Small Process Servers Can Be Beautiful
Posted on Tue, Apr 17, 2012
In my 30 years of assisting paralegals, law firms, and corporate legal departments, one of the strangest comments I've heard was this one:
"As a process serving company, you must be a really small firm to be able to provide such personalized customer service. We don't get that anywhere else."
It was a simple statement based on observation, and I did not take offense to it. After all, when I started my little court-filing and process serving business in the 1980's, I was my only employee and a Kawasaki 250 motorcycle, with a watertight trunk on the back, was my service vehicle. Now that's a small firm, with a really small carbon footprint! Compared to those days my company is pretty big, but as far as businesses go, it's quite small.
What's wrong with being a small firm anyway? Being vertically challenged myself, I often joke about having the advantage of a lower center of gravity, or saving the money spent on business class because I fit comfortably in coach.
Consider these advantages of a diminutive business stature: Decision-making is simplified; information is easier to accurately dessiminate; and adapting to the inevitable changes that occur in business is more fluid. You can even call yourself a boutique firm. How chic is that?
In addition to a more nimble operation, a small business is uniquely poised to focus on the customer. You know your customers personally, and you know what to expect from one another. You can also do business with the best customers, and leave the others to the big dogs. The big dogs have made compromises, and forged the “relationships” necessary to acquire the others. The others are not looking for your brand of service anyway, and if they are, they can't get it anywhere else.
Skip Thomas is Founder & CEO of Serve Legal Process, Inc. He can be reached at sthomas@servelegalprocess.com.