How to distinguish your business from the rest

When I started to work on my current position as business development manager, the first question I asked myself was, what is our competitive advantage, and if you don’t have one, how can we create one?

We work in the IT service industry where the market is saturated with firms of all sizes ready to provide services from selling a single PC to setting up networks that serve hundreds or even thousands of users.
In the local market I am working on, Saudi Arabia, people in general don’t get good customer service, many large firms focus mainly on selling products more than offering superior customer service.
Being a small firm gave us one competitive advantage over our competitors, we are better suited to offer superior customer service. We are able to offer our customers better customer service then they would get with at large service centers.
I informed my staff that now our competitive advantage will be our superior customer service, our competitions may be able to offer services at lower cost, but we can offer better customer service, fast turn around and give more attention to each customer.
Our strategy is based on:
1- Creating customer service culture in the firm
2- Our service turn around time should be less than 24hrs in most cases
3- Improve the quality of service delivered so the customer issue fixed on first visit
The above strategy, as simple as it seems, worked real well and our reputation as customer friendly service center started to grow.
When you are a small firm, you may not have the assets and the financial strength to compete with larger firms, but you always have the choice to provide better customer service.