… had two unsatisfying interactions.

The first involved one of the email vendors I use: a 30-minute wait to speak to a human.

The second involved my credit card company: don’t get me started.

The thing is, these types of interactions are not the exception – we are all forced to deal with big company bureaucracy every day.

Which is why your competitive advantage as a tiny professional service firm is to provide prodigious (SAT word!) levels of transparency and availability:

Respond to emails; return phone calls; provide complete contact information on your web site (not just a form); don’t require every interaction with you to go through your virtual assistant; and maybe stop using “we” on your web site when we all know it’s really just you back there.

Big companies can’t get out of their own way. That’s not a feature; it’s a weakness.

In a world where we are all tired of empty promises of the your-call-is-important-to-us variety, your unassailable advantage is YOU.