The Two Sweetest Words a Print Customer Can Hear

As a customer, when I get behind the eight ball on a high-priority project, it’s all consuming. I can feel the stress building like the heat on a mid-summer Miami morning, and I dial the number of my go-to print provider.

The exact words I want to hear from a service provider at such a time are simply:

“No problem.”

I will deal with the specifics in the next conversation with that provider—even discuss the cost later—but at that moment, when my neck is on the line and a job has to be produced in less time than I thought I had, all I care about is that someone I trust will be there for me.

So I put it to you: As a print provider, do you convey this sense of “calm in a storm” to your clients? Can they count on you to push that boulder up the hill with them— for them—and relieve their anxiety? Do you take that burden off their shoulders?

Or do you hem and haw, express doubt, or focus on the price, how busy you are, and how it will be difficult to squeeze the job into your schedule?

I’m being literal...and I’m not. Print customers want to work with printers who are confident and calming. We count on you to be experts and handlers, mountain movers and miracle workers.

Once, years ago, I worked with a terrific financial printing firm—our #1 provider, in fact. Yet the CSR had a habit of responding to my requests with comments like, “Well, I can’t promise, but we’ll see.” Funny thing was: the shop always delivered. She just did not want to commit. It drove me nuts.

The way you respond to your customers’ high-pressure problems will help define you. Are you their go-to person?