Reading time: 6 minutes · For owners of SMBs in Ausserschwyz, the Linthgebiet and around Lake Zurich who have a good product but reach too few customers
You have the better product, the cleaner work, the fairer price. And still the job goes to the competitor who simply happened to be where the customer was looking. Many businesses in the region know this feeling. This week, of all companies, Meta, the group behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, showed how to solve exactly this problem.
At its Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg showed the Muse Charm: a small device for your keyring, with a small screen and an animated character you talk to. Behind it is Muse, Meta’s personal AI assistant. The device is due to ship in December, according to Zuckerberg. I recorded my take on video:
A Tamagotchi for the AI assistant
The device itself is not the interesting part. What is interesting is what Meta does with it: the AI assistant becomes a game. You can personalise the character, dress it up, play with it. You open an app when you have to. You look at a character on your keyring because you want to. That is the difference between a tool and a habit.
And anyone who talks to an assistant every day tells it what they are working on, where they want to go on holiday and what is on their mind. For Meta, that is the real value: a daily conversation with its customers, especially the younger ones who left Facebook long ago.
The better product has failed Meta before
Meta has built hardware before. Portal, a screen for video calls, was a decent product. It sold 600,000 units in 2020 and 800,000 in 2021, mostly to businesses. In 2022 Meta discontinued the consumer version. Good product, no channel.
The turning point came with the glasses. Meta did not sell them alone but with Ray-Ban, through opticians people visit anyway, under a brand they already trust. In 2025 Meta and EssilorLuxottica sold more than 7 million of these glasses, more than three times as many as the year before.
The best product rarely wins. The product that wins is the one that reaches customers through a channel they already use.
Why this applies to a local business too
A joiner in Siebnen, a specialist shop in Pfäffikon or a manufacturer in the Linth plain does not have Meta’s resources. The lesson is still the same, and it matters even more for small businesses, because they cannot afford a Portal mistake. On top of that, customers are changing where they start looking. According to the IGEM-Digimonitor 2026, 80 per cent of respondents in Switzerland use AI services. I described what this means for online shops in my post on Amazon and AI shopping agents.
For a local business this does not mean building a device. It means answering three questions honestly: through which channel do customers reach me? What reason do they have to come back? And do I record what they tell me?
What to do
1. Sort out the channel before the product
Where do your customers already buy today? From a specialist dealer, through the architect, through the tradesperson who installs your product, or via a Google search with the name of the town? For the glasses, Meta used an existing sales route instead of building its own. For many SMBs the most effective channel is also a partner who already has the customers. I described how to involve dealers and partners so that they actively sell, using the example of dealer meetings that actually lead somewhere.
2. Give people a reason to come back
Meta wants you to talk to Muse every day. An SMB does not need daily contact, but it does need regular contact: the seasonal maintenance reminder, the offer before the heating season, the invitation to an open day. A newsletter with real value is often the simplest way to do this. What matters is that it has a reason and is not just sent because another month has gone by.
3. Record what customers tell you
Meta’s real goal is the conversation. Your customers are already having that conversation with you: on the phone, at the site visit, in the quote request. But afterwards it usually lives in the owner’s head or in an inbox. If you record what a customer is planning, when they want to renovate and what bothered them last time, you can follow up at the right moment. That is exactly what a simple CRM with a clean follow-up process is for.
4. Handle customer data properly
With Meta, many people wonder whether they want to reveal so much about themselves. Your customers ask you the same question, just more quietly. If you store notes and conversation content and possibly analyse them with AI, you need to know what is allowed in Switzerland. The tool AI and customer data: what applies in Switzerland sums it up on one page.
None of these steps is complicated. They get left undone because in most SMBs nobody does marketing; everyone does it on the side. How this works with one central contact person instead of a dedicated department is described under Marketing without a marketing department.
Where the limits are
Not every business needs more contact with its customers. If you do one-off jobs, such as building a house or a renovation every twenty years, you gain more from referrals and a well-maintained Google Business Profile than from a newsletter. And nobody knows today whether the Muse Charm itself will be a success. Meta has to ramp up production and get the device into enough hands by Christmas. The principle behind it holds regardless, and it applies to a business in Lachen just as much as to a global corporation.
Frequently asked questions
What is Meta’s Muse Charm?
A small keyring device that lets you talk to Muse, Meta’s AI assistant, without taking out your smartphone. An animated character that you can personalise appears on the screen. Meta plans to ship the device in December; price and availability in Switzerland are not yet known.
What can an SMB learn from this?
That the channel often matters more than the product. With Portal, Meta had a good device and no sales route; with the Ray-Ban glasses it had both. For an SMB this means: first work out which route customers come through, and be present there.
Do I need a CRM for this?
Yes, as soon as more than one person takes enquiries or needs to follow up on quotes. It does not have to be big. What matters is that what customers tell you is recorded, and that someone follows up at the right time.
How often should I get in touch with regular customers?
As often as you have a genuine reason: a seasonal reminder, a new offer, an invitation. For most SMBs that is four to eight contacts a year. Without a reason, every message feels like advertising.
Do you know which channel your best customers come through?
Book a free 30-minute initial call. Together we look at where your enquiries come from today, where they get lost and what to do first. Prefer to read on your own first? In the tools you will find checklists, no sign-up needed.
