Buying Web-to-Print Software Under Duress

Your customers want convenience. Printers who prioritize around making it easy to do business with their customers will differentiate themselves. Don’t wait until your best customers demand online ordering and self-service access to the business they do with you—do it proactively and strategically instead of under duress.

Here’s my favorite definition of “duress”: compulsion by threat or force.

When a printer’s top customer decides to make online ordering a non-negotiable requirement, printers go shopping for web-to-print solutions under duress. 

What kind of decisions do you think you make when you’re under “compulsion by threat or force”? Not very good ones. 

All printers are humans, and all humans who own and operate businesses in developed countries carry cellphones and spend a significant amount of time online. These same humans buy plane tickets, rent cars, and coordinate hotel stays without talking to customer service agents because they can do it faster at their convenience (e.g. while watching TV at 10 pm at night).

Why is it still a discussion whether your customers would want to order from your print shop in a self-service online fashion? Are we really still having this conversation in 2019? 

The digital world is changing what drives customer loyalty:

convenience is now what drives customer loyalty—not love for any particular brand.

- Steven Van Belleghem

How convenient are you to do business with? 

Could a competitive printer who has similar equipment and capacity sneak into some of your biggest customers with the message of convenience? Just imagine a talented sales representative walking up the decision maker at your customer whom you’ve known for 20 years. They hand over their phone and say, “Our system allows you to easily place reorders from your phone.” That’s how I would approach print sales today because most printers are vulnerable to the “convenience sales pitch.” If the tools you offer your customer to engage with you are email, phone, and fax—you are vulnerable. 

Could you imagine being displaced in some of your longest term customers because you don’t provide a way for the customer to check their order status online, easily reorder from you, or request an estimate?

You don’t need to imagine. I get a call at least once per week that sounds something like this:

“Our top customer, whom we’ve been dutifully serving for 20+ years, is going out to RFP and the first requirement is an online ordering system. Can you help us find one and implement it, all in the next 45 days?” 

That is buying print software under duress. It isn't strategic and it isn’t fun, but it is very stressful because you’re not implementing software to build differentiation or go into a new market. Your customer basically had to resort to threatening you in order for you to take their level of convenience seriously.

Did you read the quote above: “convenience is now what drives customer loyalty.” Think about the Uber/Lyft ridesharing movement. We are obsessed with convenience. If the car isn’t coming in less than four minutes, we are now outraged. Before Uber/Lyft, I would call a taxi in San Francisco to go to the airport. I would get treated poorly on the phone by a disgruntled dispatcher who acted like I woke him up. Then I would wait and wait and wait and sometimes they just didn’t show up. How did they get away with that for so long? And how did they not see that we all have had sophisticated phones, tracking devices, and GPS in our pockets for years? Convenience is king in rides. Taxicabs simply didn’t prioritize the customer’s convenience.

Print is struggling to compete with digital communication. Print is still very relevant, but we are not moving fast enough on the convenience side of things. Print customers are burdened with calls, faxes, emails, and attached files—basically, you’re asking the customer to work very hard in order to do business with you. 

Don’t wait until you’re under duress and having to save one of your top customers to prioritize customer convenience. Duress is a terrible condition in which to change processes or introduce your team to a new technology. It's no way to make a strategic technology decision either. You should stop assuming your customers like talking to you for every order—they don’t. They are busy. They want you to make their lives easier. If they can place simple orders from their phone and get a hold of you for complicated stuff, that is ideal. 

Your team should not be bothered by simple orders. What if moving to a web-to-print solution gave your best CSRs 20% of their time back everyday? These people are some of the most knowledgeable people about your customers in your business. Can you imagine what else you could accomplish with that time?