How do you update your customers on order status?

[JPR-5690]

We're a small commercial print shop, so we have customers with digital and offset orders as well as wide format. We're constantly having to let customers know that their order is ready, reminding them to come pick it up, updating them on the status, etc.

Its a pain in the arse to make the same robotic calls and emails over and over.

Are any of you using automated phone calls / text messages / emails to do any of this?

Im trying to find out if it would be worth investing in and which companies/services are best.

 

[Bly]

We're using Corebridge.
You can set it up to automatically email clients with updates as their job progresses through the system.
I don't want to bombard them with emails so we just notify them when the job is finished and ready for collection. It works well and you don't have to remember to call/email everyone constantly.

 

[White Haus]

You might want to check out Smartsheet. Might not be exactly what you're looking for but it works very well for us and our larger clients.

You can set notifications and automate a ton of tasks if you set it up properly.

 

[bannertime]

We had setup an automated process with Trello, Zapier, and Gmail. Whenever we moved a card into a new stack it'd automatically email the customer that the project had moved. If you didn't want it to send an email you could delete the email from the card and it'd pass over it. Pretty simple. We had made some nice HTML templates. I'm just not very good at sticking with it. So most the time I don't even make a new card and just email the customer the email template.

The more streamlined way would be to use something like White Haus and Bly said. I think ShopVOX has something similar.

 

[CanuckSigns]

We have the last person in the production process email or call the client, also in QuickBooks we set up a email template that's goes with the invoice saying if you are getting this your order is ready for pickup.

Works for us most of the time, we still get people either calling every day or waiting 3 months to pick up cause "we never let them know it was ready"

 

[Stacey K]

Email unless they request another option.