Interesting thread but I strongly disagree here.
I have been in automotive industry on the manufacturer side and on the vendor side and in both cases I absolutely can't stand the old school approach to customer service.
When I became engineering manager at the machine builder I used to work at, we saved SO MUCH money by ditching the old school sort of "patronage" system where we bought from our little circle of small vendors that we had personal relationships with... Sure, they might buy us lunch once in a while, and they'd provide support on-site if needed or whatever, but they absolutely could not compete with Wi Automation or even freaking AMAZON.
Even for custom stuff like you are talking about here... I once worked with a local "customer servicey" type place for printed circuit boards... Got the sales managers cell, he always answers and is super nice, etc. but when the rubber meets the road its lots of money and lots of excuses... Went online to a big player (Advanced Circuits, now called AdvancedPCB), submitted drawings using the automated web tool, answered a couple automated questions about what I wanted, ordered with a credit card at 3:30pm and had 10pcs for prototyping IN HAND the next day before lunch.
Cost was more than 50% less than the other guy, I never spoke to an actual human, parts were perfect, and they even threw in a free t shirt and a bag of microwavable popcorn (odd I know, but I appreciated the snack 😂).
I have had similar experiences so much that terms like "customer service" "small business" and even "local" have become huge red flags for me... I feel like places use this talk as a crutch to try to shield themselves from competition with bigger, more efficient players.
Now whenever I can I go straight to the biggest, most soulless, impersonal giant business I can... Jeff Bezos may not stop by my facility and shmooze but guess what? I order from Amazon I get my shit dirt cheap and it's there on time every time without fail.