The Customer Service Dilemma For Label Printing Companies

_{Ian Renton  | 12/12/2016 | Label Printing - General Knowledge,Wedding Labels}

The label printing industry is a diverse one. There are some suppliers who operate out of a garage whilst others have millions of dollars in capital equipment and a large payroll to go with it. Both types of businesses can be successful. Printing as an industry is in decline as the volume of printing done in Australia and worldwide is reducing. There are less newspapers, less magazines, less greeting cards, less annual reports, less letters and less advertising by direct mail. Of course, the printing industry is a big one and the strong players will survive and thrive.

The reason I like the label printing industry is because it is one subset of the printing industry that is not in decline. In fact, as the economy grows, so does the need for labels. Label printing is also recession proof. Labels for food, wine, other drinks, cosmetics, soap, shampoo, chemicals and other products will always be needed and more of these labels will be needed in the future. Not only that, but as technology improves, it creates more demand for labels in two ways.

Firstly, digital label printing has allowed many small businesses to label their products economically and at an equivalent quality to the labels seen on supermarket shelves. This is because labels produced in short runs can now be done economically as they are printed now without the need for expensive film and plates. This really helps start-up businesses that have a lot of different products to label but do not have large sales initially.

Secondly, labels now appear in places today that they did not 20 years ago. For example, you can use wedding stickers to create memories that will last a lifetime. This includes personalised bottles of wine or water as well as candle labels and labels for chocolates or lolly jars. These sorts of extra bonuses for weddings would have been much rarer 20 years ago because of the prohibitive cost of producing a small number of labels for the wedding guests.

Do You Really Want Fast Service From Your Label Printing Provider?

Suppose there a few restaurants in your street. One has a line-up and waiting time for your meals after the order is placed. The other one has empty seats and the time to wait after ordering is not long at all. Which restaurant would you patronise? The same dilemma applies for suppliers of products when they choose a label printing supplier. Most of us would patronise the busiest restaurant. Getting a nice meal with a good ambience is the priority. You would be prepared to wait a little longer or even a pay a bit extra.

Well the same principle applies to any business but especially printed labels. You want your labels to be of the highest quality and they must do the job that you need them to do. This would include being easily read and noticed by your clients and not peeling off when exposed to water or other elements.

In other words, you may gravitate towards the busier company even if the waiting time was longer than you would like. As we approach Christmas, we have found we are getting a lot more orders for customised product labels. Yes, we have a backlog but are working through these orders. Apart from starting work early and leaving late, we generally do not employ shift workers. Many of our customers demand fast service and really do not have the option of delaying the order for too long.

What we do when we have an over capacity is we outsource some jobs to reputable label printing companies. This is less profitable for us but it keeps the customer happy and that is really what every business is all about.