In order to maintain their presence in the marketplace, small businesses lean towards quality to maintain and acquire consumers. Larger versions of themselves can rely on quantity in the market to forego quality. So I ask, as a consumer, are you content to be apart of the quantity or do you value quality? Are you a follower of the norm or do you break the mold and take chances?
Voice over Internet Protocol, or better known as VoIP, is not a new technology, but a newer technology that provides freedom, flexibility and cost efficiency to business types of all sizes. YourSip Telecom is a local VoIP phone service provider in the Tampa Bay Area. They have been in the market since 2005 and built and maintained their presence in the business phone service market by offering guaranteed cost savings over their larger competitors (traditional phone service providers) at the same time as providing quality to their consumers.
So I again ask, do you value quality over quantity?
- Does your business benefit from being apart of the quantity that the larger service providers offer?
- Would your business benefit from partnering with a small business that offered you quality and cost savings?
Recently a business I am affiliated with moved their office from Hillsborough County to Pinellas County. This business relies heavily upon their fax number. The larger service provider that provided this business with the fax line would not port our fax number. This posed a serious business dilemma for us. Our marketing materials (a significant financial investment) clearly stated this fax#. Our clients (they provide us with the business that keeps us running) were familiar with this fax# ~ changing our fax# was not a viable business option. The large service provider had no viable solution to this situation and showed very little concern for the situation they put us in ~ and why should they care? They have thousands of businesses utilizing their services monthly. Our pickle was of no concern to them. Remember . . .quantity.
What struck me the most curious was this:
'How is it possible for a small business like YourSip Telecom capable of porting my fax line from one county to the next, but this larger service provider with a national presence and millions spent on commercial marketing not able to port this fax line?'
The only answer I could come up with: they don't value us as a consumer because they don't have to.
They weren't working to keep our business by providing us with added value, they essentially spat in the face of our business because they could. It wasn't a great feeling considering the money we spent monthly to have this service. It may not have been a significant amount of money to a business of their size, but it was a significant amount of money for our small business - money that we value.
Fortunately for us, YourSip Telecom valued our hard earned money, understood the pickle we were in and provided a practical business solution that allowed us to keep this valuable fax#. In the end, the larger company lost our business. The lesson we learned ~ big things really did come in small packages and partnering with vendors that offer quality over being a part of the quantity added value to our business.
