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.

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.

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.
Click here to read the full text.

NAPL releases Field Case Book, a new initiative to share best practices and innovations with printers.  In NAPL’s first  field book case study, a printer is highlighted for a creative customer retention strategy saving $130,000 in business within the first month of the strategy. 

Click here for complete case:  http://www.fieldcasebook.org/

Leveraging customer testimonials is a great way to improve your marketing approach. Most businesses do not do this effectively or don’t make it part of their overall marketing strategy. It is very easy to collect testimonials.

The easiest way to get testimonials is through a paper or e-surveying process either done annually to all customers or individually after jobs are completed. In the survey add the question “Is there anything you think we do particularly well or anyone you want to recognize?” You will quickly get dozens of testimonials to use. All you need to do is immediately send back the comments to the customer asking their permission to use in marketing.

99% of the time they will say “sure” and now you have your dozens of testimonials. Another way is to add an approval box after the question asking their permission to use any comments in your marketing efforts. Any checked off are fair game to use and you have documentation that they gave the OK to use it. Good luck!

Jamestown, RI, March 23, 2009 – As part of its commitment to help printers develop profitable, highly responsive, customer-focused organizations, Survey Advantage ( www.surveyadvantage.com), a customer research and loyalty firm, has released a new report for all CustomerPulse™ customers. The report tracks customer loyalty and a referral rating continuously, and benchmarks real-time with other printers.

“It is great that the different printing industry MIS systems are incorporating CustomerPulse™ into their customer management processes. This enables printers to select jobs and contacts to send a survey in just five minutes a week. With low administration time the printer can now get the same customer intelligence the hospitality industry has been collecting for years. Now any size printer can obtain feedback after jobs are shipped helping them gauge loyalty, promote referral programs, and drive improvements.” said Michael Casey, president of Survey Advantage.

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In January 2009, 205 independent quick printers shared their thoughts on the question “Where do you think the top growth opportunities are in 2009?” Digital printing is on the minds of 82% of quick printers. The ability to make short runs quickly, managing staffing levels, and training time are key drivers of this investment. After that quick printers see mailing services (56%) and large format (28%) as the next most important to growing their business. Marketing services, web design, promotion products were all in the low 20′s or teens in the percentage seeing these areas as growth areas.

It is amazing how many quick printer customers still don’t view their printer as a mailing house or someone who can do large format. As an example, in a recent print buyer study we asked the awareness question for these services. We surveyed the customer base of a quick printer asking thier customers about awareness of each product and service. Only 25% of their customers were aware they offered bulk mail and 70% large format. The interesting thing was that many customers stressed their interest in learning more.

You can’t assume that customers will remember you just by mailing a few flyers and mentioning it a few times. Get creative on your messaging. Becoming a marketing service provider starts under your roof. Launch that new service this year and measure awareness as you go. A good goal to shot for is over 90% awareness.