Margie Dana

Why Every Customer’s Judging You by Perceived Value

No matter what you’re selling, your customers are evaluating you by the perceived value you provide them.

It’s easier to judge the value of a tangible good – a car, restaurant meal, kitchen appliance, office copier – because we comparison shop, read online reviews, seek opinions from friends and family, and then make our purchase armed with this information and guided by budget.

Defining Value is trickier for service providers who don’t sell tangible products. As a writer, I’m in this category. Likewise, it’s tricky for companies manufacturing products that thousands of others do, too (like commercial printers).

In these cases, the stakes are higher when customers judge our Value.

Part of what customers evaluate is Service. In my own case, Service is a combination of how fast I deliver my product, how accessible I am, how quickly I respond to clients’ requests, how well I listen to clients, and how pleasant and professional I am to work with.

The Quality of my product (or yours) is something totally different: It had better speak for itself, or we’re out of business. Mediocre or lousy print jobs will send any customer packing, as will unacceptable copy.

It is the Value that concerns me and should you. How would customers describe the unique Value you provide them? Do you know what they’d say – or what they’re even looking for?

It helps to think of Value as getting more for our money. This works for all sorts of service providers. If you can articulate what this specific Value is that you offer and provide your customers, you can then use it for different reasons: to develop new business, to communicate to your sales and service staff so they’re on board with it, to measure your unique selling proposition by, and to market your business in all sorts of channels.

Stop and think about what your company’s unique Value to customers is. These questions might help:

What extra knowledge or expertise do you bring your customers?
What special skill or capability do you have that, while not directly affecting customer jobs, will certainly help them/their company in some way?
What tips, tricks, or shortcuts do you regularly share with customers to make their work go smoother and save them time?
What creative suggestions might you offer customers that cost you nothing yet make a significant difference to them?
How have you let your customers know – lately and regularly – that you’re thinking about them and want to help them succeed?
What related experience or passion do you have that will help your customers? Do they know it, and do you share insights freely?
Why should customers work with you and not your competitors – what do you bring to the table aside from your products?

Your answers will be different from everyone else in your field, as mine are in my field. Focusing on what Value you bring to customers is essential. If problems arise with your products or services, and customers start questioning the relationship, they’ll end up with this very issue: “What am I getting out of this, and why on Earth should I stay?”

If you haven’t paid attention to the Value you bring, customers won’t hesitate to shop around.

On the other hand, when you provide great Value, customers stop thinking about what it costs them. They’re thinking, “I get so much more from this company that I’m never leaving them.”

What the Average Print Customer Wants

What do print customers really want?

A print company owner emailed me to ask the simple question: what does the average print buyer really look for in a printer today?

Giving a simple answer to a tricky question is a challenge that I accepted. I put aside all thoughts of specific technologies and capabilities. Here’s what I came up with:

Honesty & integrity

These are by far the most important qualities a customer looks for in a printing company. If a printer proves to be otherwise, there are no second chances, and the bad reputation will spread like poison ivy to the customer’s colleagues and acquaintances.

Creative ideas

Seasoned print customers in particular prefer printers who make suggestions on ways to improve and enhance their materials. It’s one real way by which a printer can stand out in a sea of other printers. Novice print customers won’t necessarily recognize this quality from the outset. However, I strongly believe it’s a way to differentiate your print company.

Speed

Print and deliver it fast. That’s a given for every customer – corporate and consumer. We have Amazon to thank for that. Your customers will look to see how fast you can deliver their products. It’s critical.

Very good quality

It’s the most obvious ‘must-have.’ Whatever it is they’re buying from you, buyers expect excellent quality.

Expectations met

Even if customers never articulate their specific (and unique) expectations, they’ll presume you’ll put their jobs in production right away unless they hear otherwise. They’ll presume a lot, in fact: that you’ll keep them informed of problems. That you’ll tell them in advance when to expect proofs, plus how the proofs will come to them and what to do with them. They’ll presume, too, that the work will be delivered when you agreed to do so, and that the quality will be as good if not better than they hoped. In a nutshell? No surprises. That says it all.

