Stories from the Field

“Great customer service.” What does that phrase mean to you? I hear it nearly every day, and yet I wonder how different people interpret this concept. A wholly intangible idea, this can be difficult to define.

For our customers, the experience begins as soon as they pick up the phone to contact us. While our Field Service Technicians are the face of a customer’s experience with the Northwest Group (CTX and QBSI), our Dispatchers in the Customer Care Center are the voice. If a customer experiences long hold times, unclear communication, or the feeling their concerns are not being addressed, then an opportunity to provide great customer service has already been missed. However, if a customer has a prompt, concise and attentive conversation when calling the Northwest Group, the tone has been set for a great overall experience. But great customer service doesn’t end there.

As important as effective communication is to our Customer Call Center, it is equally imperative to our Service Department. At the Northwest Group, we ask that all of our technicians contact our customers within one hour of receiving their service call to provide an estimated time of arrival. This allows a customer to understand where they fall in our technician’s schedule. Since not all copier repairs go as expected, not every ETA can be achieved, which is why follow-up communication is absolutely critical. If a technician knows they cannot meet an ETA, it is of the utmost importance that they communicate with their customer to update them as soon as possible. Additionally, if a machine is in need of parts that must be ordered from our manufacturers, and the part arrival is delayed, step one is to contact our customer to update them of the situation, and offer alternative solutions, if possible. 

What does this all mean? Communication is the key!

So, what does great customer service mean to me? That our customers immediately know the expectations, are communicated with if there is any delay, and what the plan is if there are any hurdles that our Service Department needs to overcome. Now that’s great customer service.

Jim Wadsworth 

Field Service Manager

www.ctx-xerox.com

www.qbsi-xerox.com

Knowing is Half the Battle

I’m a kid of the ‘80s.

I left my Flock of Seagulls hair in 1984. I left my mullet in 1985. I then left my Bon Jovi locks behind in 1986. Don’t ask me about my Living Color shaved head/dreadlocks from 1988 to 1990. I have successfully “misplaced” the remaining pictures/evidence of that fiasco. When it comes to hair, I learned what not to do in the ‘80s.

However, one thing that I still haven’t moved on from is G.I. Joe. No, I don’t have action figures throughout my office (nor at home). I still subscribe to their tagline, “Knowing is half the battle.” I am a firm believer of “I don’t know what I don’t know”, so when something comes along that causes me to shift my thinking – a paradigm shift – I am open to it. I don’t assume I know everything about even the very industry I specialize in – Managed Print Services.

This open thinking has allowed us at CTX to move into areas we previously have not offered service. At first, we only serviced HP, Xerox, and Kyocera printers but over time, we created a business model that allowed us to take on virtually every make and every model of desktop laser printers. This has opened up so many doors for us. We found a way to meet a need in the market – manage any laser printer out there because our potential customers may have ANY laser printer out there. And we haven’t stopped adjusting our business model as needed.

Now let me turn this back on you and your organization. How much do you know about your energy cost in kilowatt hours? Maybe you don’t know personally, but I am positive you or someone in your organization can look that up easily or call someone at PGE (or some other provider) and find out. Knowing this number gives you opportunities to make smart business decisions around that number.

Can you negotiate it down with your current vendor? Are there better opportunities through other service providers to negotiate that number down? Are there new or emerging competitors that offer different services that can provide the same end result (or better)?

Can you communicate the need to reduce energy consumption to your employees? If you were to create an incentive to do so, how much money could you budget to award employees while still maintaining a net reduction in expenses?

Are you able to pinpoint where your energy goes? If so, can you isolate the “worst offenders” and change business practices and habits so that these offenders use less energy? Are there other assets that could replace these “energy hogs” that will create an attractive ROI?

OK, maybe knowing in this case isn’t “half” the battle – it’s more like 10%. As you can see, there is more work to be done after you are in the know. I gave you an easy example. Oregon (and nearly every other state) has initiatives and incentives revolving around energy. There are rebate programs for putting your company’s personal computers on a power management program (please see me if you have any questions – we have a great solution around this). Let’s move on to one area I’m positive into which you have little visibility – printing.

How much do you spend on generating a single page document?

Don’t know? Well, you really should. I can say that because I have seen through my work that knowing this number has allowed companies large and small to reduce their real expenses around printing in a manner similar to reducing their expenses around energy.

