19 June 2017

Customers are doing it for themselves

With greater access to print via B2C and B2B portals, it gives customers access to production ready estimates which is another path to customer engagement and service offering.

If one had predicted 12 months ago that customers of printers would today be generating their own production-ready estimates, one might have been frowned upon for even suggesting such a thing!
Print is a complex animal requiring an expert to first understand and then specify it; something that customers, frankly, are incapable of doing, right? It seems not.

For the last 6 months, ESP Colour in Swindon has watched agog as customer usage of ‘PDQSalesHub' - Haybrooke Associates automatic online print pricing solution soar.

Haybrooke CEO, John Roche, says he wasn't surprised by the system uptake by customers:
"For as long as I can recall, the assumption has prevailed in the industry that customers are incapable of understanding the printing process, certainly not enough to do an actual quote. PDQSalesHub has turned this notion on its head. Customers are, at long last, doing it for themselves. And loving every minute of it."

This is no idle remark. ESP has watched as customers have grown in confidence using the system and, what started out as a trickle, has now become a deluge of customer self-quoting activity; over 1,000 estimates per month at last count - and growing. Roche believes it is something we are going to have to get used to in the industry.

"Like all innovations that provide genuine benefit, the idea of a customer generating its own prices is here to stay. It is quick and easy and saves time for the printer, too. It's not just customers that are using the facility, either; it's non-estimators, account managers and sales people, all of whom can now make a contribution to the estimating function."

To find out more about pdqsaleshub, visit the Haybrooke Associates website www.haybrooke.com.
John Roche can also be emailed directly [email protected]