Great communication

See above. All print customers expect their printers to keep them informed of what matters to them — when their proof’s coming, the delivery schedule, potential price changes, and so on.

Fair pricing

Customers shop for printers, and price is part of the equation. Hopefully, people shopping for the best printer know how to select similar companies so they can get comparable prices. This is not always the case, particularly with novices who think a printer is a printer.

Respect

Whatever the service is that people pay for, they want respect from the provider. This includes printers. It’s the whole package: how you speak to them and treat them, how you handle problems that arise, how fair or balanced the business relationship is, how seriously you take their concerns, and how quickly you respond.

Put these expectations together and you get a package that spells professionalism. It can’t be much simpler than that.

Surly doesn’t suit you, saleslady.

funny angry young woman When I ordered a salad to go from a neighborhood café, the saleswoman couldn’t have seemed more miserable to be waiting on me if she tried. Later, I learned she’s the manager, which made it worse.

She was brusque. She was curt. Everything a salesperson shouldn’t be.

Customers are sensitive to your demeanor. We can hear it in your voice. We can see it on your face. We can read it in your emails.

If dealing with you is unpleasant, we will leave you, and we will tell other people about you.

If I had sales or service team members, or someone answering my phones, I’d teach them this on day 1. I’d insist they become good actors when necessary, because it happens to all of u: We’re in a rotten mood. Something else is troubling us. When we can’t avoid dealing with customers on such occasions, we need to rise above it for the moment.

There are plenty of other cafés and coffee shops nearby. I’ve already found them.

Well, I’ll Be. Print Buyers Want to Be Surveyed.

At least one does, and I know him. He’s a super experienced, seriously brainy operations manager at a major publishing organization, and although he’s been toiling away in publishing for a few decades, in charge of manufacturing, he did cut his teeth in a few printing companies before that. So he knows printing from both sides.

When he emailed me, suggesting I give printers a bit of a nudge to survey their customers, I thought he was fooling. But no. He means it.

And although it feels like we’re getting surveyed to death these days from every business (Starbucks, auto mechanics, hotels and restaurants all come to mind), he casts his vote for printers to ask their customers for more feedback.

“I’m not shy about telling my printers how they are doing in my view, survey or no. But I do think they could, as an industry, benefit from jumping on the survey bandwagon.”

I took that as a request to bug my readers who are printers to consider what this print customer’s saying. He’s ready, willing and able to provide feedback. All you have to do is ask.

Oftentimes, if you don’t ask customers direct and specific questions about your relationship with them, you’ll never know if there are problems brewing. Wouldn’t you rather know if a customer has one foot out the door so you can address the situation?

I’ve done surveys for printers and know a thing or two about them.I think printers should survey customers every few years. Here’s my advice:

Know why you’re doing it and what you’ll do with the information you collect before you start.
Involve your sales and service reps as you develop the survey questions.
Do it online. I use Surveymonkey, but there are many tools available.
Keep your survey fairly short. It’s important to respect customers’ time.
Incentivize people to take your survey with some potential reward or prize.
Let your customers know in advance that you’ll be sending a survey.
Carefully decide which questions are mandatory vs. optional.
Don’t waste a question. Be exceedingly mindful of what you’re asking.
Leave plenty of room on most questions for free text so responders have the space to express themselves and don’t get “hemmed in” by the structure of the survey.
Always ask people to share in their own words a question you should have asked but didn’t. This will inform you for future surveys.
Once the survey’s done and you’ve analyzed the results, share what you can with your employees and customers. Customers don’t expect to hear every detail, but give them an overview of what you learned – and thank them again for participating.

If you do it right, you’ll be amazed at what you learn. The results you collect will paint an interesting picture of your service, reputation, and overall image.

And there’s this: printers who survey customers end up with testimonials they can use in many ways. Surveying your print customers is worth the effort.

