THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

I dunno if it's just my partners or if this is a normal thing in small business, but there's something besides a product that sells that product to the gang in my office.

Service.

So it was an interesting observation that Karl Palachuk had on the Small Biz Symposium day when he noted that no one from CSS/PSS was there to represent the division.  Now I know from a prior blog post from Vlad that they were in attendance at TechEd... and had a booth at TechEd in fact. But it reminded me that while some large companies see support as a cost center, we see it as a selling point.

If we are investigating to lease a new copier in our office, what's the first thing the managing partner asks?  "What's the service and support like from this firm?"  We don't buy the brand of copier based on the brand of copier.  We buy or lease the copier based on the quality of service that either we've gotten in the past, or call and ask a current customer of the firm.  We ask our office manager how responsive the firm is on service and support and if they haven't been responsive or give her a bad time for whatever reason, we're looking for a new firm.

Support and Service is so important.  And whether the marketing folks think so or not, it's a selling point.