How to chase customers away.

One of the things I like about the old school printers, big box shipping/office supply printers and cheap internet printers is that eventually their poor customer service, inconsistent quality, slow turnaround times and ridiculous prices chase customers in our direction.

Unfortunately sometimes our soon to be new clients come in really frustrated from their last experience and we need to really just slow down, empathize with them and be a friend before we earn the right to ask for their business. This is also our chance to spend as much time as it takes rebuilding trust for print as a medium.

I write this with humility because a) printing is a brutally humbling business, and b) its not my nature to brag or bash others. I do want to highlight some customer service best practices in light of some recently new customers who have been chased in our direction.

So how do you chase customers away?

1) Miss a deadline and say you "didn't get around to it". True story, another printer said that to our soon to be customer. I'm not perfect, I missed a deadline with a customer last week, it happens. I called my client, took responsibility and gave him our new plan and timing. He was happy to hear me be accountable and eager for us to finish his project. One of our designers came up with a better idea which would take a little longer and he is thrilled with the 30 foot long family tree!

2) Go dark on communication. Yep, that will definitely chase your customers to us. Especially on an event or mailer, or in the case of a screw up, someone needs to own it proactively. We try to shine a light on mistakes, be blame/shame free and focus on plugging holes in the process or coming up with a new process if the old way is broken. Again, we aren't perfect, but we work really hard on adapting our workflow, being accountable and communicating on projects.

3) Set the bar low on quality. Why would you hand someone a box of crummy printed paper and expect them to take it? We keep a folder of bad print examples on file and I posted some pictures here on our Facebook site (if you're still using Facebook... :) Do we make mistakes? Oh yeah, print is a humbling business, but we don't expect you to live with them. I can think of 1 job in almost 15,000 that the customer flat out refused and we couldn't fix it. Why? Because we couldn't print the color they saw on a computer monitor at their office. Let that sink in for a second.... I gladly refunded their money. Again, it's about how we set the bar high for quality and how we handle mistakes.

4) Price like you are a price maker. We have saved 3 clients over $2,000 EACH this year in printing costs and it's only April. How? By switching them from offset printing to digital but it's not just 'hit print and walk away'. We've got really good color matching and calibration tools (again, posted on Facebook). We set the bar high on quality and we include our customer in the process so they aren't guessing if their stuff is going to look great. With all of the discount printers in the market, its more important than ever as a printer to communicate our value to clients. When our benefits are clearly explained and our pricing and terms are seen as a good value, we don't need to race for the bottom on pricing. If you're an old school printer, it's only a matter of time before your clients figure out that your pricing is unsustainable - and a reason to change. 

5) Lastly, and this one is the ugliest way to chase customers away. Being discriminatory, on race, religion, or something else. You want to send someone running away quickly? Tell them racist jokes or that they violate your religious code like another printer across town did to a client of ours. Bottom line, religion (or lack thereof) isn't a condition of doing business with us, but respect for human decency is. And discrimination has no place in society or business. I love you just the way you are, and I'm not going to tell you to somehow change who you are so we can do business together.

The bottom line is that we are focused on you, our customers, not our competitors. Again, the point of this thought piece is to highlight some business and print industry principles that we stand for. And I believe if we stand for the right things and consistently execute on them with empathy, conscientiousness, hunger and humility, that people will prefer to do business with us.

That's how we do things here in Redmond. What do you think?

JD Klein

Chief Printing Officer

Minuteman Press of Redmond