Employee Spotlight: Duncan

As you go through your print buying journey, we have a range of processes and teams in place to make sure we’re providing you with an excellent customer experience. From the moment you’re first introduced to our brand all the way through to ongoing relationships with your business, we’re dedicated to giving you a positive experience. Here, Duncan, our Customer Service Manger tells us all about it…

1. When did you start working at instantprint?

I started working for instantprint on the 12th of August 2013, so that's nearly five years ago now!

2. What does your role involve?

My main responsibility is leading the instantprint customer services team this includes recruiting new team members, working with our advisors on their personal development as well as ensuring we are delivering against our key performance indicators. Generally my responsibility is to make sure customers are given the best customer service possible from both a quality and speed of service point of view.

3. How does your role fit into the journey of an instantprint customer’s print?

My role is to empower our customer advisors with the confidence and knowledge to answer any question that may come their way. At instantprint, it’s our mission to ensure each customer has an easy and straight forward experience when ordering print and our customer advisors are central to this. The team will make recommendations on paper types or lamination, give you advice on what will work for your brand as well as deal with any issues that may arise.

4. What makes you proud about working at instantprint?

I feel as a company our customer service teams are very customer focused. Our teams do not have a script or sales targets. We have a collective of real people on the end of a phone, email, social media and live chat ready to help you. Approaching customer service in this way enables us to have the freedom to really understand what it is our customers are trying to achieve and gives us the opportunity to support that through our expertise.

5. What’s the most exciting technology or change you’ve seen in the way print is produced?

Print has changed so much since I starting working for instantprint. I’d say the most exciting thing I’ve seen in print is the sheer speed in which we can turn an order around. The fastest time we’ve ever processed an order, from customer approval to being ready for delivery is in 23 minutes and 17 seconds!

6. Tell us about your downtime hobbies or a random fact about yourself

I play badminton for Steel City in the Sheffield Men’s League which is great at keeping me active. I also really enjoy going to cinema to watch the latest films. My ultimate guilty pleasures, however, is real ale. I love tracking down real ale festivals and visiting them in my spare time.

7. What do you enjoy the most about working with instantprint customers?

Our customers are awesome at leaving positive feedback on our products and services! Coming from a call centre background you get used to the constant bombardment of negativity and I remember being quite taken aback when on one of my first days a customer called just to say thanks for his posters.

8. Tell us about a standard day, what are the most common problems you help customers with?

I start the day by catching up on the statistics from the day before and looking for any trends or patterns I can highlight with the goal of creating solutions and improving service levels. Then I’ll tackle any ongoing projects, carrying out one to one’s or collaborate with other department heads on strategic tasks.

9. Tell us about the best customer experience you’ve had?

I’d say the best customer experience I’ve had was with a teacher from a local school. Some of his students wanted some booklets printing of their stories that they could sell to raise money for charity. They were so happy with the service they asked if they could bring the students in for a tour of the factory, we obviously said yes and I had the pleasure of giving them the tour and showing them our latest equipment. The children were so interested in our machinery and how we make our products.

10. How do you deliver the best customer service – what’s your biggest secret to a satisfied customer?

I help deliver the best customer service by empowering the team with the confidence and knowledge to be able to make decisions for themselves and also be in a position to advise our customers. I’ve always felt if you stick to rigid processes you’re not going to get great results from your team members and your customers aren’t going to have a positive experience with your brand.