| Your Commitments. Delivered. |
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| Monthly Newsletter |
June 2007 |
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Greetings!
Today, we launch a new version of our newsletter by introducing a Printer's Bill of Rights.
You may recall this past winter that JetBlue airlines experienced
severe service issues and responded with their version of a bill of
rights for their customers. If you think about it, there are
similarities between the airline industry and our own. Both are
service industries whose success relies on keeping customers satisfied.
In a perfect world, that would be easy. But things happen - so
our response in the midst of challenge can also make or break the
customer experience.
Seaboard Bindery wants to set the standard when it comes to treating our customers like you would treat your
customers. We invite you to read your Bill of
Rights below. It is a work in progress and we'd welcome your
input. Send us your suggestions and we'll send you a pre-loaded Starbucks card as our thanks. |
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 Printer's Bill of Rights
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1.
High Quality Product |
You have a right to the kind of quality product that your
customers require. Manufacturing glitches or errors that
we notice in print product are brought to your attention
before binding and finishing. Bindery quality issues are
identified and rectified prior to delivery. The focus is on
prevention rather than repair.
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2. Reliable Turn-around |
You have a right to expect the agreed upon delivery dates
when your job is sent out for finishing on time. When a delay
occurs on your end, you expect your finishing partner to
proactively reset aggressive new delivery dates. When
production schedules permit, you have access to emergency
turn-around service.
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3. Clear, Proactive Communication |
You have a right to timely, honest, and regular job status information updates, including proactive outreach for suggestions, issues, and delivery status. You need regular communications throughout the job, not just when there are issues or problems.
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4. Personal Professional Service |
You have a right to personalized, professional and hands-on customer service and support throughout the outsourcing process, from estimating straight through to delivery. This assumes effective follow-through on all requests, telephone calls, emails and meetings.
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5. Consistent Customer Experience |
You have a right to the kind of overall customer experience that you would deliver to your own clients. The experience is an integral part of a long-term partner relationship and fosters the environment of customer care that puts you and your customer first.
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6. Extended Control |
You have a right to expect that the outcome of outsourced binding & finishing matches the same expectations you have of your own in-house capabilities. You expect your supplier to focus on your expectations, acting and delivering as an extended partner, rather than an external vendor.
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| Customer Focus: Mark Sanderson, President, Springfield Printing
Q: What are the top challenges in the commercial printing industry at the moment?
The
top challenge we face today is handling the speed of change going on in
our industry. We need to be able to adapt quickly to the changing needs
of our clients and consistently provide innovative, timely and value
driven marketing and communication services.
Q: What do you think it will take to deal with them?
It
takes thinking outside the conventional printing realm. To succeed we
will have to learn and become proficient at providing additional
services such as digital printing, database management, mailing and
cross platform marketing programs using the Internet in conjunction
with direct mail.
Q:
To what extent will the new services you provide involve outside
relationships? It looks as if these new services are less capital
intensive and more knowledge/information intensive.
It will require establishing outside partnerships
(creative, database, etc.) in addition to our internal training. True,
it is less capital intensive but those resources are allocated to
building the intellectual expertise.
Q:
What is the most important thing you look for in a supplier or vendor?
The most
important thing we look for and value in our supplier relationship is
reliability. We pride ourselves in our ability to meet our commitments
to our clients. We search out vendors who feel the same way and help us
meet those commitments.
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Technical Tip: Perfect Binding
Beware of the two most common planning mistakes for perfect binding
1. Make sure your spine width and the book thickness match. Image
that is too large for the spine width results in a poor fit, and we
have to wrap the cover around the book in a way that was unintended. This also results in mutual wasted time and expense while we work out a solution. The best way to make sure that the cover spine and the text spine match is to measure the actual stock. No additional allowance needs to be made for side glue.
2. No glue trap on the covers. Many gluing applications start and stop on a dime, but perfect  binder glue rollers do not. We need extra cover at the top and bottom to catch any squeezing out of the glue when the cover is nipped to the glued spine. Otherwise the squeezed out glue will get all over the machine, and then on to the next books that come down the line.
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