Small business owners are learning that relationships are often the key to survival

MIAMI – July 27, 2009 – How far should you go to keep a client in this economy?

Would you give up your child’s birthday party to take a loyal client to the airport? How about cutting your vacation short to intervene in a customer dispute?

With the recession making it tough to stay afloat, small businesses are going to new extremes to coddle clients and keep customers. As owners are rediscovering in this recession, survival is much more about relationships than just business.

“Focusing on customer service is critical,” says Althea Harris, spokeswoman for the Small Business Administration’s South Florida office. “Very few small businesses are the only game in town. You might cut salaries or staff, but you have to focus on how not to cut customer service.”

Miami real estate broker Lillian Macken missed a close friend’s party to pick up a client from the airport, show the couple a home, then dine with them afterward. “If you don’t make yourself available today, people will hang up the phone and call someone else,” she says. “In this challenging industry, you have to be out there.”

Facing added pressure on the bottom line, small-business owners are making more personal trade-offs to retain customers.

When Province “Boo” Zamek started an online community newsletter, JustAskBoo.com from her home, she hoped it would allow her to better balance work and family. Lately, she’s been putting in 10-hour days and weekends, working more closely with advertisers. “It’s like I’ve become an ad agency in-house and I never expected to have to do that.”

What’s more, she’s spending her off hours patronizing her clients, recently relocating a dinner with friends to her advertiser’s South Miami restaurant. “We are definitely working harder than ever to secure and nurture relationships with our advertisers, but that’s OK. It has a huge up side.”

As the recession drags on, America is watching big companies – with too much payroll, too many facilities and too much overhead – go down. The advantage of small businesses is their ability to tailor services to individual customers and position themselves as partners.

For architect Donald Wolfe, vice president of Nichols, Brosch, Wurst, Wolfe & Associates in Coral Gables, that means providing low-cost or no-cost designs for long-time real estate developers badly hit by the economy. “Even if they are behind in paying, we still move their design forward,” he explains. “We’re taking risks with clients and hoping they remember us when times are good again.”

Wolfe says his staff – now half the size of a year ago – spends double the time with each client. Beyond drawings, they research design options and visit places where developers are considering building to handpick a team of consultants. “Before, we didn’t have time to do that.”

Carlos Wolf has discovered that people are spending money during a recession, even on plastic surgery. Wolf, a Miami surgeon, considers it his job to make sure they choose him over competitors.

“I’ve been very aggressive with teaching my employees to treat my patients great, not good but great, to go one step beyond what needs to be done.”

Along those lines, Wolf gives out his cell number to all patients, often stays after hours to give Botox treatments and recently started having his assistant send out updates on Twitter to the family of his patients during an operation. “It gives them comfort.”

That customer loyalty is what Leslie Kaplan, owner of a yacht charter business, says she is aiming for now that her corporate business has declined.

This summer, she lifted the minimum requirement to book a party on the Carrousel yacht docked in downtown Miami.

“I’m not going to give it away for free, but I’m doing everything I can to make it affordable.” Kaplan says she’s personally trying to add more value for customers. “I’m the event planner, the bouncer, I’ve even cleaned bathrooms … whatever it takes.”

Of course, small businesses are often credited as the sector that likely will lead us out of the current recession.

But Vincent Daniels, a Nova Southeastern University business professor, advises small-business owners against going overboard to accommodate customers if they want to be part of that recovery.

He recommends paying attention to margins and accounts receivable, and knowing when customers are stretching the limits. “When the market comes back, you don’t want to be down at the bottom digging yourself out,” Daniels says.

Copyright © 2009 The Miami Herald, Cindy Krischer Goodman. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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