Survey Advantage Press

At this year’s convention Survey Advantage will highlight two new programs;  CustomerPulse for Printer’s Plan 2010 and CustomerPulse for PrintSmith.  Survey Advantage now works closely with both MIS providers to help franchisee owners survey customers after print jobs are completed.  Survey Advantage has worked closely with franchisee owners of all Allegra Network’s the brands; Signs Now, Allegra Print & Imaging, American Speedy, and Insty Prints, offering  owners customer loyalty, lead generation, revenue retention programs that are affordable for the small business owner.  

Survey Advantage invites all attendees to visit us in booth 525  for a demo.

Phoenix, AZ:  Survey Advantage introduced three new printer programs to several members during an introduction July 27th at the headquarters of Printing Industries of Arizona.  Survey Advantage will offer CustomerPulse, HealthCheck, and MarketCheck to PIAZ members interested in revenue preservation, client share expansion, and lead generation.  CustomerPulse is designed to help printers obtain immediate feedback after jobs are completed while HealthCheck and MarketCheck are designed to help printers during strategic planning and ISO 9000 process improvement efforts.

In San Diego, CA during Franchise Services annual owners conference Survey Advantage and Printer’s Plan co-presented the newest version of Printer’s Plan and how surveying customers after jobs just got easier within the application.  The new features of 2010 now flag the last time customers were surveyed to help manage survey frequency.  In addition, the smartlink of Survey Advantage pulls in the job number from Printer’s Plan enabling printers to quickly and effectively follow-up with customers.

Print ‘09, the largest printing show in North America, will be in Chicago from September 11-16th.   Survey Advantage president Michael Casey has been asked to lead a presentation on Monday, September 14th from 2:15PM to 4:00PM.   Please read the overview below or visit www.myprint09.com for more details.  

Topic: Creating and managing a customer retention strategy

On average 5% of a printer’s revenue is directed to the marketing budget to capture new customers through tradeshows, advertising, and get your name recognized on the cluttered field of printers.  Printer’s with an effective, deliberate customer retention strategy benefit from lower marketing expenses through higher client share and customer referrals.  Rarely does a printer lose an account completely, but many will lose client share if they don’t have an effective early warning system in place when a specific job goes out with a problem.  This session will discuss ways printers have implemented programs to retain customers by driving loyalty, proactively gathering print job feedback, customizing services, and making their customers feel unique and special.  Multiple studies have proven how much more profitable it is to grow revenues with existing accounts versus pursuing new accounts.  Retaining customers is the best way to keep your business healthy, reduce marketing budgets, and drive referrals to your door.

What you will learn
• Effective customer retention strategies
• Printer loyalty programs
• Printer referral programs
• Printer loyalty benchmarks to shoot for
• The importance of surveys
• Best practice survey techniques
• Low cost customer feedback process
• Customer service processes to consider

Presentation for Executive Management, Owners, Customer Service Directors and Managers, Sales and Marketing Directors and Managers

From October 29th-31st, 2009 the National Association of Quick Printers will hold their annual conference in Austin, TX.  Survey Advantage has been asked to present a session and moderate a session.  Below is a summary of each session.  Please visit www.naqp.com for more details on the conference.

Session 1: “Leveraging Customer Feedback to Expand Client Share, Drive Referrals, and Preserve Recurring Revenues”  Mike Casey, Survey Advantage

Learn how printers have implemented processes to preserve recurring job revenues, drive referrals, and uncover opportunities to expand client share. Learn how to fully leverage your existing relationships to grow your business. This session will also cover ways to streamline the process by using technology and customer information you already have in your operation.

Session 2: “Panel: How to keep customers coming back for more” Moderator, Mike Casey, Survey Advantage

A prerequisite to being a printer today is producing quality on time. And everyone has solid customer service so there goes that differentiator! Your peers will share how they create and maintain loyal relationships by making their customers feel unique and special and change the game for competition knocking on their customer’s doors. Learn what successful, profitable printers are doing beyond shipping quality on time with great customer service. Learn the little and big things they do that keep customers coming back every time.

Jamestown, RI– June 19, 2009 – Survey Advantage Inc, announced today a partnership with Technique Group, the developer of commercial printer MIS solutions. Technique users now have the ability to generate referrals, identify areas to expand client share, and preserve recurring revenues through continuous customer feedback and reporting. By developing the necessary tools Technique has enabled customers to work closely with Survey Advantage to implement the CustomerPulse™ program. On-line reports are delivered daily to deliver leads, monitor performance over time, and benchmark with the industry.

