When Great Quality Control & Customer Support
are Good and Bad for Profits

I recently ordered business cards from VistaPrint and decided to place content on the back of the card as well. When the time came to upload my design to the back of the card, I realized that I needed clarification from customer support in order to understand how the front and back content would be oriented. These business cards are in fact not business cards but certificates of authenticity I use for my hobby – collecting and selling meteorites. As such, the cards need to be cut down by about 3/8″ and the back side content must be properly aligned in order not to cut off desired content on the back.

So, I called customer service, they were very helpful, confirmed that the way I uploaded my design was correct and placed my order.

Cards came back and they were not correct.

Called customer service they fixed the order and said they would send me new cards for free.

Got a call the next day and the design review team decided to cancel that order and stretch the design on front of card because the design did not align to the registration marks.

I called back the next day reinstated the order I wanted and am hoping for the best.

Well, this process got me thinking about quality control and customer support. Granted my case is somewhat unusual as the large majority of people do not care how the content on the back aligns with the front. Nonetheless, having worked in both the semiconductor industry and the consulting service industry I realized that many business struggle with achieving the right balance between running a profitable business and losing money in order to satisfy all customers in every situation.

Businesses selling a highly customizable product (business cards, custom T-shirts, etc.) or a complex product (microcontroller integrated circuit, IKEA TV console, etc.) quickly realize that quality control, and pre- and post-sale customer support (live and self-service) are critical to creating satisfied and loyal customers.

As with nearly all business decisions/processes there is no one formula to determine what the right level might be. However, there are guidelines and processes that can be followed.

VistaPrint had a very useful 360 degree online tool, but it was not easily accessed and I can’t easily find it again. This tool if made more prominent in the order process would have solved many if not all of my issues and allowed vistaprint to make their normal profit from my order. This process is a great demonstration that all aspects of a company must operate thoughtfully and efficiently to get the best result for customers and corporate profits.

Closing the loop. With the help of customer service, I finally got the correct order. When I received a request to take a survey on the customer service reps that helped me, I did the first survey but could not take the second on a different customer support representative because I had already taken the survey. Seems like they