INDUSTRY TIPS / THE ONLINE PRINT COACH 38 email: editor@printmonthly.co.uk March / April 2025 - Issue 353 on their answers e.g. How might we improve our service? Multiple choice might be more suited to questions like the last one where they can select the box(es) that best suit them, e.g. telephone, email, social media, or in person. Similarly, if you are asking which products they typically buy, they can select the boxes with the products in their current marketing materials. Some of these questions might seem forward but I assure you they work. I went through a similar exercise with one of my coaching clients last year. Like many of us are guilty of, he too assumed that most of his clients were giving him the majority of their work. On analysis of the submitted surveys, he discovered that from the 75 customers who did respond, he was leaving around £1.5m on the table. Much of this was down to unresolved issues he had no idea Some questions you might want to consider asking are: • How satisfied are you with the quality of our work? • How satisfied are you with our turnaround? • Are there any products you would like us to offer that we currently don’t? • Which other suppliers do you use for print supply? • How much do you spend annually on printing? • Which of the following products do you typically order? • How would you rate our com- munication throughout the pro- cess of order from start to finish? • How might we improve our service? • What is your preferred method of communication? I recommend using a mix of question types. Closed-ended questions such as using scales from one to ten in order to rate you or simple yes or no answers. You should also use open-ended questions to allow your customers to elaborate about or simply their lack of understanding of what products he did or didn’t offer. There were some customers who stopped using him for a particular product because they weren’t happy with the quality last time around or the job was late. In some cases, he just hadn’t marketed his full offering well enough. I’m sure we’ve all had that conversation with a client where they say “Oh, I didn’t know you did that!” There are a number of ways for you to get your survey into your customer’s hands. One of the more common platforms is Survey Monkey or if you use Mailchimp for email marketing, they now have a feature you can use to send surveys out. Alternatively, you can opt for the good old-fashioned way of sending them a printed questionnaire. Customers are probably more likely to fill out your survey if there’s something in it for them. A discount on their next order is probably the most common one. I’m not a huge fan of discounting but I do believe they have their time and place, and this is one of them. The data you acquire from this process is invaluable and well worth the small hit. You can choose to send it out annually, individually after a job is delivered whilst their experience is fresh, or even consider a blend of both. Once you have the results, you want to use these insights and take action. Firstly, you want to look for recurring trends. For instance, if multiple customers are commenting on not being aware of certain products you offer, you might want to look at how you can change this by educating them better through your marketing efforts. Try and focus on changes that will have the biggest impact both on your customer’s satisfaction and also your sales pipeline. It's important to give feedback to your customers on what changes you’ve made. It shows you have listened and are making the necessary improvements. From my time as a print coach, the one thing I’ve come to learn is that the print companies that listen to their customers are the most successful ones. Distributing Your Survey Analysing Your Results
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