Published Article

The Customer Service Solution

By: Fred Daubert, Vice President, The Riverside Group
Published in: Printing News

In the graphic arts industry, we talk a great deal about how technology is changing the way we do business, for better and for worse. Most of these discussions – either verbally with customers, suppliers or peers, or in print in publications such as this – focus on the equipment improvements and workflow enhancements that allow us to produce more in less time, and with less cost.

One aspect that’s rarely considered is the shift in sales activities that has accompanied these advancements. The goal of your company’s sales activities is likely unchanged: To build long-term business relationships that are beneficial to both you and your customers. How graphic arts companies cultivate those relationships, however, has changed.

Traditionally, salespeople focused on establishing profitable relationships by offering copious amounts of personal attention - both in and out of the office. The role of the salesperson was to forge a personal relationship with customers, from which business was earned.

That approach to sales has become antiquated. Customers today often come from a wider geographical area, making it difficult for a salesperson to appear at their door at a moment’s notice. Also, many of your customers don’t want that level of attention. A weekly three-hour lunch or round of golf is simply not palatable to most busy printing and graphic arts professionals in today’s business climate.

The Customer Service Solution
To be clear, this does not mean that the value of a salesperson has been reduced or marginalized; if anything, the importance of good sales personnel has only increased. However, the realities of winning and retaining business have shifted that value from relationship-builder to door-opener. While prospecting has always been a key sales function, it is perhaps of more critical importance to the success of your company now than ever before.

So if salespeople are spending more of their time prospecting, who is keeping existing customers happy – and cultivating even more business with them? Customer service representatives are ideally suited to fill this void. They’re responsible for day-to-day customer interaction already, so they know each customer’s needs intimately. With that level of familiarity, transitioning existing customers to contact your CSRs rather than sales should be reasonably painless.

Of greater importance is ensuring that your customer service personnel are motivated to take on these extras duties. One solution is to offer CSRs incentives for winning new work from existing customers. These incentives should reward all activities that aid the sales effort, including contacting customers regularly for new business and broadening your company’s contacts within each company. This is something we have implemented at The Riverside Group to great success.

As customers demand even shorter turnaround times for printers and post press services providers, it’s important to the health of your company that you consider every way your business may be impacted. While technological improvements certainly change the way we do business in a day-to-day basis, the way we win new business and serve existing customers shouldn’t be ignored. Placing a greater emphasis on prospecting and transitioning customer service to take on more direct sales responsibilities is one solution that can pay dividends now and in the future.

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Fred Daubert is President and Peter Pape is CEO of the Riverside Group, an “under-one-roof” bookbinding and finishing company located in Rochester, N.Y. They specialize in both soft and hard cover binding production, including perfect binding; PUR binding; notch binding; Smyth sewing; cased-in mechanical and perfect binding; and more. Additional capabilities include mechanical binding; laminating and UV coating; folding; gluing; tabbing; die cutting; foil stamping; embossing and more. For more information, contact Fred Daubert at (800)777-2463, or book@riversidegroup.com.