By Dave Fellman
Much of what I’ve written over the years has been about gaining new customers, or maximizing the value of the customers you already have. Today, I thought I’d start writing about losing customers — or at least about how printers seem to lose them far too often. What I’m hoping is that you’ll see some of the things you may be doing — or not doing! — in this discussion, and that will help you to hang on to more of your current customers. Because one of the hard truths of this business is that gaining new customers doesn’t help you to make money if you’re losing them as fast as you gain them!
Quality Failures
One of the most popular ways to lose a customer is simply to deliver a finished product that doesn’t meet their quality expectations. One of my clients has a sign on the wall in his production area that says: “Ugly Printing Creates Ugly Situations…And That’s The Best Case Scenario!” I love that sign, because I know it reflects the absolute truth. The people who tell you they’re unhappy at least give you some chance to make amends. Hard experience has shown that many people won’t tell you that you’ve let them down in terms of quality; they’ll just stop buying from you!
How do you avoid losing customers over quality failures? The first thing you do is avoid having those failures in the first place! That requires a combination of training and quality control, with a measure of good management thrown into the mix. First, you teach your people to do their jobs well. Second, you establish quality control procedures that support your quality objectives and provide accountability. At the very least, you need to be able to identify the “who/what/where” surrounding whatever quality problems are occurring. When you identify the causative factors, you correct them by applying training and/or discipline. You also pay attention to your equipment, because even though it’s often said that only a poor workman blames his tools, it’s also true that sometimes the equipment is the problem!
The second thing you do to keep from losing customers over quality failures is to follow up on every job — or at least on a regular enough basis to ensure that no one can establish a good relationship with another supplier before you have a chance to do some damage control.
I know a few printers who still include a “comment card” with every finished order, and a few more who e-mail a survey form at regular intervals. From my perspective, that’s not a personal enough way to measure customer satisfaction. I think you’d be wise to initiate a phone conversation — or better still a face-to-face conversation — to make sure that you’re meeting a customer’s quality expectations.
Service & Contact Failures
The other two leading causes of lost customers are Service Failures and Contact Failures. Please watch for my thoughts on avoiding these problems over the next few months.