"No" isn't a 4 Letter Word

There’s a certain level of honesty and integrity that needs to be upheld by all businesses, but could you actually be sabotaging your own business with a policy that’s intended to please your customers? At 4 Color Press we have a policy we like to call “The Yes Factor,” which states that what the customer wants the customer gets, as long as it is within our boundaries.

In these situations there are two extremes, one is the company that believes that they are always correct and will not bend for any customer, and the other is the company that will do absolutely anything to please their customer, even if it is detrimental to their business. Sometimes 'no' is needed so you can look out for your and your customer's best interests.

Sure, striving to please your customers is always important but it doesn't benefit either party if you stretch your limits too far. Let’s use my company as an example. We have a very tight niche within the printing industry: full color, short run. If a customer calls at 4 in the afternoon and needs a project by 8 the next morning, we’ll do it. If a customer calls and needs a larger format project produced that we could easily outsource, we won’t do it. That’s where the honesty comes in with both us and our customer. The customer will most likely get better results if they go to a company that specializes in what they're looking for.

You need to stick with what you are capable of doing. If we outsourced large format projects, customers would start believing that’s what we did. Not to mention how much we would have to mark up the price just to cover our own cost. It’s not worth it. At the end of the day, customers and non customers alike will appreciate that you stuck to your guns as they know you will handle their needs with as much care as you handle your own.

Have We Lowered our Expectations As Customers?

Periodically, we send out surveys to some of our customers and potential customers to find out what their priorities are and what they expect from their print vendors. Our last survey was pretty surprising. We listed four factors (price, customer service, overall quality of produced materials and turn time) and asked the respondents to rate the items in order of importance for determining which vendor to work with. Surprisingly, customer service was rated the factor of least importance.

We suggested in one of our newsletters that perhaps the reason people don’t make customer service one of their priorities is because they've come expect poor service if any at all. How often do you anticipate an unpleasant experience when making a call to a company’s customer service department? Do you expect to get taken advantage of sometimes because it’s happened to you before? I know I do.

Some people have the idea that the number one reason a company exists is to produce a profit; they're willing to lower not only their own standards but their customer's as well, simply to increase their bottom line. I, on the other hand, believe that companies exist to provide solutions to a problem; to increase the overall quality of people's lives. Boldy put, why even have a business if you're only going to make people angry? That sounds like a pretty poor business model to me.

We're hoping that by providing the highest quality of customer service possible we can help maintain our customer's standards for service and encourage people to not settle for anything mediocre. Being a primarilly B2B provider, we understand how hard our customers work and we sincerely enjoy making their lives a little easier. We've been on your side of the table, we are on your side of the table and we won't work with vendors who don't beat our expectations. You shouldn't either.

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