The Personal Touch is Gone. Now What?

Gone are the days when you could count on a friendly smile with your purchase.

Sure, you can still get that warm smile, but these days we head to the self-checkout line and intentionally choose to skip the opportunity for that friendly smile altogether. That’s a topic I explored in a recent article published on LinkedIn entitled, Connecting People to Process. (If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, please take this opportunity to connect with me while you’re there reading the article. Thanks!)

Who’s In Control?

You don’t have a self-checkout line in your print shop, but your print-buying customers probably feel like most Walmart shoppers. They don’t always want a personal touch anymore! They want control – the control to regulate their buying pace, the control to access and change their order whenever they want, and the control to not wait for you.

The Easiest Process Wins

If your customers are exercising their control and choosing to skip the personal touch, that means they’re going online to order printing. Today, over 70% of buying decisions are made before a conversation with a real live human even occurs. 70%!!! And all signs point to that number going even higher in the future.

Let’s go back to the self-checkout line again. Nobody likes to wait for the overseer of the self-checkout line because the “self” checkout was interrupted by a faulty system. Nobody likes being unable to find a product in the Walmart database when you have to look something up manually. We expect it to be easy. We expect it to be quicker, and we inadvertently blame Walmart when it isn’t, even without interacting with a single employee. The same is true when your customers buy printing online. The printer with the easiest online print-buying process wins.

If your personal touch has been replaced by your online touch, you need to make sure your online touch can carry that heavy load.  Take an honest look at your website. Is the online version of you doing a good job replacing the personal touch? (If not, we can help. In fact, that’s why we’re building Odyssey, a completely connected Print MIS!)

Dave Hultin
President, Marketing Ideas For Printers