It was 7 p.m. on a Friday, and Jon Alagem, president and co-founder of Harper+Scott (asi/220052) in New York City, was getting ready to wind down yet another hectic work week.

Suddenly, an email came in from a very important client for a rush order. The technology/media company needed branded silicone phone wallets – 180,000 pieces, in fact – delivered to multiple locations across the country. By Tuesday morning. That gave Harper+Scott fewer than three days to make it happen.

Alagem quickly realized any plans for a restful weekend were officially null and void.

But instead of telling them they were out of luck since it was after 5 p.m., or firing back a testy email asking why they waited until the last minute to place an order, Alagem immediately assured the client they were working on it and mobilized their team to source enough inventory.

“We called every vendor we could,” says Alagem. Only one said it could help: Hit Promotional Products (asi/61125) in St. Petersburg, FL. The rest were “off for the weekend,” as Alagem remembers being told.

For three days, Harper+Scott and Hit worked to get all 180,000 pieces picked, branded with the client’s logo and shipped to 19 different locations by Tuesday morning. Through a combination of Harper+Scott’s dedication to their client and Hit’s commitment to their distributor, they succeeded.

The world moves fast, and to keep pace, end-buyers want speed, convenience and transparency. According to data from Counselor’s State of the Industry report, 35% of all orders require turnaround times of five days or less. Quick response times to even the most basic inquiries are becoming the norm.

At the same time, many distributors want to provide consultative service that’s individualized to their clients’ needs to maintain long-term relationships. Can distributors offer the best of both worlds? They think so. “Technology has enabled a lot of great things,” says Jeff Holt, vice president of sales & marketing at Image Source (asi/230121). “But if we get too far from our core competencies – such as communication, service and creativity – we’re in dangerous territory. If we lose what’s made us great, that’s a dangerous gray area that a lot of companies will find themselves in. Frankly, they won’t survive.”

Use these six strategies as the foundation to offering amazing distributor customer service.

1. Be Quick or Be Dead
Prospects and clients need products fast, and they’re looking to a distributor to help them out. At Harper+Scott, account managers’ target response time for an email or phone call is no more than 30 minutes (which certainly helped on that major Friday night rush order). “If it’s more than 30 minutes or even an hour, they’re going to the next distributor,” says Alagem. “They move quickly.” A common practice at Harper+Scott is copying three team members on every email to a prospect or client so all bases are covered and response time is expedited.

Similarly, target response time for Blank2Branded (asi/141113) is 30 minutes, particularly when the prospect or client is asking for product ideas. “I’m calling them back in a half hour,” says President Marcia Tarnoff. “If I need to do more research on what they’re asking for, I’ll refer to a similar job we’ve done and the success we had with it. It sets up competence and trust from the beginning. It tells them we’re experts in the field.”

At Brand+Aid (asi/145193), the team knows fast response time is integral to creating a new client, especially since promotional products are readily available at so many different companies. Target response time to an inquiry, particularly at the product sourcing or quote stage, is one hour, even if it means just confirming receipt and letting them know they’re working on procuring more information. “Otherwise, they’re sitting there wondering if we got it or not,” says Andre Neves, head of business development.

Longer than that, and there’s a good chance a distributor has lost the order. “You’ve lost their attention and that’s the most important thing in their discovery phase,” Neves says. “If they go to a competitor, that company got their attention. And then it’s really hard to get it back.”

Another tip is to give them a timeline on when they can expect information, and to underpromise and over-deliver. Tell them two days, and have it to them the following morning or even EOD. “We want to be ahead of the game,” says Neves. “We want to go to the client before they have to come back to us.”

And while speed is important, distributors also have to respond with the correct information for that client’s need, says Mark Ziskind, COO of Top 40 distributor CSE (asi/155807). If they need 100 polos, says Ziskind, CSE can take care of that in 15 minutes. A custom piece from China? C-suite holiday gifts above $200? That requires more discussion and time. “We have to ask, ‘What did they like last year?’ or, ‘What’s worked or hasn’t worked for you before?’” says Ziskind. “They very rarely reach out to us with all the information we’ll need. That would make life too easy.”

