8 Things to Consider When Hiring a Commercial Print Shop for Your Printing Needs - Part 2

Quality of Customer Service

At the heart of every great company is great customer service.  Without it, a business essentially can’t build trust and positive relationships with customers. High-quality customer service can make a significant difference in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Here are some key factors that contribute to quality customer service:

• Empathy: Being able to understand and share the feelings of the customer is crucial in providing quality customer service. It helps to build a strong connection and shows that the business cares about the customer's needs and concerns.
• Knowledge: Customers often have questions or need help with a product or service, so it's important that customer service representatives have a thorough understanding of the business's offerings and policies. Providing accurate and timely information can go a long way in building customer trust and satisfaction.
• Communication: Clear and effective communication is essential in customer service. This means using language that is easy to understand and taking the time to fully listen and address the customer's concerns.
• Responsiveness: Customers appreciate prompt responses to their inquiries or problems. This means having systems in place to resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently.
• Flexibility: Customers have different needs and preferences, so it's important that customer service representatives can adapt and be flexible in their approach. This could mean offering different solutions to meet the customer's needs or being willing to go above and beyond to find a resolution.
• Professionalism: Maintaining a professional demeanor, even in difficult situations, is important in customer service. This includes being respectful and courteous, and avoiding getting flustered or agitated.

Overall, quality customer service is about building a strong, positive relationship with customers and showing that the business values their needs and concerns. By prioritizing empathy, knowledge, communication, responsiveness, flexibility, and professionalism, businesses can provide top-notch customer service that leads to satisfied, loyal customers.

Level of “Expert” Consultation

For the most part, larger commercial print shops tend to have a much broader level of experience and knowledge on what makes a great print, what is possible and what is not, and will also have much better access to supplies. This means that they are less likely to make promises they can’t keep and won’t waste your time figuring out the best solutions for your business. In addition to inherently offering more in-house options, larger commercial printers (if knowledgeable) should have the versatility to find cost effective solutions for your projects and with good customer service can walk you down the appropriate path. Be mindful of any print shop that doesn’t offer alternative solutions to your voiced concerns about a project or that can’t promptly provide information about your questions, especially if related to cost effectiveness.  

Stability in Staffing

Evaluating the turnover rate within any company can be difficult sometimes from the outside looking in, but a company’s internal stability is vitally important to the consistency and service level you will receive from any vendor.  This is a loaded topic, but ultimately this particular point speaks to the overall quality and nature of a company itself and how they treat their staff.  If you can determine whether there is a revolving door with staffing, you will have learned a lot about the company you are using or considering. There’s never any harm in being direct and asking about staff longevity and turnover.  This will also help you gauge the transparency of the company in question. Just like most things in life, consistency is vital and if you want to have trust in any business you are partnered with that your needs will be met, look at the staffing dynamics and stability.

Is There a Thriving Company Culture

Another topic that seems to be a common talking point these days is whether there’s any company culture and if so, is it healthy or toxic.  The side effects to the business environment are vital to the overall health and stability of the company itself and should speak volumes to the “buy in” factor with employees and the overall company mission. It has been common knowledge for a long time now on how much environment factors into people’s behavior and general state of being. Businesses with a toxic culture tend to lead to indifference, lack of care about the quality of one’s work and productivity, and instability within the organization. Companies with healthy cultures usually display conscientious behavior, better work ethics, collaboration amongst staff and general happiness and satisfaction which promotes stability within the organization. This is again a factor that may be harder to discern from the outside looking in, but to follow up a point from Part 1 in this series, ask to take a tour of the facilities in which you are looking to entrust your work and money to…it’s usually not hard to determine the nature in which a business operates and whether its people are happy and in good spirits to be at work.

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