Thanks, G., for the nudge to write today’s post.

Don’t Tap Dance Around Bad News

While talking with a print company CEO, I asked her why she thought print buyers like working with certain printers. Of course, I have my own opinions. There really are lots of reasons why we customers stick with printers over the years. It’s not usually about the product; it’s often about the relationship. Buyer and printer (specifically, the sales rep or service rep) have settled into a groove, a comfortable routine, that’s built on trust and familiarity.

One thing this CEO said stuck in my mind. When I asked her specifically why her clients prefer working with her, she quoted a good client who said:

“You call me with the good news. You call me with the bad.”

I immediately flashed back to my financial print-buying days, when I juggled production schedules of a dozen shareholder reports mixed in with prospectuses and other related financial print jobs. The stress level was pretty high during the busy seasons, and while we expected the printers to always come through for us, there were those inevitable, occasional delays and problems.

The printers I loved working with were the ones who told it to me straight. If a delivery date was threatened, they didn’t hide from me.

They called me up, shared the bad news, and were prepared to take the heat. Usually, they had a solution to salvage the situation.

Being upfront with your customers usually works best. If a proof is running late, or a delivery date can’t be met, or that special paper hasn’t yet arrived, don’t hide it. Tell your customers. They’d rather find out there’s a potential complication and hear how you’re resolving it than find out after the fact that you knew all the while there was trouble brewing.

What happens if a printer (substitute any “business provider” here) tap dances around bad news, to avoid confronting a customer? Loss of respect, for starters. Loss of trust follows. And very likely, loss of business.

In business, don’t deal in BS. Be straight with your customers. There’s too much you stand to lose when they find out you’re hiding something.

Scary How Little It Takes to Lose a Customer

Maybe it was the missing soap dish in the shower (or a shelf of any kind, to be exact). Although it easily could have been the fact there was no full-length mirror. Or that clogged sink. Regardless, these picayune things, piled onto a few other irritations, added up to a heap of bad service (in our minds) in an expensive hotel, where we’d gone for a few days in the sun last month.

So we moved down the street, where service was truly excellent, and the room (less pricey even) was far nicer and much more comfortable than that first one. That evening, upon our return from dinner, we saw the blinking, message-waiting light. “We hope everything in your room is satisfactory!” the voice said, and it effectively sealed the deal: we made the right choice and won’t ever go back to Hotel #1.

On top of that, we won’t ever recommend the first hotel, and I’ll go out of my way to tell friends to steer clear of it.

Now my question to you is, how do you know your customers aren’t experiencing some dissatisfaction about your service? How do you know how they really feel about their treatment by your company – and in the case of printers, I mean by their sales and service reps.

Having been there, I’ll testify to the fact that print customers have left printers because they get unacceptable treatment. Too often, they’d much rather switch than fight.

Maybe they feel they’ve been slighted or ignored.

Maybe they never hear a “thank you” when all of their other vendors go out of their way to say it.

Maybe their calls have gone unanswered one day too many, or they can’t get a straight answer about the status of a job.

Maybe some function about your web-to-print interface is so frustrating that they’re ready to give it the heave-ho and look somewhere else.

Maybe they just plain feel like their business is unappreciated. And that they don’t matter to you.

The reality is, customers like coddling, whether we’re guests at a hotel, diners at a restaurant, or clients of a printer. There’s an expected level of basic service in every buyer-seller situation. It may not take a whole lot to achieve this, either – and that’s what’s important to know.

What steps are you taking to learn if any of your customers have one foot out the door?

I suggest you find out. All it would take is a focused effort to poll them – individually or as a group. You could send an easy online survey to customers, or automatically send an email to each customer following a job’s completion. Word your questions carefully (i.e., a sloppy and lazy “How’re we doing?” won’t do) to get to the heart of a customer’s feedback.