Maybe you think that you could do some simple math to determine your cost per print. You know that Staples charges $149.99 per toner and the manufacturer boasts an output of 6,000 pages for that toner. That seems to work out to $0.025 (rounded) per page. Now, as you walk through the office and you see a stack of papers go uncollected on the printer, you know that is approximately $1.45 (for example) wasted. Multiply that out for a year and that number grows. Are you beginning to see the direction I’m going here? This is a great place to START, but don’t stop there.

How much did the printer cost? How old is it? How much……wait.

I’ll save you the many more questions you should be asking. $0.025 is only the tip of the iceberg for calculating your cost per print.

I highly encourage you to request an assessment from CTX (Oregon and SW Washington) or QBSI (Washington). We specialize in working with your administration and IT staff to determine your true cost per print. Once you know that….well, that’s half the battle. What you do with it at that point is up to you. You can continue to watch money sit wasted on the printer or you can take the next step.

What is that step? Well, we can help with that too. Give us a call today.

Daniel Alexander has been the Director of Managed Print Services for CTX since 2010. He has personally helped hundreds of businesses get their arms around what is known in the industry as one of the last unaudited expenses – print management. He can be reached directly at 503-968-0365.

The Xerox Color Press 800 Improves The Way One University Works

As your business grows and your workflow changes Xerox has a product family that grows with you. From business color to light production to full production, we can cover every aspect of your production printing requirements. 

A major University in the Northwest that had been using a Xerox 700 Digital Press for 5 years recently implemented the Color Press 800 and that has in turn changed their entire workflow.  By embracing change, this customer was able to expand their production offering to their customers, thus allowing them to grow their volume from 45,000 per month to 173,000 per month in the first six months.  With the Color Press 800 they were able to:

·       Move 20% of their offset short run press work to the new machine

·       Print on Heavier stocks, up to 350 gsm

·       Print on a variety of textured stocks because of the unique way the machine fuses

Because of these important improvements, they are able to increase their offerings to their customer base.  The University was also able to adjust their pricing structure, allowing their clients to send work previously done in black in white to color at a minimal increase. 

The biggest result of the installation was the production time improvements. Because the speed of the Color Press 800 is 80 Pages-Per-Minute on all media types, They were able to decrease those production times to one-third what they experienced from the Xerox 700 Digital Press. For example, one job that used to take the University 6 hours to setup and print was cut down to 1.5 hours because of the efficiency and the speed they now have with the Color Press 800.  As the customer stated “the Color Press 800 is a different class of machine.  Xerox has a niche between the light production and IGEN/Indigo world and no one else has anything like it.” 

Shana Crook - Northwest Group Production Specialist
www.ctx-xerox.com

The World of Color

The world of color can be a very tricky one to maneuver, especially if you are new to it.  If you have been spending a lot of money on outsourcing all of your marketing jobs and feel like you have reached the point where some of those less intense jobs could be done in-house, here are some things to think about.

1.) How do you design for digital printing? Make sure your graphic designer or marketing coordinator knows how to design for digital printing. This involves knowing your brand colors, understanding crop marks and bleeds and how to optimize your printing device to get more bang for your buck.

2.) What are your brand's colors and how do you keep them consistent? Understand the difference between RGB, CMYK, and Pantone Colors. Getting your monitor to look like your output device can be a tricky and costly for that matter but at least understanding why it doesn't can be very beneficial when designing as well.

3.) What is text, bond, cover, tag, and index? Paper! The world of paper can be quite confusing at first but once you figure out your top paper types for your jobs and where to get them, you will be in full swing.

4.) How will you print your jobs? Finding the right machine that will not only fit in your environment now but also grow with you as you get the hang of things and start bringing more jobs in-house is imperative.  Most digital presses are around for 3 to 5 years so make sure the one you get is the one that will fit with your company in 3 to 5 years.

5.) What is Finishing and Color Management? Finishing is basically printing lingo for finishing your document i.e. saddle-stitching, booklet fold, tri-fold etc.  Choosing whether it is more cost-effective to do this inline, offline or outsourcing is important to think about. It may be cost-effective to do offline but if it requires 4 hours of your employees time to do it, it may be better to outsource.  What about Color Management? Is the digital press that you bring in going to have some method of managing color, calibrating or creating profiles, or do you think that a normal business color machines is sufficient for your needs?

All of these items are important to think about when contemplating bringing jobs in-house but with the Northwest Group(QBSI, CTX, Pinnell) on your side we can help you maneuver through this so that you come out on the other side with all the information you need. Let us know!