A CSR by any name is key to developing customer relationships that translate into dollars.

It’s hard to describe the true value that a customer service representative (CSR) adds to each sale, but there’s no doubt that they are virtually indispensable.  Most printers find CSRs to be a crucial element in maintaining strong customer relationships and enhancing the efficient execution of every job.

While responsibilities might vary from plant to plant, CSRs are credited with streamlining processes, improving communications between customers, sales and prepress, and in many cases, taking on tedious paperwork and detail management that can bog down jobs. Today, the typical CSR is responsible for supporting approximately 1.5 professional print sales representatives — down from an average of two sales reps per CSR just a few years ago. More and more, CSRs are taking on greater responsibilities, from managing client concerns, to processing job orders, to following up with customers after the order is shipped.  Most sales reps value CSRs for keeping jobs in motion and freeing them to spend more time making sales.

Atlanta-based Geographics is an FSC-certified printer that employs a traditional support model with CSRs assisting outside sales reps.  They also add an extra layer of service with sales assistants, who support both CSRs and the sales reps.  Ron Lanio is executive vice president of Geographics (www.geographicsinc.com), which is the largest independently owned commercial printing company in the South, and offers web, sheet-fed and digital printing.  Lanio describes CSR responsibilities at Geographics as “Keeping the job on track for scheduling purposes; both for the customer and for our plant; managing details for outside purchases, like embossing and foil stamping, getting proofs to the customer, and seeing that corrections are made.”

Lanio cites the most valuable characteristic in a CSR as exceptional organizational skills, “They have to be very, very organized.  That’s probably number one when in comes to working with sales reps who might write their quotes down on the back of a cocktail napkin.  Sales reps are not known for being great with details.”  But Lanio also notes, “The interesting thing about our CSRs is they have to wear two hats.  They have to take care of the customer and sales person, but they have to look out for the plant, too.  They make sure the presses aren’t waiting.  They cater to customers, but also have to watch out for the company at the same time.  It’s a tough role.”

At Geographics, CSRs are deeply involved in account planning and management, and head up pre-planning meetings.  Lanio describes the meetings as “triage,” and part of their Best Practices policy for every job.  Says Lanio, “CSRs call together all the department heads and say ‘here’s the job; here are the lasers; here’s the paper it’s printing on.’ Then they go back to the sales person or customer and discuss problems that they could have with paper, or folding, or cracking.  It’s a great way to catch job problems ahead of time.”

Lanio adds, “They also are very much in tune with the schedules of our plant. They sit in two production scheduling meetings a day at 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 in the afternoon and update everyone about the status of every job.  They get critical information from the customer to the plant.”

Henry Wurst, Inc. (www.henrywurst.com) is a family-owned business established in 1937 with facilities in North Carolina, Missouri and Colorado.  It is one of the nation’s largest and most diverse providers of printing and communications services. For more than 30 years, it has been listed annually by Graphics Arts Monthly in the Top 100 North American printers. Henry Wurst also utilizes the standard service model with CSRs supporting outside sales reps. CSRs are assigned to support one or more sales rep, depending on sales volume.  Peter Wann is western region vice president of sales and explains that CSRs in the Henry Wurst organization support a wide array of functions, “With our organization, CSRs need direct mail and fulfillment experience, as well as sales.”

At Henry Wurst, CSRs help save time for the entire plant by entering jobs.  Says Wann, “We have an ERP system for electronic job ticketing. The CSR enters the job, then it’s available for the rest of plant.  As it goes through stages of production, the CSR, or others in the plant, can make changes throughout the process.”

According to Wann, CSRs conquer challenges daily that make everyone’s jobs easier, “The biggest challenge they face is getting incomplete information from the sales person or the customer — and it’s typically the customer. The specs come in as XYZ and they find it’s really ABC.  At times they have to do some detective work to get the job entries complete.”

While Wann says print experience is very important in a good CSR, he describes communication skills as a critical asset, “The best CSRs are those individuals who are comfortable talking through problems with the customer. Then it’s not incumbent on the sales person to come in for every problem. The CSR comes up with a solution and communicates it to the customer.”  In addition to exceptional communication skills, Wann also believes a good CSR takes ownership in their work, “I think they have to have a sense of ownership.  They have to be doers.  You can consider them farmers.”

Seasoned sales professional Suzan Rowe, with Prographics in Atlanta (www.prographinc.com),
has a deep appreciation for CSRs that can only come from a career that began with typesetting and stripping while working for a print shop right out of college.  With an undergraduate degree in design and experience working for publishers, she knows a good detail man — or woman — when she sees one.  Rowe credits a great CSR for freeing her to invest more time in selling.

Says Rowe, “Print is a very service-intensive business. If you don’t have a good CSR, you spend all your time servicing.  All the phone calls come to you and it ties you to the office, you can never be free to go out and sell.  A lot of things in the printing business are very visual and physical.  If there’s not somebody there that can make good decisions, that understands the sales person’s business, then that means the sales person has to be in the plant.”

Rowe continues, “When you have a great CSR, you don’t have to do everything over and over and over again.  You don’t have to put the same information back into their heads. They know that at a certain account has to be handled a certain way.  They know your accounts and it just happens automatically.  And you don’t have to go back behind them and check.”

“A good CSR can increase your efficiency by 50 percent, easily,” says Rowe.  “All of a sudden, everybody in the plant is not calling you asking questions.  Your shipping instructions are where they should be.  If there’s a question about how your job is planned, your CSR can answer it. Good CSRs don’t have to call you and ask you these things, because they’ll think about these things for you so that you’re free to go out and do what you have to do, which is sell.”

