We were asked by Headline, design and printers in Woking to undertake a client feedback project. The objectives of the exercise were to:
- Speak to the agency’s key clients and understand their initial motivation for using Headline and what were the elements of service that ‘earned’ customer loyalty.
- Devise a series of case studies that focused on identified market sectors to form the basis of an evidenced-based business development campaign.
It was a pleasure meeting all of the clients that Mark (the business owner) had requested I made appointments for. It became clear from just the first couple of meetings that what people were buying from Mark was not design and print, but certainty.
Of course, design and print was the output but the reason why clients returned to Headline was because of their reliability to deliver on time and to specification. A lot of the print supplied by Headline is for event-driven activity e.g. exhibition, launches and training. The people on the client side value the reliability of service as much as they do the final printed product.
Every Headline client I met thought that idea of sending someone in to talk about customer service was a positive development and was a real example to show that Headline took client care seriously.
There were ‘wrinkles’ in a couple of the relationships, but clients were happy to share these and in every meeting permission was given for the feedback, warts and all to be passed back to Headline. It’s interesting when you speak to people about service, they will talk less about the core deliverable (print in this case), and more about the service wrapper. On numerous occasions the polite and happy disposition of the Headline team (both and the telephone and when making deliveries) was an important factor in customer loyalty – so the little things really do matter.
A case in point – St Andrew’s School
Many of the interviews were written up into market focus case studies, like this one for the education sector. Headline have seen an increase in conversation when they get an enquiry from a sector that they have a prepared case study. They now have eight such studies.
