Back in 2017, Harvard Business Review estimated “...the cost of a do-it-yourself [customer service] transaction is measured in pennies, while the average cost of a live service interaction (phone, email, or webchat) is more than $7 for a B2C company and more than $13 for a B2B company.” Print businesses don’t typically break down the cost per “customer interaction” in the carpeted area of their businesses. This level of detailed costing is reserved for the print manufacturing floor. I have discussed this topic widely with print business owners. They assume they have a sunk cost in head count in customer service and then return their focus to shaving off minutes in finishing or buying  a press with inline finishing to increase both their capacity and profitability.

Customer service is changing because the customer is changing. “81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative.” —Harvard Business Review. This of course assumes the company the customer is buying from has a way for a customer to solve their own issues. Today, with most print businesses, the only place a customer can look in order to solve their own issues is their inbox or their voicemail. Most print businesses have no self-service tools for the majority of their customers. 

A print customer can’t go look at their full order history online, a print customer can’t look at all the approved artwork their print vendor has for them online, a print customer can’t download an invoice, or pay an invoice by credit card, for example. Print customers have to use full service as their only option. This means that print companies have to staff labor to answer every customer question at the cost of more than $13 per question (in 2017 dollars). You have to have customer service, so, again, why focus on it? There are a couple really good reasons why to focus on it now. The global pandemic has pushed lots of customers into the digital self-service world. Think of COVID-19 as the digital laggard accelerator. All those people who insisted on walking into the bank for every transaction have now migrated to digital banking. Do you think when COVID-19 recedes, they will go back to walking into the bank? Not likely.