One afternoon while on a walk downtown in my city I bought a funky hat in a small shop that sold hand knitted items from various artisans.  As I looked at it, I noticed the quality of the smaller details and the  brand:  Woolflower.  Clever name and I noted that their things were beautifully made with interesting touches.

Fast forward two weeks later.  I was sitting at my desk and saw my dog coming downstairs with a sheepish look on her face.  I briefly wondered what this was about but resumed my work. Mistake! I soon learned what she had been up to when I started upstairs and saw my hat partially chewed up on the landing.

I considered my options and decided to contact Woolflower and tell them my story.  I interacted with a nice lady named JaNahn and asked if they could possibly repair the damage and asked for a quote.  I sent them photos and JaNahn shared an address for where to send it.   I did, and received my mended hat back looking as good as new.

I was initially impressed by the product quality and the creative branding, but my customer interaction with them is forever branded in my memory.

This experience led to a comparison between small business and working for and with larger organizations.  In these organizations Net Promoter Scores or Voice of the Customer are gathered, analytics are created, projects are built.  Surveys are sent out to capture feedback, but how many customers have the patience to answer these with so many other messages clamoring for attention?

More than likely they will just delete the request and get on with their next task.  A lost opportunity and feedback fatigue ensue during all the points of collecting data which could be turned into meaningful customer interactions.

I thought about my business of one when I was completing my master’s project in the midst of a large organization.  I used a mixture of quantitative data and qualitative interviews with customers across the world.  My goal was to understand their pain points and needs for identifying global talent, and how the team I was on at the time could help them deliver a more integrated experience.   There was no substitute for those individual conversations to gather insight and ideas while building relationships.

Small business has the flexibility for engagement that legacy companies only imagine building.  Small business owners may have limited resources to collect data initially, but where they soar is in connecting with the customer.  Sure, data is important but without meaningful action on improving customer engagement it tells an incomplete story.

Small business and large organizations approach systems integration differently, which affects the customer experience.  Small business doesn’t have precisely streamlined systems while larger companies are focused on reducing waste and improving margins.

My time in larger organizations showed that they can capitalize on scale only if all the moving parts of the business are in tight communication. By design these systems are built to manage high volume over rapid response.  Implementing these steps in a bustling startup can feel like standing at the finish line of a marathon waiting for the participants who just crossed mile 13.  Similarly, tenets of startup culture celebrated in those circles can be perceived as impulsive and overly direct to larger enterprises.

PC : Nitin Mehendale

Customers today are looking for authenticity and experiences over established brands.  They want more information about the products they are buying and their backstory to be sure they are dealing with ethical organizations.  This is evident in communications from independent luxury brands like Finlay & Company where they take you inside the factory where their sunglasses are made, offer city guides for points of interest near their stores, stories about cool collaborations, even how to find the right sunglasses for your face shape.

Small business excels at customer engagement due to their focus on personalizing the experience, being mindful of speed and leveraging their autonomy to make quick decisions and pivot when necessary for how to best serve and interact with the customer.   Long-established brands like Coke, Pepsi, and Anheuser-Busch have been losing ground to upstarts like Hint Water and craft breweries due to a shift in consumer taste for the new and curated.

​​So how to bring the two camps together to benefit and reach the customer?

Small business can’t beat larger organizations for distribution and larger organizations can’t be as nimble as smaller players.  Small business owners are disrupting the marketplace, driving the demand for larger brands to meet them in the middle through acquisition or alliance relationships.  They have the flexibility to offer a more customized product and work alongside the larger organization as a type of innovation station.

A strategic imperative for capitalizing on the strengths each side offers is to push past the inevitable culture clashes between the two, allowing these cocooned relationships to emerge as smart strategic butterflies.