Hold the pickles, Hold the lettuce,
Special orders don’t upset us,
All we ask is that you let us serve it your way.
Have it your way at Burger King.

It was probably not the most remarkable advertising campaign of all time, but we can give Burger King some credit. In the midst of the burger wars of the early 1970’s, they tried to show how they were willing to accommodate individual requests, contrasting themselves with McDonald’s, whose burgers were characterized as being mass produced. At the root of the campaign was the notion that people want choices, that they have individual needs to be met.

We think about that a lot in the services we provide to our clients, in particular, the type of support we make available. SiteCats offers three distinct support packages, ranging from a basic plan to a more comprehensive one that includes a wide variety of services. These offerings were developed based upon the general needs we saw emerging in all our years of business. We did not conduct a scientific study to determine the groupings; it was more of a gut feel on what organizations needed.

What we discovered over a period of time was that these groupings met the needs of about half of our clients: the “basic” package readily took care of many business requirements, but the other 50% came back to us asking for a modification. Could they drop an item from one package and add an item from another one. Naturally, we said yes… we don’t offer needless support.

While there are benefits to having standard offerings and processes, we’ve learned that those fundamentals can also hem-in an organization, trapping flexibility and creativity. So rather than being a slave to bureaucracy, we try to accommodate clients requests. Each business is unique, even if they operate in the same market. Their internal processes and their people have unique strengths and weaknesses we need to be aware of and make accommodations for them.

If you want support, you really can have it your way…

 

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