April 2013
| Business World Magazine | 281
you’re just a number in their system. When
you call us, you’re treated like a person. You
call some companies, you’re going to get a
voice recording and the first menu option is
whether you need to pay a bill, not customer
service, but fee collection. When you call us,
you get a human being, and that might be
me, or you’ll get customer service, and that’s
my daughter,” says Papa.
As for efficiency, Papa is prepared to
compete against any national service pro-
vider which may be equipped with its own
fleet of vehicles. “You can ask any of my cus-
tomers, even some that were formerly clients
of national companies, and they’ll tell you,
‘Tommy took care of us faster with no truck
than the big company did with its huge fleet.’
That’s because we care about doing what we
say we’re going to do and being there to help
our customers. Our commitment to them
keeps them committed to us,” he says.
An expression of that commitment exists
in the fact that Universal has never lost a cus-
tomer due to a deficiency in service. Some
clients may have been lost due to closings
arising from the peculiarities of the present
economy, but never because of a problem
with Universal. In fact, the very early clients
Universal secured when it first opened its
doors are still clients all these years later.
HOW IT WORKS
For all of Papa’s popularity and personality
(and he does have plenty), business remains
about practicalities and were it not for its
providing of advantages, Universal could
not have achieved what it has today.
When considering partnering with Uni-
versal, the process begins with an audit of
