SKAGGS Blog

And me too, and me too…

that’s the attitude and service we received from FedEx Kinkos’s while hiring them for a paid “test run” of poster for our client. Meanwhile, they’ve potentially lost a 1/2 million dollar job due to lack of managing their custumer service and quality control. I recently read that “Kinkos’s wasn’t doing too great…” I wonder why?

In an age where smaller businesses are ruling the roost and home printers have fantastic print quality, Kinkos’ business decline is no surprise! In my opinion, they need a big change in employee attitude and large modifications to their operations, NOT a new tagline or advertising campaign. This is a common and frustrating mistake with large corporations; instead of looking at the company internally and fixing the decay, they seek “new, shiny and expensive veneers”  in the form of headline grabbing rebrands and “innovative” marketing. While they might attract the business, maintaining it is going to be a problem if you haven’t got informed and proactive employees. Did you know that consumers are 50% more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than by radio/TV ads and I’m quite certain we all know that stories of bad experiences spread far more quickly than good ones.

I’m not sure about the rest of the country, but I know for a fact that Kinko’s reputation in New York City is pretty much known for “bad service, unhelpful and/or un-informed staff. It’s a love/hate relationship - you usually end up HAVING to use them, because there’s nobody else available for your last minute or convenient job. You just have to grit your teeth and put up with the poor service. At SKAGGS we call this “Duane Reade Syndrome”  (don’t even get me started on that).

Does anyone else agree?
If any Kinko’s employees or Kinko’s corporates are reading this, please feel free to enlighten me — I look forward to hearing from you.