Doing customer service right - Business Cards came today

If any micro-ISVs or prospective micro-ISVs wonder how important customer service is, wonder no more. Great customer service is absolutely critical to making – or breaking – a small company. Let me illustrate the point: I just got today my new business cards which I ordered from printingforless.com last week after getting a recommendation from someone on the Joel on Software – Business of Software forum.

The cards are great – the best I’ve ever created for myself. I’m sure a real graphic artist could have improved the images front and back, but they work, and the printing job/card stock are superior: a good heavy card stock, colors as spec’ed and consistent.

Wait a minute, you say, online card printers are a dime a dozen: don’t you have to cut costs to the bone, outsource whatever tech support you do and advertise the hell out of it to keep the pipeline of new suckers customers stocked? Nope: printingforless.com does exactly the opposite:

• Preorder, I called and talked to a real live person, Hannah, in Livingston, Montana where printingforless.com has their business. I must have talked to her for 30 minutes on this tiny little business card order.
• Having the customer in mind, they make it easy to switch to them by supporting all sorts of file formats, and letting you see proofs online of what you’re getting.
• They said I’d have it today, and I did. That’s rare.
• They work in small teams of three and their camaraderie and willingness to take responsibility come through.
• As far as I can tell, their advertising is word of mouth plus Google AdWords (“Printing with us is easier than the search you just did to see this ad.”)
• They fuel their WOM advertising by letting current customers pass along to new customers a Promotion Code (RP1684R98) that will save you $25 on your next order. (Note, I’ll get $25 too, but being able to save $25 on a small business card order is nice).

A good business card is a must, even for a micro-ISV. I’d highly recommend them.

(This .jpg doesn't do justice to the card, but when you see it as the .pdf proof online, it's easy to know what you are actually getting.)

Comments

[Bob Walsh]

Hi Daniel - That is a good point, but the cards I got do let you write on them and that ink won't smear if you give it a moment or two to dry.

Given I want these cards to do double-duty, 2sided 2color made sense.

[Daniel]

I'm sure your card design looks great - I just wouldn't go for two-sided, full-cover colour cards because I want the person I give a card to to have the chance to make a note on it (e.g. "Call for quote; messaging software" or "Appointment, Mar 25th" or something like that).

If you hand out cards at a fair or conference, I think that gives the other person a better chance of remembering me from the whole pile of cards they collect.

As always, YMMV.

For folks in Germany, I'm told that the following services are quite good: http://www.flyerdevil.de/ and http://www.flyerwire.de

Dan.

[Matthew Cornell]

Thanks for the pointer, Bob. I just finished creating some cards for myself, and went with the "clean edged Avery at home" solution. An acquaintance design the cards, and we were able to do full-bleed, multi-color on a home ink jet. They turned out surprisingly well, and, better yet, I can print only a few as needed. (This is useful as I suspect my card will be morphing as I get clearer about what I do.)

[Ben]

I'm on the hunt now for a good printer, although I have yet to design the business card, I know I have to get that done soon.

So thanks for the referral, based on your comments I will be checking them out. I'm a particular stickler for customer service, so highlighting that specifically gives me the incentive to take a look.

We'll have to see what shipping costs to Canada are though...

If I do go ahead and use them I'll let you know how it goes, and hopefully I'll have as good an experience.