On Customer Service

By Harry Poulton, Senior Sales Representative, The Print House

What I am about to share with you is something that frustrates me to no end. We have all been there, and I know you can all sympathize with me, as I am certain you've experienced something similar.

Sales has always been easy and quite natural for me, perhaps because I enjoy it, but there is something else. It is the thing I keep in mind with EVERY sales call I make. It is what I think about when I am resolving a problem, or a customer has an impossible deadline. I think about it when I hit a home run and get letters of praise from my customer. Keeping this one simple goal in mind for me has been the Holy Grail of print sales, and it is so simple that we forget about it, we don’t think about it, we put it aside.

What has allowed me to achieve a successful career in printing is simply Customer Service. What has happened to customer service? Is it dead? How can the level of customer service that you and I receive from our utility companies, cell phone carriers, health insurance companies, and yes even printing companies, be justified? For the most part customer service has become non-existent and in many cases it borders on down right rudeness. It is like a plague that has moved from company to company. In the frenzy of cutting costs and becoming more and more price competitive, businesses have tossed something so important out the window. I find it so frustrating because I don't, I can't, and I won't conduct business in that manner, yet I encounter it constantly. I wish I could go back in time and experience the level of customer service my grandfather received...personable, caring, kind, and responsive. I guess I want to be treated like I treat my own customers. Perhaps it would help somewhat if I were to elaborate on what I mean by customer service. To me, customer service is having a genuine concern for your customer. It is working late nights or weekends to help them meet that impossible deadline. It is about listening to what your customer’s needs are and making it happen no matter what. It’s about being dependable. It is about being honest. It is about owning up to your mistakes and making things right. It’s about keeping your promises. It’s being kind on the phone, no matter how stressed you are or how much work you have on your plate. It’s about taking a minute to look at that really important job to make sure it is perfect before it’s delivered. It's not always about money, it's about the customer. It’s just common sense. I certainly don’t think that I am the only one in the printing industry that feels this way; there are many of us out there. It's not even for me to say whether I live up to my own aspirations - that is better left for my customers to decide. However, I do feel that those of us that still truly believe in customer service really are special.

Where has customer service gone? I guess I don’t know. However, there is one thing I do know. Eventually you will give someone special the opportunity to work with you and you will become a customer for life. So perhaps customer service is not dead, you just need to know where to look. Thanks so much.

Harry Poulton is a Senior Sales Representative at The Print House in Malden, MA. Their web site is www.printhouse.com.