2. Get Personalized
Being familiar with the ins-and-outs of every account and, indeed, every individual customer is what Tarnoff calls “the basics” of customer service. “It’s getting to know your client’s likes, dislikes, needs, even feelings and emotions,” she says. “I always promote face-to-face interactions. You have to relate to them, engage with them, look them in the eye. That’s your point of distinction.”

It’s a marketing agency type of customer service, which is individualized and always available. “We have to be present and right in front of them,” says Holt. “That’s where the real magic is. Things are trending online, but one-on-one selling is not going away. It’s actually going to be increasingly important for those who need a relationship with their distributor. We know our customers and their brand, goals, target audience and how they want fulfillment done.”

Of course, once a distributor promises a high level of service for their client, they have to live up to those expectations throughout the entire order process, or risk losing the customer. It’s living by your word, says Mat Goldblatt, owner of Breakmark (asi/145257). “If you say, ‘I’ll get back to you by the end of the day,’ you better do it or you’ve let the customer down,” he explains. “Tomorrow is too late. They’re answering people on their end too. There’s a whole chain of communication that’s being affected.”

(Don’t) Speak Your Mind

Distributors tell us how they would have liked to respond to high-maintenance end-buyers, and what they’ve actually said.

Heather Comerford, 1338Tryon

• Wanted to Say: “Life’s too short to deal with mean people like you.”
• Actually Said: “Our personalities don’t work well together.”

Jeff Holt, Image Source

• Wanted to Say: “Here are the names of some similar companies (actually, our immediate competitors). They might be better partners for you.”
• Actually Said: “We’re not the right partner for you. The amount of revenue we’re seeing isn’t aligning with the man hours we’re putting in. There are a ton of online distributors that you can find with a simple Google search.”

Marcia Tarnoff, Blank2Branded

• Wanted to Say: “You really set me up to fail and I lost money on this.”
• Actually Said: “I went outside my normal channels for you, to serve you, even though it didn’t work out in the end.”

Mat Goldblatt, Breakmark

• Wanted to Say: “You’re saying the products don’t look right, but you received them three weeks ago and now your event is in two days. What am I supposed to do at this point?”
• Actually Said: “We’ll figure out how to make it right.”

3. Cater to Their Schedules
Awesome customer service means knowing when clients have time to focus on their marketing. “You have to be there where and when they need you,” says Heather Comerford, owner of 1338Tryon (asi/287946). “We’re not always thinking about what our clients are doing. They’re not thinking about promotional products. They have meetings and big projects they’re working on; sometimes they can’t talk until the end of the day.”

Comerford’s tech clients, for example, often have back-to-back meetings all day, so the best time for them to talk with her is usually between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. If an international client needs to talk at 5 a.m. her time, she’s there. “We give them everyone’s name and contact information when they come on as a client, and we make ourselves available wherever they are,” she says.

Goldblatt echoes the sentiment: a client’s day job determines how best to communicate with them, and when. “If your client is in the trades, they’re out at job sites,” he says. “They’re not going to be on social media, and they don’t want to read emails or field calls. They want to text. Know what works and adapt.”

At CSE, Ziskind doesn’t mince words when he says that, in the quest to meet clients where they are, sales reps are on call 24/7. “We have to be very available, even late at night,” he says. “If you respond quickly, you’ll move to the top of the client’s list. If you don’t, you’re at the bottom. The competition is fierce right now. It used to be that you had a day or two. Not anymore.”

4. Provide Multiple Access Points
Part of serving clients is giving them multiple contact methods they can choose from to get in touch with a company. Goldblatt’s clients who work on job sites prefer text, while those in cubicles appreciate phone, email and Live Chat. Students in high school and college, which make up a sizeable percentage of Breakmark’s clientele, often contact the distributor with Facebook Messenger.

Harper+Scott has spent considerable time building close relationships with customers, which means they have full access to the staff. “They have all our cell numbers, including executives and customer service reps,” says Alagem. “And they know they can call or text any time.”

