional service that they deserve, and quite often go elsewhere?

An example of this is banking. I do the majority of all of my banking at Clover Community Bank. It is a small local bank that can do 95% of the stuff that a big national bank can and offers fantastic customer service. The tellers and managers actually know who you are when you go into the bank. You are not just another person that needs to be serviced. They seem to get it. They are making an investment in my customer service experience – and are a big reason I am so loyal to them. Why would I go elsewhere?

If you own a small business, how do you treat customer service? Investment or expense? Do you invest enough in your employees to make sure that they are providing spectacular service? This can obviously relate to the wages that you are paying them, but also the training and the tools they use to service your customers.

If you have a plumbing business, how do you customers get in touch with you? What happens during “off” hours? I know several times I have needed plumbers in the past, and been unable to get a machine to leave me a message. I even got a hateful sounding woman one time that told me I would have to call back because he wasn’t there. Why is he spending money in the Yellow Pages if he has no acceptable means to receive the calls when they come in.

I recall an upholstery shop nearby that I attempted to call for days on end – no one answered and there was no machine. This was odd considering their advertisements were all over the place advertising the phone number. While an answering machine may not be the optimum device to use to achieve spectacular service, it would have been a major improvement for this company.

My point is that from a small business perspective, there are often many little and inexpensive things that we can do to dramatically increase the level of service our customers receive. Let me know your thoughts or examples of how small businesses may be improved.

Mark Ramsey from hear2.0 had an excellent post the other day regarding a story in which Walt Disney invited several GE executives to the studio to view the “Carousel of Progress” prior to the 1964 World’s Fair.

After they viewed the show, they loved it. Walt thought it needed something else. He told them that “It doesn’t have a wienie!” and invited them back the following week.

The next week, they viewed the almost identical show again. This time, the Walt had added a animated wienie dog to each scene.

This was the finishing touch on the Carousel of Progress. It was a little something extra that his customers were maybe not expecting. When you roll out a new product or service, do you give your clients that something extra that they are not expecting? Do you give them the “Wienie?”

If you are not giving them the wienie with your current offerings, look for ways to give it to them. This will ultimately help to differentiate you from the competition and propel your revenues and profits skyward.

If you want to maximize the growth of your company, the answer to this question is YES! We are now living in a new age and large numbers of consumers gravitate to the Internet for information about everything from building a log cabin or finding the best local salon to get their hair colored at, to looking up the menu of the restaurant down the street .

For years, consumers relied on the yellow pages to find local businesses. Today’s consumer goes to an Internet search engine, types in what they are looking for, and receives back a list of companies vying for their business. In today’s world, not having a website is like not being listed in the telephone book. A website provides added visibility and credibility among consumers.

Many business owners use the excuse that their business is “word-of-mouth,” and they they do not need a website. Do not be fooled by this myth! Sure, you may be able to get by with the customers who call from your “word-of-mouth” campaign, but without a website, you are not maximizing the efforts of the people out on the street trumpeting your name. A great way to reinforce the personal recommendations of other clients is through a professional looking website. Even word-of-mouth customers want to check you out before committing their money to your firm.

Another common excuse that business owners use is that the cost is prohibitive. If done properly, even a basic one page ‘business card” website may be the most cost effective advertising you will ever do. If you are ambitious, and your business model lends itself to Internet commerce, you should aim to not only cover the cost of your website, but develop it to be a source of revenue for your business.

A website can allow your company to:
Increase product awareness,
Provide customer service and/or support,
Keep your customer base informed,
Sell your products,
Generate and qualify leads,
Gather feedback,
Expand your distribution and customer base,
Compete with Big Business.

The basic elements you are going to need to get your website started are a domain name and a hosting company. There are many companies out there, and I have used several in the past. Choose a hosting service based not only on it’s price but on their customer service level. I have used several in the past and I am currently migrating all of my Internet activity to GoDaddy.com. I do not know if they are the best, but compared to the other companies I have dealt with, their customer service is phenomenal – and it is 24/7/365.

Your next decision is whether you want to design the site yourself through a site builder solution or to have it professionally designed. The fastest way to get up and running is a site builder solution. These are available through most hosting companies. You can usually have a basic site up and running within a day of signing up. The downside to these is that they are not very flexible, they do not look as professional, and they can be much costlier over the long term. Usually with these solutions, you pay a monthly fee that can range from $5 to $50 (or more) depending upon the complexity of your site to use the site builder solution.

The route that I prefer now is to have the website professionally designed and to have a Content Management System (CMS) installed on the hosting server. The CMS allows you to edit the content as you desire without the help of the designers and web professionals. In short, the CMS is very similar to the site builder solution above; except that it does require you to may a repetitive monthly fee.

The cost to have your site custom designed can range greatly. For your basic small business website, you can get a professional site designed from between $250 and $400 if you search out web designers on services such as oDesk.com or Elance.com. For this rate, you will likely get a professional design firm from India that will create the entire website and uploaded it onto your hosting server for you. The downside is that it will be more difficult to communicate due to time zone and cultural differences. You can expect to pay roughly $750 to $1,500 for someone in the United States to perform the same work as someone in India. The advantage is that you will be able to communicate much more easily which may be a big advantage if this is your first endeavor into the world of website design. For your basic small business website, you should be able to get all of this work completed within two to three weeks.

Once your site is designed, you are off and running. Unless you want to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, you will need to learn some basic information about how search engines work and how to get your website to the first page of the search results. Depending upon your business, this could be extremely easy to do, or it could be very difficult and time consuming.

Regardless of the method you choose to get your web site up and running, you will surely have an added since of visibility and credibility once you do. As I previously stated, if you want to maximize your growth potential, you need a web site. If you have a true desire to achieve more for your business, a web site must be a part of your marketing strategy.