Stuart Mason says…

Your customer may only be able to leave you a FIVE STAR review, but you must leave them with a SIX STAR impression.



That might sound like another marketing cliché, but in an industry as competitive as print, I think it’s becoming increasingly important. We all know how easy it is for a customer to compare prices, whether that means getting three quotes from local printers, searching online or simply forwarding your quotation to somebody else and asking, “Can you beat this?” If the only thing separating you from the competition is the number at the bottom of the quote, you’re always going to be vulnerable to somebody prepared to do the job for less.

The alternative is to give customers something much harder to compare on a spreadsheet: the experience of doing business with you.

That’s what I mean by building a Six Star Business. It isn’t about having the newest equipment, the biggest premises or spending a fortune trying to impress people. It’s about looking at every interaction a customer has with your business and asking whether it reinforces the value you want them to place on what you do. If you want customers to stop seeing you as simply another supplier of print, you need to give them reasons to value the relationship as much as the product.  Do you know what those reasons are?

That experience begins with PERCEPTION Before somebody has seen the quality of your print, they’ve probably already seen your website, an email, .a quotation, your premises, your vehicle, your social media or perhaps one of your samples. Every one of those things is quietly telling them what sort of business they’re dealing with. A professional quotation followed by a badly written email creates a contradiction. A great website followed by a phone that rings unanswered creates another. You don’t get to decide which parts of your business contribute to the customer experience because, from the customer’s perspective, they all do.

Then consider how welcoming your business actually is. When somebody walks through the door, calls or sends an enquiry, what happens next? Do they feel valued, or do they feel as though they’ve interrupted somebody? Are you simply taking an order and producing a price, or are you asking questions, understanding what they’re trying to achieve and perhaps suggesting something better? The printer who helps a customer make a better decision immediately starts moving the conversation away from price and towards expertise and value.

Some of the biggest improvements in customer experience are surprisingly simple. It might mean responding faster, remembering somebody’s name, spotting a potential problem with their artwork before it becomes an expensive mistake or keeping them updated without waiting for them to chase you. It could be delivering earlier than promised, helping them carry boxes to their car or taking five minutes to explain an option that might work better for them. Individually, none of these things sounds particularly revolutionary, but collectively they shape how a customer feels about your business, and that feeling has enormous value.

The experience shouldn’t stop when the job leaves the building either. One of the easiest ways to differentiate your business is with a professional follow-up. A simple call or email asking whether everything arrived safely, whether they were happy with the job and whether there is anything you could have done better shows that the relationship matters beyond the invoice. It also creates a perfectly natural opportunity to ask what they’re working on next. Suddenly your customer service, marketing and sales activity are all working together.

Going the extra mile doesn’t mean giving things away or discounting your way to Six Star status. In fact, that rather defeats the point. The objective is to create enough additional value around the product that the customer is less inclined to make their decision purely on price. Think about the businesses you personally enjoy buying from. It’s rarely because they are always the cheapest; more often it’s because they are easy to deal with, reliable, professional and occasionally do something that exceeds your expectations.

That is the difference I’d encourage every print business to explore. Five Star is excellent, but Six Star is memorable, and memorable businesses are talked about, recommended and returned to. More importantly, they give customers a reason to stay when somebody else inevitably comes along offering to save them a few quid.

So, here’s the challenge. Sit down with your team and list FIVE things that genuinely make your business FIVE STAR today. 

Then, alongside each one, write down what you could change, add or improve to take it from FIVE STAR to SIX STAR.
Your customers may never be able to give you that sixth star on Google…. Yet!!

But they can certainly remember how you made them feel.

www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-c-mason