Comerford says at minimum, distributors should have email and phone, with the option to text their reps. Live Chat has worked well for her team, since “we can be doing other things and when the question pops up, we can usually answer it quickly,” she says.

A caveat about Live Chat, however: if a distributor offers it, it has to provide quick answers, says Holt. That means having enough staff fielding queries. “However they reach out to us, the most important touch is personal,” he adds. “This is still one-on-one sales. Our clients want to talk to us, see us and consult with us. This is still very important for larger clients.”

5. Make It Right, No Matter What
The best customer service focuses on clients’ satisfaction and makes them eager to work with the distributor again in the near future. That’s why CSE has adopted the Nordstrom model; the luxury apparel retailer is famous for its largely no-questions-asked returns policy, even if the item being returned has clearly been worn and comes with no receipt.

“If someone calls and says two of their mugs arrived broken, we just send out two mugs,” says Ziskind. “We take care of it in 10 minutes. If they say they ordered 12 mugs and got 11, we send out a replacement. Sure, we know the weight of the box that left here, but we just send it. The customer is always right, and we have a 100% unconditional guarantee. We don’t argue with them, we just take care of it. Nothing should end up in the customer service black hole.”

And the no-questions-asked response is a pleasant surprise for most clients. “When we respond in no more than three seconds with, ‘We’re sorry about that, you have three replacements going out today,’” adds Ziskind, “people say, ‘Wow, that’s unbelievable! You mean I don’t have to send you any kind of proof?’”

It’s the same at Harper+Scott. “If they say, ‘We ordered 50 shirts and 10 look a little faded,’ we just take their word for it and ship replacements,” says Alagem. “We don’t say, ‘Send pictures, because we don’t believe you.’”

It also comes down to empowering employees to use their best judgment, and trusting them to make a decision to solve the problem in the customer’s favor without citing immovable company policy. (See sidebar on page 90 for a recent example that turned into a PR nightmare for United Airlines.)

“Always practice what you preach,” says Tarnoff. “If you’re giving a client your core values and mission statement and your entire company, every employee, embraces it, you’re one step further in your customer service than most firms.”

It’s those customer-focused companies that will build the most solid relationships with clients. “The true test of a company is how they handle problems,” says Ziskind. “Just make it right. You want to keep the client for the next 30 years, not just get to the next order.”

6. Work With Customer-Focused Suppliers
A distributor’s ability to offer amazing customer service is largely impacted by the suppliers they work with and their responsiveness. One of the best in the business according to distributors is Showdown Displays (asi/87188), which has a solid five-star rating in ESP and is a consistent winner in Counselor’s Distributor Choice Awards.

“We keep the customer at the center of the business,” says Jim Thomsen, vice president of customer care. “We want to be as easy to do business with as possible. We have friendly, engaging customer service reps who are quick to respond and give informative answers. They never have a script because then the experience is not genuine or interactive. The whole process should be seamless.”

It also stems from a philosophy that the distributor customer is always right. “Distributors know their business better than we do,” Thomsen adds. “We’re in a supporting role, so we’re constantly asking ourselves, ‘What can we strive for? What can we do better in order to meet and exceed distributors’ needs?’ It’s a tight marriage. It’s relational, not transactional.”

The best suppliers know that distributors are under pressure to respond quickly to fickle end-buyers. Standard response time at five-star supplier Ariel Premium Supply (asi/36730), another consistent Counselor Distributor Choice Award winner, is one hour. And it’s been working for the company’s distributor clients.

“With a 60-minute response time, distributors get an answer before lunch, or before the end of the day,” says Christopher Duffy, director of marketing. “We also have teams come in early for the East Coast and stay late for the West.”

End-buyers need to know distributors are reliable when their reputation is on the line, and that means suppliers have to be reliable too. “The distributor ... will only come to us if we’re trustworthy, communicative and responsive,” Duffy says. "Customer service is now ‘customer satisfaction the first time.’”

Sara Lavenduski is the senior editor for Advantages. Tweet: @SaraLav_ASI. Contact: slavenduski@asicentral.com