It’s worth taking the time to ask your customers how they currently feel about the service you provide them. Maybe fixing the equivalent of a clogged bathroom sink is all it would take to keep them content, not contemplating a move to your competition down the street – and still willing to sing your praises loud and clear.

Let Good News Travel Faster

car on the road with motion blur background

Let good news travel faster.

As a self-employed copywriter who serves a lot of different clients, I’ll tell you what really moves me:

An email acknowledgement from a client that they liked what I wrote. (Good)
An email acknowledgement from a client that they liked what I wrote on the same day I sent it. (Better)
An actual phone call from a client (remember those?) to say they liked what I wrote on the same day I sent it. (Best)
An unsolicited testimonial from a client on LinkedIn or shared with me in an email to someone else about how much they like my work. (How cool!)

These are the little things that are big boosts for service providers, and while I may not get them all the time, when I do, I absolutely remember that client. It makes a lasting impression, and I find myself working harder on future assignments for that client.

A few months back, I had to write a web site landing page for a new client, a printer here in New England, and I labored hard over that copy. Getting the tone and the words just right matter to me. Good writing takes time and research, rounds of drafts, reading aloud, and more editing.

Once I was satisfied (I’m my toughest critic), I sent it off to him in an email. Inside of two hours I got a voice message from him while I was out.

Being a typical neurotic copywriter, I thought, “Dear God, he hates it. He wants it redone.”

So I called him back, fingers poised over the keyboard as I stared at the copy I wrote for him, prepared to listen to his comments and start chipping away at the copy.

“I just had to tell you what you wrote is absolutely perfect. I couldn’t find one word that I wanted to change. That’s all.”

He made my day. It cost him nothing but a minute to dial my number. I was elated and honored, determined to pay it forward and to serve him the best I could muster every time he needed my help.

We’re often too quick to criticize (I know I am), particularly our suppliers. It’s so much nicer to share good news with someone who’s working on our behalf. I carry that thought with me every day.

An email, a phone call, a written note. Spirit lifters, one and all.

Thanks for the lesson, Dana.*

*Yes, it happens to be my client’s name.

How to Serve Your Print Customers: Make This List & Check It Twice

The New Year is nigh. If December signals a slowdown of jobs coming into your company, you have more time to plan how to make better connections with your print customers in 2015.

Maybe it’s time to examine your own – and your firm’s – customer development strategy. A list to guide you in this exercise would help.

May I suggest your list include the following 10 items?

What worked for your business development efforts this year – and what didn’t?
What’s changed about the role of corporate print buyers (or consumers if you serve them) that should influence how you develop new business relationships and strengthen existing ones?
What sorts of services have a lot of your customers asked you to offer them, month after month? Can you make this happen or at least get the ball rolling?
How certain are you that your customers are 100% clear about all of your capabilities?
Can you articulate how you differ from your top 5 competitors? Would the whole sales team be in agreement?
Can you describe the profile of your primary customer? What industry, what title, what products are purchased, how experienced is he or she, and so on.
What do your customers count on you for, specifically? Write down all the qualities and services that make you a key resource for them.
What complaints did you hear from customers this year that made an impression? Are you in a position to address and correct them?
Think about yourself as a customer in a B2B relationship. What actions from a service provider would knock your socks off – and can you replicate them for your customers?
What one quality or work habit of yours do you wish you could improve, especially a “customer-facing” one? Name it, and commit yourself to fixing it.

Any one of these topics will force you to take a long look at how you serve your print customers. As in all of my blogs, columns and articles, I approach them from the customer’s perspective, and therefore I assure you it wouldn’t be a waste of your time, or your sales team’s time, to give any and all of them some thought.

While we’re speaking of lists, wouldn’t it be a good time to ask your customers for their ‘wish lists’ for 2015? Ask them in a friendly, personable way, letting them know your intent is to try your best and deliver in 2015.

The good news is that you won’t have to don a red suit and squeeze down chimneys to deliver these gifts. But I assure you, customer satisfaction and loyalty will color your new year a rosy one indeed.

