After a management buyout nine years ago, the new directors (Keith Burgess, managing director and Mike Seamarks and Garry Hardy, finance and production directors respectively) sought the help of a marketing consultant, who cited new technology and, more urgently, service, as the important areas to focus on to push the business forward.

Changing times
“For a long time, as with many of the older printing firms, we were heavily led by production. Now we’re far more a sales and service-led operation,” says Burgess. “The old model is just not suitable for
today’s market.”

The jobs Newnorth takes on vary in size but its key work comes from charities, in-house journals, catalogues and annual reports. These are not always customers with a lot of print expertise so they need the printer to talk them through the job and use their technical knowledge to make it work.

For one particular brochure job, Burgess saw the opportunity to use spot varnish to enhance the look and feel of the literature.

“Our clients trust us to do the best job we can, and if we can think of ways to enhance it, then it does impress them,” says Burgess. “They don’t want to hear a lot of technical print speak; our customers on the whole are marketers, they just want to know how to enhance their printed material to improve their marketing message.”

The addition of David Blades six years ago was part of the giant stride the firm took to improve customer service. Blades brought with him experience, not only in customer service, but also in sales and operations management. “When I arrived here, some of the business practices were somewhat dated. It was very production-driven,” he recalls.

Previously, Newnorth had found that jobs just ‘walked in through the door’, but times have changed, particularly in the oversubscribed sheetfed market. Blades found the sales and customer service teams were swamped in unnecessary administration. He cut a lot of this out and introduced monthly meetings to keep track of progress. The teams also used to be very rigidly structured and inflexible. “

We still have a customer service person for each sales person but we have made the whole process much more fluid, making it far more of a team approach,” he explains.

He is also very selective when it comes to employing new staff. He looks for people who not only have solid market knowledge but who also know how to work hard and add value for each customer.

Since he became customer services manager – and, since March, director – he has tried to employ customer service staff who, like himself, have been on the road in sales positions in the past. This gives them greater knowledge of the ups and downs of a sales job which helps them work with account managers with more understanding.  

Customer feedback
Newnorth is also keen to court customer feedback. It produces a monthly customer newsletter in which up to six customers are asked to voice their opinions on all aspects of the service they have received. And the feedback, on the whole, looks extremely positive. “Of course there will always be times when you hear something that you don’t want to, but that just signifies something to improve next time,” Blades says.

There is a complaints procedure that the company reviews each year as part of its ISO 9001 accreditation. Last year it aimed for less than 1.2% of complaints on jobs and managed to come in well under that target. It also carries out a bi-annual survey of all of its customers in a bid to gain as much feedback as possible. This way it can review any problem areas.

Another success of Newnorth is a very low staff turnover. Blades says: “This is a vital asset for us, not only for a better working environment but also for better, longer-term customer service.” He believes that the key to long-serving staff members is having approachable directors and letting staff know when they have done a good job.

“The newsletter that we send to staff every month highlights some of the positive feedback that we get and that boosts morale as they know their hard work is appreciated,” Blades says. Newnorth also publishes financial updates in its newsletter so that everyone is aware how the firm is performing month on month. “Also winning awards, such as last year’s PrintWeek Award for Customer Service Team of the Year, helped morale no end. We got so many customers telling us it was thoroughly deserved and that’s a great injection of confidence for my team and the company as a whole.”  

Foundation for growth
The success of the customer-led approach is evident when you look at Newnorth’s annual turnover. This stood at £3.5m eight years ago; it is now a far healthier £7.6m. Considering the overall reduction in market demand and general downturn in the print, this is no small feat. The company also now gets 30% of its new business come from recommendations alone, particularly in the charities sector.  

The biggest challenge today for Burgess is balancing enhanced customer service levels with complex production schedules. “Wherever possible we do not want to say no to a client,” he says. “This means that up to 80% of our work is proofed the next day and on any given afternoon we are not sure of perhaps 50% of the work that will be going on press that evening.” To accommodate this extra production push Newnorth is open six days a week, and a year ago began operating 24 hours a day.     

“There is no point saying you can finish a job in a certain way at a certain time if you can’t,” advises Burgess. “As much as we never want to say no to a job, if we can’t do something we will find someone who can.” Burgess says that being honest with clients has resulted in further solid customer relations – after all people respect honesty far more than late delivery.

Burgess says that his company is not driven by having the biggest or best equipment. However, it wasn’t afraid to invest in new technologies. Newnorth was one of the first sheetfed printers to go into CTP and was active with PDFs when they had only just come into the production arena.

Newnorth intends to keep customer service as a priority but also push ahead with new services such as reports writing. The firm is now working towards the BSI’s Kitemark for Printing Services and has recently launched an online quoting and ordering system.

The only part of the business that has not been updated is the firm’s building, which, unlike its new business practices, still seems stuck in the 1970s. However, with the firm’s success and the warmth of the staff, aesthetics seem altogether quite trivial.

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Type of printer Full service sheetfed B1 and B2 printer and print manager
Turnover £7.6m
Staff 76
Problem Level of customer service
Solution New customer care structure with key service standards