High return on investment

Newspaper with growing circulation points to the value of follow-up on service errors

Recently I’ve been working in the customer service department of a large newspaper that holds the distinction of growing circulation. Sure, it has the benefits of a growing market and a good product, but the same is true for many newspapers with declining circulation. So what makes the difference? This newspaper might be considered downright fanatical about following up on all service errors, except that the results make their emphasis on follow-up quite rational.

Missed paper? A replacement arrives within 30 minutes. Same time the next day, a rep calls the subscriber to make sure that day’s paper arrived.

If a subscriber cancels for poor service, the district manager follows up to solve the problem and win back the business.

The newspaper empowers its customer service reps to make sure every problem gets fixed. They can call carriers themselves. They follow up personally on each service error call to make sure the issue is resolved.

Every district manager rides with new carriers for the first full week of delivery and for the first two Sundays.

I run a call center that makes outbound retention calls on behalf of newspaper clients to subscribers who are late in grace. By the time we get the records and make the calls, theses subscribers have made up their minds that they are going to quit the paper. It is our job to win them back. I listen to several hundred of these calls each week. Here’s what I hear regularly:

• “I got a new subscription and it was delivered OK for two weeks and then it stopped. When I called to complain, nothing was done. If you can’t deliver the paper, just never mind.”

• “I got a bill that was wrong, I asked for a corrected one, it never came. I refuse to pay this incorrect bill.”

• “I paid for a year in advance, and you have not given me credit for the payment. Now you have stopped my paper. If you can’t keep things straight, I don’t want to deal with you.”

• “We moved, but we never got the paper at the new address. You seem to be able to mail a bill to my new address, but not my newspaper! I have called three times, and still no delivery.”

Every one of these problems and hundreds like them would be solved—relatively easily and inexpensively—with a service error follow-up call. Yet newspaper executives tell me daily that their team members just do not have time or resources to follow up with subscribers to make sure their problems were fixed.

In response, I point to the newspaper I have cited here that requires its staff to make the time and invest the resources. Without a doubt the apparent returns to their bottom line and circulation figures have far exceed their investment of time and resources.