‘Tis the Season to Be Patient

The affable-looking guy manning the cash register at Wegmans seemed perfectly capable of scanning and bagging my groceries. But something about his outfit that day caught my eye.

It was that bright, yellow ribbon he wore, which proclaimed for all the world to see that he was new. The new guy. The new cashier-in-training.

It’s something I don’t recall seeing anywhere else, though it’s possible I have and just forgot. But seeing this very public sign that he was in training caused an immediate reaction in me: I relaxed. I instantly forgave him anything he might do as he carried out his duties. He was new, and Wegmans wanted me to know that. So I cut him some slack.

After all, who among us hasn’t been new at our jobs at one point? Wouldn’t it have helped us if our first few clients or customers realized we were getting trained, just getting our feet wet, a bit nervous in our new role, and trying extra hard not to screw up?

Back when, I wrote copy that was too saccharine, too florid, too long-winded. And my first few presentations were God awful. I needed practice and coaching. I’m embarrassed just remembering them.

So new service reps in printing and in other industries deserve our patience and our empathy. They have to get used to their company, their sales team, their bosses, their procedures, their schedules, and us, their customers. The same could be said for new sales reps.

What would be so terrible in letting customers know, as Wegmans does, that an employee of yours is in training?

I’m not suggesting this approach would work in every field – I don’t want to know that the pilot in the cockpit is flying his first commercial flight, or the surgeon about to operate on me is breaking in his or her medical instruments for the first time.

But letting your customers know that they’re working with a new rep can create empathy and understanding. Tell us, “Hey, we’re new, have mercy!” so we automatically cut you some slack.

It’s a very human approach. And most customers, aware of the situation, will be more forgiving should things not go perfectly.

This week kicks off a long holiday season. We’ll be dealing with service employees of all kinds, face to face and on the phone. Chances are good that at least some of them will be new.

If you remember what it was like to have demanding customers on the verge of screaming at you…hold that thought…and give the service reps and baristas and salespeople a break, as you take a deep breath and let “happy holidays” spring from your heart and roll off your tongue.

When a Rep Leaves – What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted Customer?

Despite all the talk about the lack of loyalty among print customers, I know for a fact that many customers are totally attached to certain sales reps and CSRs (Customer Service Reps).

This translates into customer loyalty. When a customer and rep have teamed up for a long time, a strong bond forms. The relationship become quite meaningful. The rep has extreme value for the customer. Does management even know?

Whether people in this service role are called sales reps, CSRs or Account Managers, here are some key reasons why a bond forms with certain customers:

– The rep knows the customer’s preferences and idiosyncrasies.

– The rep has the customer’s best interest in mind.

– The rep offers suggestions to help projects or prevent problems.

– The rep takes care of zillions of details behind the scenes, inside the plant.

– The rep’s become a trusted and respected ally, on whom the customer depends.

When a rep has our back, there’s no better reason to stick with a printer.

These relationships are often the main reason why customers will recommend you to others.

Management shouldn’t wait till a crisis occurs (i.e., the rep skedaddles). If the bond is that strong between customer and rep, you need to get involved – appropriately, occasionally – so customers get to know other people in the company. Then the relationship a customer has with your company won’t be tied to a certain person.

Yes, customers get attached to their reps. It’s strictly professional and altogether human.

So what do you do, as a print company CEO or sales manager, when a beloved rep leaves the company? Maybe the customer knows about it, but maybe not.

The best advice I can give you is this: call customers (particularly if you know there are long-term relationships at stake) and talk about it. Share with them whatever information you can. Let them know how you’re going to handle their account in light of the departed rep. Tell them who their new rep will be and what he or she brings to the table. And then….listen.

Let them tell you how they feel. Reassure them that their business is valuable to you. Ask them what they need during the transition to a new rep. Introduce their new rep personally.

And keep in touch over the coming weeks and months to make sure their work is on track and their wounded hearts, on the mend.

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Category Archives: Customer Service