Companies Don't
Need to be Big to be Good
As I browse through all of my
competitors, their advertising and the hype their marketing teams
have created I want to remind people that a company does not have
to be huge to have a great product.
In fact, it is the smaller
companies that are almost always better than the big guys.
Look at for example in
the automotive market what is better?
A Ford Fiesta
or A Bugatti Veyron?
A Chevy Impala
or A Ferrari F40?
A Cadillac or
a Rolls Royce?
At least from my
perspective, the smaller companies have a better product that the
big companies.
Smaller companies care more
about their products can devote more personal time and the people
running the show are the ones involved in the actual product.
At companies like Web.com do
you think CEO David Brown with his Harvard degree has any idea
that you are calling in because your website is not working?
At Godaddy.com do you think
Bob Parsons cares if your shopping cart is not working and keeps
sending users to the wrong page?
Do you think anyone in the
upper management cares any more about your problems than the
President of the United States cares that you can't feed your
family this week.
Don't get me wrong, they do
care, just not enough to do something about it.
Large companies like Network
Solutions, Wix, 1and1.com and others all work based on bottom
line numbers. Facts and statistics that add up to profits.
They have to look at thousands
of customers complaining to see trends in sales that tell them
their product is not meeting market demand and when hey happens
they try adding more advertising to make people believe that it
does.
So nobody should be surprised
when they are jobless, homeless and the President says, that is
bad, I feel bad, but does not offer a solution a job or a plan to
help you.
In the same way, large
website hosting companies like web.com don't have solutions to
offer the individual user, they have broader market solutions.
MORE, MORE and MORE! That is
their solution because it builds their bottom line and in many
cases, that does work for companies that have the budgets to
support it.
But at pageBuzz.com we saw a
real need for a Rolls Royce of website hosting, something smaller that what custom built for each
customer by hand. Treating a customer like a person and not a
statistic. More hands on from upper management and more personal
interaction with customers.
Does that mean we can afford
to knock out website for $1.99 a month? Of course not.
But it also means when your
business has a problem, you can work with someone that cares and
get real solutions.
That when the holiday rush
comes and sales are spinning out of control you can depend on
someone to be there when order data is not quite right or
something needs to be changed in minutes rather than waiting 3
days for a support call back.
It is true, our datacenter is
small and not 300,000 sq ft like some of our competitors.
But unlike our competitors, we
can manage what we have very closely.
What would happen if 10,000
servers crashed at the same time at godaddy? They would not have
10,000 people to fix them, so the down time would be weeks.
If you have a hurricane
devastates an area, it takes power companies weeks to make
repairs because their infrastructure is so big and they don't
have the man power to fix it.
Smaller companies have smaller
infrastructures and better crisis management because they have
less to deal with.
We all still have the same
structure, dedicated servers in a secure data center, generators,
UPS Backups, Networking Fiber and Routers. But outs is just
smaller. Instead of having 100 routers we have 1, so when a
problem occurs in the software, we only have one to fix to get
the network back online while big companies will be busy for days.
Being small is almost always
an advantage because we can change quickly, modify our business
model and have great flexibility while larger companies are
lethargic, slow and inflexible.
The problem for
website hosting customers is very clear.
Just like the biggest company
of all, The United States Government tried to build a heath care
website with a colossal flop big companies just don't do it
better.
Google was the brain child of
2 college students and it was a killer search engine with 90% of
the search market, now it is the ward of a huge mega corporation
and changes and fixes take time and never seem to work. 2 out of
3 people are complaining that the results just suck and it is
just not useful anymore.
This almost always happens
because big companies just can't do what smaller companies can do.
Do you want to be a number in
a database when you call godaddy.com and try to get support from
the hundreds of operators?
Or do you want to call
pageBuzz.com speak with me on a personal level. Talk about how
your business is doing and whats new in your market?
At pageBuzz.com,
because we are small we enjoy a more relaxed environment, more
freedom and we do our own thing.
We have to work harder for
each customer because each customer matters.
I have been working with
customers personally since they opened websites with us. I have
created designs, worked though their business growth and helped
with new programs to support them.
When my customers call me and
ask me to add a wish list to the shopping cart I can do that
because I know it will help their business and i need them to be
successful to remain as my customers.
If they called web.com, they
would either have it or not have it and if they ask to have it
added they offer you a $10,000 custom solution instead.
My customers have never had to
pay for programming changes or network upgrades. At web.com, if
you need more resources, they sell you more space, more resources
or a dedicated server for more money.
Our philosophy has
always been to give people more for less and they will
stay with us.
Our customer are
loyal not because they are stuck but because they know us,
respect us and we respect them.
We build
relationships not just websites.
We get to know who
we work with and what they need from us.
We build our
products around our customers and not statistics.
When a customer calls
we don't ask for a CUSTOMER Number ad PIN Code, they say, this is
Joe with thenameofmybusiness.com and we say, Hi Joe, how is your
wife doing since such and such.
We will banter about sports
because we know Joe is a Philadelphia Eagles fan and we lie the
NY Giants and have a sports rivalry. We talk about car shows and
business marketing.
We do that because we get to
know our customers and work with them over the years to make sure
they get what they need.
It might seem a little strange
for our price, but our business model is amazing and lets us do
what nobody else can.
You know what it is like to be
at a bank for 10 years and be kicked to the curb when you need a
loan. To be a loyal phone company customer for 10 years and be
treated like a turd when you call to add even another phone to
your account.
Small companies wont treat you
the same way.
We call customers that have
been with us for 10 years and offer free website upgrades. We try
to help them and keep them current.
Just last week I
was pleading with a customer to let me update his website. He
asked, how much that would cost.
Nothing I replied.
You have been a customer for many years and we want you for
many more, so let me clean up the site for you and just make
it better.
That is what small companies
do.
While larger companies try to
capitalize on their relationship by giving your phone number to
call centers to try to sell you more services.
I had to yell and scream at AT&T
after over 50 calls trying to sell me more services. I told them
point blank in language I wont repeat in this article "I
have been a customer for over 10 years, I have AT&T Cell, AT&T
Internet, AT&T TV and AT&T Business phones, If you call
me one more time I will not be an AT&T customer".
It is crazy how these big
companies try to exploit your relationship to get more out of you.
I don't see how that is better
at all.
Maybe you see the downsides of
working with a smaller company like pageBuzz, obviously millions
of people use the larger companies and very few comparatively use
us. But that is just because they don't know about us because if
they did, they would realize how much better we are and how much
more we can offer.
We have made it our focus from
DAY #1 to tell people we are small, to be more personal and
honest right up front on our website.
If you want to work
with a company the size AT&T then you don't work with us. If
you want something more, something better you seek out a company
lie pageBuzz.com so you get a better, more reliable and more
usable product that will support you as you grow rather than
trying to sell you more services when you make more money.
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