Dome Printing is located in Sacramento, CA (www.domeprinting.com) and was purchased by the Poole family in 1969. They are certified for chain of custody by the Forest Stewardship Council and have won several awards from the National Association for Printing Leadership.  While Dome Printing has CSRs on staff, their service model deviates slightly from the popular model with CSRs supporting outside sales. Dome has an inside sales group, called customer relations managers (CRMs), that dates back to company founder, Ray Poole.  The group was originally set up to handle contract state agency work.  Says company president, Tim Poole, “We’ve always had a strong inside sales group, which came from doing contract work.  We’ve been doing it this way for 20 to 25 years. It keeps our outside sales reps focused on customers who need a higher level of service.  We reserve outside sales for prospecting and developing relationships.”

The inside sales group, or CRMs are available to support outside sales reps in the event that they are not accessible or are out making sales calls.  Both CRMs and sales reps handle their own paperwork and enter their own jobs. Dome also has sales assistants who support both the CRMs and outside sales reps.  In the Dome print family, the more traditional role of CSR has evolved into planning and prepress functions.

Poole finds that the sales and service structure that they’ve created opens the door not only to happy customers, but also to higher profit margins.  “The real bonus,” says Poole, “is that CRMs are available to work with customers who may have simple or low-margin jobs.  And basically, it’s a client that wants less service.  Some clients don’t want any face time. They don’t want this elaborate sales process, but they want customer service and a knowledgeable person. Our outside sales reps seek out more specialized projects with a higher profit margin that require a lot of hands-on service.  A commissioned sales rep is paid to manage high-margin projects.    Inside sales reps have a little more room to sell.”

Amy Labowitch heads up the team of CRMs and has been with Dome Printing for 15 years, where she started as the first customer relations manager.  Says Labowitch, “Customer relations reps deal with a lot of house accounts.  We have our own book of business.  Plus we’re here whenever a sales rep needs us.  We meet with the sales reps every morning.  If we know that someone is going to be on the road, we share responsibilities.  Because we have such a large group, if a sales assistant can’t help, reps can call us and we take care of everything.  We also handle numerous call-ins and e-mail requests from our Web site.”

Labowitch credits her group with being “detail-oriented and good at multi-tasking.”  However, she notes, “You have to be able to think on your feet and be confident enough to say ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out for you.’ Communication skills are really important.  You have to be able to communicate ideas, deadlines and information to the customer and to the plant.”

Bob Poole is vice president of sales and coordinates both inside and outside sales activities. Says Bob Poole, “Our CRMs write up quotes, do billing, route proofs – when sales reps are on the road, they take hold of jobs and move them through the plant. CRMs also have the flexibility to go out to visit customers and go over proofs.  They do whatever we need to do to get the job done.”

Taking a giant step outside the traditional, Printingforless.com (PFL) services all of its direct channel customers without the involvement of outside sales reps.  Founded by entrepreneur Andrew Field in 1999, PFL is based in southwest Montana and provides a unique form of technical and customer support with instant on-line pricing and ordering for its full-color marketing materials. PFL is a full Heidelberg shop that produces printed products for small-to-mid-sized business customers throughout the United States.  Field harnessed the power of e-commerce to make printing accessible to an underserved market segment of hands-on entrepreneurs who don’t always have access to professional designers.  His unmistakably successful business has been named by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies, with four-year average annual sales growth of 186.5 percent.

Unlike the traditional printing industry model, PFL sells products and services only on line. Without outside sales representatives or CSRs, they have, instead, pioneered a service structure that relies on a technical service representative or “TSR.”  This person with hybrid skills is a combination of inside sales rep, CSR and technical consultant, which includes performing pre-press tasks.

Kerie Hagler is director of process management for PFL. Hagler explains the basic service structure for PFL customers, “We work in small teams. Each customer is assigned to a team and the team handles all of their needs from placing the order until it goes into production.  TSRs are the frontline staff that answers all of our customer sales inquiries, phone calls, e-mail, everything.”  To build strong relationships and maintain a high level of customer contact, PFL assigns three TSRs to each team.  Team members share and rotate responsibilities servicing the customer.  PFL currently has 13 teams, plus a group called “designated hitters” which fill in when team members are on vacation or out of the office.

Does providing printing exclusively through an on-line portal necessarily mean that personal service has been driven out of the sale?  Not at all.  Says Hagler, “We have over 60,000 customers and still maintain personal relationships with customers through our small team system.”

To ensure that the TSRs have the necessary skills to manage the customer relationship, as well as provide technical assistance, PFL has developed a formal, proprietary, in-depth training program that includes 10 weeks of classroom training, plus eight weeks of on-the-job training, and coursework. The training program includes sales training, customer service training and technical training.

TSRs are trained to run each file received from a customer through a series of processes to make sure they meet certain criteria.  Says Hagler, “Our process is to call every customer with every order.  If we have concerns with files, or photos are too low res, we discuss the issues with them, make any appropriate fixes, and provide advice to make sure that the marketing piece will meet their expectations.”  Hagler adds, “We continue to break the mold in the industry.  It’s not easy.  It takes a lot of training and commitment.  We could automate a lot of things, like other on-line printers, but that’s not who we are.”

CSRs – whether they are called TSRs or CRMs or sales assistants — have the opportunity to contribute to the bottom line every day by managing details in a way that keeps costs down for both the customer and the print provider.  How well they manage that function can translate directly into additional sales and increased profitability through greater productivity. It’s no wonder that while industry experts anticipate little or no growth in the number of professional sales reps in the industry, they predict that the number of customer service representatives could increase by as much as 25 percent over the course of the next few years.