Customer Flight or Retention: Lessons from the Printing Industry

Customers may select a printer based on quality and pricing, but they stick with a printer for another reason: service. In an industry shaken up by mergers, acquisitions, and the recent threat of Web-based printing services, customer service in a printing company is often the factor determining customer retention – or customer flight.

What is it about customer service reps in this industry that helps businesses succeed? Here are a few key qualities that can be applied in many other industries.

Technical knowledge and competence.

Printing depends on a mountain of details. From paper to inks to folds to mailing requirements, every print job is customized. What the customer doesn’t know about print manufacturing, the best customer service rep should. Through adroit questioning, the best CSR will help a client prepare a job to be printed so that there’s a minimum of problems at the print shop.

Most consumers know little about the critical aspects of getting anything printed well. This puts the onus on the printers to make sure their sales staff as well as the supporting customer service staff has impeccable technical knowledge. The best printers invest in their CSRs through intensive training about the manufacturing side of the business. Even though a salesperson might have made the initial sale, more than half the time it’s the CSR who deals with customers during the production and delivery cycles. So technical knowledge is critical to the printer-customer relationship.

Client Familiarity.

Print company CSRs are quick learners. The best ones are knowledgeable about the customer’s industry, so that they can converse about specific problems, schedules, and products that are unique to a given industry. For example, CSRs in a financial printing firm are well versed on such financial products as shareholder reports, prospectuses, and proxies. This common language serves their customers well.

Attention to detail.

I can’t figure out how they do it, but the printing CSRs somehow manage to remember details from each customer’s entire print-job history. It’s as if, during every phone conversation, they have every one of your job folders at their fingertips. They remember your firm’s particular preferences. This allows them to gently correct your mistakes should they occur, without ever offending you. You find yourself constantly amazed at their recall and their grasp of your company’s idiosyncrasies. Imagine what comfort and confidence this instills in customers.

Flawless follow-through.

The best CSRs in printing are always on top of your job, whether you have one or 21 jobs on press. They call you back as promised with schedule updates. They keep you informed, even if the news is not good. In fact, you’re more apt to forgive delays, problems, and printing mistakes when your customer service rep is forthright about the problem, quick to respond, and determined to help solve whatever problem there is.

Bona fide professionalism.

The printing industry depends on high-quality CSRs who are highly visible. They’re on the “front lines” of a manufacturing plant all day, every day, juggling multiple jobs for multiple customers.

In printing, a customer service rep is much more than a polite person who answers a few questions over the phone. When all is said and done, you can look at a dozen similar printed pieces from a dozen different printers and not be able to distinguish who printed what. But you’ll remember who helped you produce them, who saved your hide when your supervisor was pressuring you, who caught the typo before the job went on press. Nine times out of ten, it will be a CSR.

CSRs in printing need a head for business, a thick skin for handling frantic print-buyers – and an extra big thank-you come next holiday season for all of their efforts.

© Margie Gallo Dana