This is especially the case in the printing industry. Web-to-print (W2P) platforms have made purchasing print easier than ever. Buyers can simply search online for print providers in the local vicinity and then quickly compare and contrast pricing before choosing the best option for their needs without ever speaking to a representative from any company.  

As well as streamlining the process for buyers these platforms have helped some businesses save significant costs as they’ve eradicated the need to employ a large salesforce – for these companies SEO is king. On the flipside, W2P has played a major role in commoditising print and driving down prices to all-time lows.

Given that retaining customers is cheaper and less of a time investment than going out and winning new customers, how can print businesses manage and cultivate customer relations in a world that’s increasingly dominated by W2P? PrintWeek spoke to the finalists of the Customer Service Team of the Year category at the PrintWeek Awards 2015, to get some pointers.

Tough choices

Offering customers the ability to order online can be considered either as a necessary evil in this digitised age or as a highly effective way of bringing in new custom. In the former case, the decision to implementing a W2P set-up can be a tough one. Just ask Ross Bellotti, managing director at Kingfisher Print & Design in Devon. The company is just starting out on its W2P journey, according to Bellotti, and it’s something he has agonised about.

“We have built a really good reputation over the years for having a really personal service,” he explains. “By pushing our clients toward ordering online we are worried about losing that personal touch. We really haven’t decided how to manage it, but we envisage more personal visits to clients and making sure we stay up to speed with the orders they are placing, getting regular feedback and updates on how the process works for our clients.”

Some of the measures Bellotti suggests are standard practice at Otley-based print management company JPS. Regular communication and meetings are a vitally important element when it comes to building strong relationships with the company’s customers, says director Bridget Petty.

“We meet each client at least once or more usually twice a season and the meetings would encompass a review of the last or current season, establishing the schedule for the next season together with forward planning for the next 12 months plus,” says Petty. 

But that’s not the end of the interaction. “We speak to our clients on the phone, usually on a daily basis, to ensure that current production and forward planning is fully in hand,” she continues. “Email is the backbone of our communication structure, but it is very important to maintain a strong personal dialogue. With the best will in the world there will always be last-minute requirements and by having good relationships with suppliers we are confident that we will fulfil these.”

Despite such high levels of communication the company doesn’t employ a sales force – just a team of account managers. “Each client has their own dedicated account manager within a backed up management system,” explains Petty. “We have a high level of client retention, which we attribute to our working hard to provide a service integral to our clients’ business together with a cost-effective solution rather than a hard sell.”

Seamless on-going communication with clients is also vitally important to Karen Navarrete, marketing consultant at Amberley Adhesive Labels, which won the customer service gong in 2014.

“Amberley constantly strives to deliver the best customer service and we have allocated team members and assigned deputies to every customer we look after,” says Navarrete. “Whilst emails play a big part of the modern business world, we still ensure that our telephone service offers all customers a voice to talk to.”

Even for companies that heavily rely on W2P platforms and automation, it’s still vitally important that they offer customers a ‘voice’ that’s always on hand to help address any issues or queries, according to Fraser Church, head of creative development at Romford-headquartered DST Output, who says that the business is focused on regularly talking to customers.

“One-to-one communication builds trust and delivers long-term benefits to the client, whether providing them with information about the latest advancements in communication, discussing their business requirements, recommending solutions, providing an update on the progression of their work or undertaking a post-campaign review,” says Church.

For some clients, for whom the company produces large quantities of regular work, DST Output even places members of its team in their offices to ensure the printer fully understands its client’s business needs, with reviews set for regular periods throughout the year depending on the customer’s own requirements. 

“There is no set rule and this will very much be dependent on their requirements,” explains Church. “Whilst we do produce some ad-hoc print on demand, much of our work is strategic data driven output that requires full specification and development. Indeed, for the more complex projects business analysts and project managers support the account management team and can have numerous regular meetings on a frequent basis across different departments. 

“Whether weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, it is important to mutually agree on the most appropriate frequency and content of meetings to deliver optimal benefit to the client,” he adds.      

It’s a view shared by Petty, who says there is no better way of delivering lasting customer relationships than getting a job right first time, delivering high-quality print, on time at a competitive price.

“We manage the planning for our clients to ensure timely decisions, making sure the right supplier can be booked on bespoke paper to optimise the budget,” says Petty. “Careful budgeting, price comparison and open-book accounting help to build trust and confidence and delivering this over many years helps cement the relationship.”

Worth the effort

Building and then cementing relationships with clients can be incredibly challenging and require a lot of time and investment, but it’s worth the effort in the end. Just ask Sam Neal, managing director at Geoff Neal Group and winner of Customer Service Team of the Year award in 2015.   

Although the firm doesn’t offer W2P, Neal sees that there are certain upsides to these platforms, but on the flipside he also believes that they can be limiting. 

“Web-to-print is a fantastic technology offering a very efficient and cost-effective way of getting simple print produced to a pre-determined set of parameters and there are some great success stories of businesses who have harnessed the technology,” says Neal. 

“Step outside of these parameters and the computer says no. You can’t ask a web-to-print system for a favour, but you can ask your customer service team. I am a big believer in favours helping to make the world go round.”

He adds that far too often in the printing industry a one-size-fits-all solution is sought, which sometimes isn’t best for customers or for printers. 

“Where print excels and cannot be matched with an online digital experience is in both the tactility and also the prestige and emotional response printed products create,” says Neal. “In order to create something that offers this experience then pre-determined, commodity-based repeatable formats are not going to cut it. This is where close customer relationships and an understanding of the client’s brand come into its own. More and more it is down to the manufacturers to be innovating themselves and to also keep up with the latest developments from the industry at large. Clients and suppliers need to have close relationships to ensure this innovation is shared and in due course used.”      

As the above examples underline, delivering high levels of customer service is at the heart of any successful business. Not only is it a useful tool to aid client retention, it’s also a good way to differentiate a business and help it to stand out from the crowd. This latter point is even more important for businesses that decide to whole-heartedly embrace online and replace their salesforce with a web-to-print platform – just because you’ve taken your business online doesn’t mean that you can afford to completely shut down traditional channels of communication.

In fact the opposite may actually be the case when you consider that clients’ needs and business strategies can shift overnight due to all manner of different external factors, so if you’re not talking to them you’re not going to be aware of what they expect from their suppliers.      

“I’ve always said a lot of mistakes made in selling web-to-print is that printers try and sell a solution without really understanding the client’s needs and building a web-to-print solution to fit that,” says Bellotti. “You have to try and make sure the online solution is always progressing to keep up with the clients’ needs.”

If you can get your head around this conundrum, you should be on track to enjoy a long-standing and fruitful relationship with your customers.