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clients with poor customer experience

Overcoming the Late Communication Problem to Improve Customer Experience

One of the hottest management subjects today is improving the customer experience (CX). One article often cited as the pioneer of this subject was the Harvard Business Review article entitled, “The Truth about Customer Experience”. This article talks about the customer experience as a journey that includes all the key touchpoints when the customer interacts with your organization.

The Theory

The theory is that overall customer experience is the cumulative impact of multiple touchpoints. This results in a feeling of a good, bad, or indifferent relationship. So how do you achieve good customer experience? By fixing any issues in your workflow that result in a bad customer experience.

The Problem

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One common problem is notifying a customer late when there is a problem with their file. Typically, files enter into production by being placed on the top of a stack of work which may not get looked at until the next day. When a problem is found, the job may be pushed aside again into another stack of problem files that may not get looked at until the next day. The result is that the customer may not be contacted about a problem with their file until one or two days after file has arrived. At this point the customer is furious because it has taken so long to identify the problem and now their back is against the wall because of a deadline.

The Root Cause

How do you fix a problem? You must start by identifying the root cause. The root causes for this problem are these piles, which are in essence work in progress and the obvious answer is to get them out of those piles faster.

The Solution

One strategy we recommend to our clients is what we call a two step preflight process. The first preflight is a “quick and dirty” preflight; the second is the same in-depth preflight. The quick and dirty preflight task must become a priority over other day-to-day work. In other words, you create a new standard operating procedure to preflight files with four hours of arrival and measure that time as a key performance indicator (KPI) to insure success. Using the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle, this first preflight looks for the 20% of the problems that cause 80% of the issues (i.e. fonts, resolution, color, and size/bleeds issues). If a problem is discovered, the customer is called immediately and a solution is created. If no problems are discovered, the job is placed back into the normal workflow and hopefully only has minor issues.

How do you overcome your biggest client communication challenges? Share with us by commenting below!


Howie Fenton

Howie Fenton

Howie Fenton has been a consultant in the industry for nearly three decades. He specializes in optimizing the production workflows throughout the organization, delivering an average increase in productivity, reduction in turnaround time and cost savings.

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