
In podcast #9 I ask the question “Are Silk Screen Printing Customer’s Always Right?” I showcase a very impressive screen printing shop, and answer screen printing questions.
Yes!!! But…. I believe customers expectations need to be managed from the very beginning. We are in the process of testing and figuring out what areas need to be reviewed with the clients verbally vs What we can just leave for the terms.
Here is a scenario; Clients provides art work, you sit down with them and review the art, you make sure to verbally review the following areas, shirt color, shirt sizes, Ink color, print location, print width, and print distance from collar. They verbally agree that they love everything. So you take that as a green light.
The garments are ordered, the screens are burned and set up, and the job goes to print, it gets packed and the client is informed that their garments are ready for pick up. The clients shows up and you bust out one of the shirts to get the sign off then you see the face.. You all know the face, I call it Airport Face. It the face that says it’s shit and that they aren’t happy but don’t want to be confrontational and get dragged out of the terminal by TSA. So you ask is everything as expected? Flood gates are opened. The print isn’t as big as they wanted it to be, and the graphic is on the front but they wanted it on the back. You took notes and you show them the notes and you printed based on those notes. How did the miscommunication happen?
There is so much room for error and miscommunication. So after that scenario is the customer right or not. You have the notes Didn’t get a signature Client doesn’t remember saying yes. What can you do? Should you reprint? I say yes because you didn’t get a sign of on the production notes AKA the Tech Sheets aka art approvals. You need them to review every detail and check of on each individual area in full, including final print size, print location, distance from collar, ink color, shirt color and shirt sizes. In closing If you had gotten all of that then the customer would not be right in this scenario and you could review the approved specs and prove it.
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