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November 30, 2022
Why the Customer Service team is so critical and how the Print MIS system can enable their success. by Jane Mugford & Danielle Jackson |
Your customer service team can be quite instrumental in the make or break of your company’s success. If they are excellent at what they do, they will make a significant contribution to your overall success.
Print customers love a trusted advisor. While the Sales team is key at landing customers, your Customer Service (CS) team plays a pivotal role in keeping them. Often when "regular" customers have new jobs, that are not online submissions, they would rather bypass Sales and speak directly to their CS person. This is the ‘sweet spot’ you want to find yourself in. When your CS team is taking great care of their customers’ needs, you’ll find your Sales team doesn’t get bogged down with the day-to-day maintenance of their accounts. All-star CS teams within a Print company know how to add value for a customer by helping to translate their wants into the technical production specs of what they actually need. As well, they are usually quite successful at up-selling to the customer.
Effective CS teams will become great communicators in all avenues, whether it be over the phone or via email. They also need to be proactive and good at monitoring the progress of their customers’ jobs. In order to do this they will be extremely proficient in the use of the Print MIS system. Top-notch CS team members use Print MIS systems to capture specs, and any order changes as they occur, thus ensuring job specs are captured accurately and completely, but NOT with a heavy reliance on notes. This is because notes aren’t always read completely, and so details contained in notes can get missed.
An important part of the process of monitoring the progress of jobs requires the CS team to stay on top of proofs that are out with their customers. In this way they remain able to keep those jobs moving to completion. If there are issues that cause jobs to be put on hold, great CS teams and their members have become brilliant at helping to chase down the details required and work toward the solutions to problems as they arise. Quite simply, CS teams keep jobs moving which equates to happier customers and shorter time between job receipt and invoicing.
These CS teams will be able to effectively follow company processes and procedures. They will instantly know how to avoid shortcuts and ‘band-aid’ solutions. And it will always be top of mind that they will provide effective feedback to the customer and the production teams about any changes required.
Barriers to creating an All-star CS team:
If your company lacks standard operating processes and procedures then this will negatively impact the success of your CS team. They will be less effective at all of the things mentioned above.
Poor performance of Print MIS systems will in turn have a negative effect on the effectiveness of your CS team to aid in taking care of your customers’ day-to-day needs. Your CS team will not be able to drive success in the same way.
If your Print MIS system lacks well-defined, built-in processes and workflows this will lead to the use of extensive notes and bad specifications when jobs are entered. It adds time and lacks useful data. It leads to the reliance on the CS team to remember ‘everything’ and impacts their ability to add value.
What enables an All-star CS team:
In addition to the obvious characteristics of great team players who excel at detail and are great at customer service, here are some key elements which foster an All-star CS team:
Give them access to clearly defined dashboards and real time data from the Print MIS system that allows them to:
Good teams thrive on goals. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for all teams are critical to help monitor success and make improvements as needed. CS teams are no different.
Examples of effective KPIs for a CS team:
By configuring and using your Print MIS system to clearly define and report on KPIs, your CS team is given access to the tools and data to constantly and effectively monitor the status of jobs through to completion. The success of the CS team therefore is intricately tied to the effectiveness of your Print MIS system.
With the right tools and guidance you can have an All-star CS team that will make your business stand out from your competition. And with that you’ll have your customers sticking to you like glue.
Print customers love a trusted advisor. While the Sales team is key at landing customers, your Customer Service (CS) team plays a pivotal role in keeping them. Often when "regular" customers have new jobs, that are not online submissions, they would rather bypass Sales and speak directly to their CS person. This is the ‘sweet spot’ you want to find yourself in. When your CS team is taking great care of their customers’ needs, you’ll find your Sales team doesn’t get bogged down with the day-to-day maintenance of their accounts. All-star CS teams within a Print company know how to add value for a customer by helping to translate their wants into the technical production specs of what they actually need. As well, they are usually quite successful at up-selling to the customer.
Effective CS teams will become great communicators in all avenues, whether it be over the phone or via email. They also need to be proactive and good at monitoring the progress of their customers’ jobs. In order to do this they will be extremely proficient in the use of the Print MIS system. Top-notch CS team members use Print MIS systems to capture specs, and any order changes as they occur, thus ensuring job specs are captured accurately and completely, but NOT with a heavy reliance on notes. This is because notes aren’t always read completely, and so details contained in notes can get missed.
An important part of the process of monitoring the progress of jobs requires the CS team to stay on top of proofs that are out with their customers. In this way they remain able to keep those jobs moving to completion. If there are issues that cause jobs to be put on hold, great CS teams and their members have become brilliant at helping to chase down the details required and work toward the solutions to problems as they arise. Quite simply, CS teams keep jobs moving which equates to happier customers and shorter time between job receipt and invoicing.
These CS teams will be able to effectively follow company processes and procedures. They will instantly know how to avoid shortcuts and ‘band-aid’ solutions. And it will always be top of mind that they will provide effective feedback to the customer and the production teams about any changes required.
Barriers to creating an All-star CS team:
If your company lacks standard operating processes and procedures then this will negatively impact the success of your CS team. They will be less effective at all of the things mentioned above.
Poor performance of Print MIS systems will in turn have a negative effect on the effectiveness of your CS team to aid in taking care of your customers’ day-to-day needs. Your CS team will not be able to drive success in the same way.
If your Print MIS system lacks well-defined, built-in processes and workflows this will lead to the use of extensive notes and bad specifications when jobs are entered. It adds time and lacks useful data. It leads to the reliance on the CS team to remember ‘everything’ and impacts their ability to add value.
What enables an All-star CS team:
In addition to the obvious characteristics of great team players who excel at detail and are great at customer service, here are some key elements which foster an All-star CS team:
Give them access to clearly defined dashboards and real time data from the Print MIS system that allows them to:
- Monitor proofs
- Be alerted to production issues
- Track jobs
- Monitor jobs due to ship today
- Follow up on issues
- Be responsive to customers about job updates by looking up current job details and status in the Print MIS
Good teams thrive on goals. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for all teams are critical to help monitor success and make improvements as needed. CS teams are no different.
Examples of effective KPIs for a CS team:
- 98% follow-up on proofs in 24 hours
- 92% on hold resolution within 24 hours
- 95% CS ticket accuracy
By configuring and using your Print MIS system to clearly define and report on KPIs, your CS team is given access to the tools and data to constantly and effectively monitor the status of jobs through to completion. The success of the CS team therefore is intricately tied to the effectiveness of your Print MIS system.
With the right tools and guidance you can have an All-star CS team that will make your business stand out from your competition. And with that you’ll have your customers sticking to you like glue.