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Associations, corporations, non-profits, small business owners always ask this question.  It is a loaded question, but here are a few things to consider.  Response rates can vary from <10% to >80% depending on a lot of things and how you approach the study.
 
1) Topic is very important.  How important is it to them to share their brain and heart??  Get inside their head and know their appetite for the topic you are throwing at them. 
 
2) Positioning is important.  You must sell the idea to participate.  I am not saying with incentives, but tell them why it is important TO THEM. 
 
3) Know your audience.  If your members are really engaged with you, you share lessons learned from previous surveys, then you have a great foundation for high response rates.  
 
4) If you don’t send out a survey a week to members then you have a good foundation.  Surveys should have meaning and pick your battles when asking members for help.
 
5) Try to keep them short whenever possible and tell them that.  “This is a five question survey that will only take 2 minutes”.  That will get better response then “This is a 125 question survey that will take you what feels like forever”. 
 
6) Think about each question before you send it to them.  Wording, clarity of purpose, understanding what information you want back and what format should be taken into account.
 
These all may seem obvious, but it is amazing how many surveys I get that start asking my gender, marital status, and income when frankly there is nothing in it for me, it is wasting my time, and I wonder what they plan to do with that information to get at me!   I just received a birthday card last week for a trip to the Virgin Islands.  It was my birthday the week before and that scared the *&*() out of me because they don’t know me, I don’t know them, it was a scam mailer, and I wonder what else they know about me.   Be relevant and respect your audience.

Many of us are timid to ask our most loyal customers for referrals.  We feel uncomfortable asking or don’t want to alienate an already loyal customer.  Sometimes we feel the loyalty may go down by being direct and asking the question “Do you know someone we could help as we help you?” 

A more subtle way to capture referrals is to tie the request for referrals into a customer feedback survey.  The way it works is that you send a customer a very short five question survey after your complete a job, complete a service, or ship a product.  One of the questions asks the ultimate question “How likely are you to recommend us to a colleague, friend, or family member?”  For all customers who click “Very Likely”,  you now know they are loyal, love you, are passionate about what you do for them, and are the customers most likely to recommend you.  They have self qualified themselves!  At that point when they click submit on the survey you direct them to a landing page to highlight your referral program along with any gift you want to offer.  It is that simple.  I have seen up to 5% of those filling out the survey offering referrals to help their supplier or vendor.  What an opportunity!   Just don’t forget to call them or thank them for the referral.  It is only common courtesy and it will feed the referral process.  

Just last week a small printer closed a $1,000 initial order with a referral by using this process and the newly acquired customer appears to be ready to give them future orders for other printing needs.  This process isn’t just for printers, but can work with insurance agencies, any service organization or business that relies on referrals to grow and prosper. 

So, don’t leave your loyal customers just buying from you.  Engage them in the selling process and expand your selling force.

This weekend a colleague asked a myself and a few fellow business owners if our customers were asking for discounts after work was complete. His customers were telling him they could pay him immediately if he took another 20% off the bill or he would need to wait for payment. This is for work he already had done!! With the recession he added that his closure rates on bids went from 50% to under 10% and he was desperate. He is in a competitive, commodity market, but something isn’t right here. He is taking the 20% off the bills and discounting, but his business is not doing well. You could see the worry on his face and I am sure the customers are as well.

I suggest if customers are asking for discounts that you change the scope and give options. Give three different scopes of work with three different price points, but then hold firm on the work being done. You must do this to stay healthy and your customers should respect this. People love options and the customer will understand that with options there are varying levels of product.

There are typically three things to look at with any project scope; price, timeframe, and quality. Keep to these three sides of the triangle when bidding and discussing jobs with customers.

Before finding yourself in an unprofitable situation, the best businesses find ways to differentiate themselves and offer unique and special services and products. Customers will be happy and your business will remain healthy.

Last month Allegra Networks, a 400 plus unit franchisor, published an article in their quarterly franchise magazine, Connections, sharing lessons learned from around the network. The article explains how Eileen Rogers and Ted Raymond, owners of the Allegra franchise in Scottsdale, AZ, focused the business on multi-channel marketing, including variable data printing and personalized URLS, while making the shift to a marketing services provider. In addition, Eileen and Ted explain how customer feedback became part of their strategy.
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