In his energetic presentation Frangi outlined that in today’s print market, customers have many options available to them which has caused a shift in the relationship authority once held by the service provider to the client. He says in order for printers to remain competitive they need to offer an experience that customers would be content to pay a premium for.
Frangi says, “It’s no longer enough to just do a good job and provide good service. You want people to say nice things about you and keep coming back and to do this you need to move away from commodity products and focus on service differentiation.
“You need to stop thinking like a printer and start thinking like a customer because the customer experience rather than product quality wins every time. You need to ask yourself, are you doing something significant for your client? Could you offer them free advice and make money on that as well?”
The event also featured a panel discussion with industry experts including Kerim Gabaili, CEO of communication production agency Prografica; Peter Loughlin operator of New Zealand’s largest direct mail programme, and Jonathan Perry, marketing and new business manager, Canon Finance Australia.
During the discussion, Kerim Gabaili explained to attendees some of his strategies for developing one of Australia’s first full production agencies.
He says, “We now pitch our services as a production agency, we never position ourselves with one particular media. We have a variety of people in our business including people working with personalised URLs and social media as well as web developers and traditional printers.”
Gabili also outlined that often the best solution for our his customers was to integrate a number of media streams.
He says, “With any new customer relationship we start with a brief and find out what the customer needs and understand what they are trying to do and help them do it. If you don’t start with asking questions and start off with sales you could lose out on a lot of business.”
Meanwhile, commenting on the benefits of the Up and Running seminar, Mark Harvey, general manager production printing systems at Canon Australia says, “It’s no secret that the market out there is tight. We need to work together to squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of the print process.”
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