CSR and Prepress roles merging (a little)?

[abc]

Hi all. I’m hearing more and more about CSR’s getting involved in PDF file handling and even basic file checking.
The goal being to speed up the process of getting jobs into the company, and not having to wait for prepress to give feedback.

If you’re doing this, or even thinking of doing this I wonder if we could discuss (via email)?

This isn’t a sales pitch and I’m not looking to steal anyones time, I’m just interested in finding out a bit more about the process and the goals.

Also I’m not looking to start a huge thread on the why’s and wherefore's of the topic.
Although comments might be interesting

If you are interested in sharing thoughts and feedback (two way), then please feel free to drop me an email at [email protected]

 

[Macmann]

We are being asked to do more CSR duties. Planning layouts and contacting the customer. All part of the do more with less mindset. Easier for us to contact the client and discuss issues than to tell a CSR and have them relay the info.

 

[davekrawczuk]

I have been having this discussion both theoretical and practical for over a decade. It is a difficult balance between providing good customer service from a time standpoint, and managing risk/exposure to your production line/schedule internally. When your CSR says yes to a customer, you don't want to have the negative go-back that there are suddenly problems because either the workflow they depend on, or the person's potential lack of experience didn't give them visibility into a situation. Even worse - you do not want to produce material that will go un-used because of any kind of anomaly.

Technology has absolutely brought this forward to where it is feasible that some tasks can be handled by automated processes, but the struggle is handling the outliers from that process. The workflow is only as good as the person responsible for managing it - and this person is generally under-staffed or over-burdened and achieves the minimum as opposed to the maximum.

In an industry that is very "blame" oriented, and who is to blame bears the burden, it will continue to be a challenge to merge these areas in a large-scale way.

 

[PreflightMacTech]

Not really what you were asking for, but my two man team is in a very similar situation that Macmann is. We have 60+ CSR people and TWO of us handling 12000+ pieces of art each month. This ranges from crappy low res RGB images (from that fb site everyone loathes) to print ready PDFs. Because the CSRs cannot be bothered to learn what the technical terms mean and how to spot decent art, we are chosen to speak to the client's artist, cousin or dog when we need to have something corrected. This dramatically slows down our already streamlined and efficient workflow. As Macmann said, "Do more with less!" Our leadership definitely subscribes to that way of thinking. ABC, I have been pushing for YEARS for our leadership to purchase Enfocus Switch to enhance our workflow. We already preflight every PDF manually with PitStop. I would kill to have that tool in house. They don't seem to see the benefits or ROI. Any links you could point me to that I could share with them? The native ROI calculator on the Enfocus page was not enough for them. Thanks! Good luck with your quesiton.

 

[kansasquaker]

In an industry that is very "blame" oriented, and who is to blame bears the burden . . .

Excellent observation. I believe this lies at the heart of many workflow and employee issues in the printing industry. Based on my personal experience, "the blame" is too often placed on a single person. Too frequently it falls on the most capable individuals because they are responsible for the lion's share of production.

In reality it's more like an NTSB investigation into an airline crash. Usually a number of things have gone wrong, caused by both people and/or process. Usually, there were multiple opportunities to prevent whatever problem occurred. Often simple changes in process and dramatically reduce the likelihood of the same thing happening again. (Don't get me started on the people who insist it will 'never' happen again - they're either liars or simpletons.)

 

[Puch]

People and companies don't really like to change, only if the house is starting to crash on them. Everywhere I see the same basic workflow, like this:

1. CSRs acquire the data from the customer,
2. Prepress staff preflights and evaluates the data (manually: in Acrobat, sometimes using Pitstop),
3. CSRs communicate the result of the checkings to the customer, asking for new data.

Points 2. and 3. are repeated until there are data available which is sort of 'pressready'. When something goes south, the management ususally responds with an order to tighten communication (between CSRs and prepress) or tighten specifications (told to customers).

What I believe is the main problem in the changing of the above setup is the resistance of the CSRs. Since they don't have the time and intention to change their methods, any experiment with the implementation of an 'early preflight' solution is doomed to fail. The situation can only change gradually, by employing fresh CSRs with a new working model. And, good CSRs are 'golden', so they won't be pushed by the management.

 

[abc]

To those of you that have already emailed me, thank you. I will reply to your mails asap.
Personally, and from various discussions over the last years, I think change in this area is inevitable, even if it hasn't happened for some of you (yet).

Shorter run lengths
Lower margins
Faster Presses
Faster turnaround times/customer expections/competition

All these add up to the simple fact that you need more jobs to keep your presses turning and to be competitive.
This means that the time from reception of the job, to the time is available for the press has to be reduced in order to maximize the press performance.

Having jobs available quickly means you can do that, you can also plan better and potentially gang jobs for even greater efficiency. I can appreciate for some people this might seem something for the future, but this is daily reality for a lot of people. They are doing this today, and have been doing it for some time.

Is there anybody on the forum who has actually involved their CSR's in a basic preflight process (the main showstopper file errors), and to check the file content against the quote?

 

[zoran]

We did it.
It was temporary and worked partially (with couple of good CSR's). Those couple of good CSR's rocked, they wanted to do it and loved it, gave them freedom and cut time short so they don't have to wait on prepress to do preflight and tell them what is wrong with files.
Other CSR's fiercely fought it and refused to do it.
Prepress was resistant as they saw that as potential job loss and obsolesce.
Finally internal politics killed it and we were back to old ways.

Personally I saw potential and logic, and with couple of CSR's it was proven it can work and make process much more efficient (saving time and money).
I have had full setup with Switch clients and Pitstop server.
I also had "simplified" version to enable sales to do quick pass/fail verification for quotes that just told them files have proper page count and size with similar success, couple of them praised it as life saving (still in use today), most of the others just ignored it.
It was great experience for me and I learned a lot in process. With good will of Management/Ownership, and right team of people, it can do wonders.
I hope to get another opportunity to implement it.

 

[davarino]

We did it.
It was temporary and worked partially (with couple of good CSR's). Those couple of good CSR's rocked, they wanted to do it and loved it, gave them freedom and cut time short so they don't have to wait on prepress to do preflight and tell them what is wrong with files.
Other CSR's fiercely fought it and refused to do it.
Prepress was resistant as they saw that as potential job loss and obsolesce.
Finally internal politics killed it and we were back to old ways.

Personally I saw potential and logic, and with couple of CSR's it was proven it can work and make process much more efficient (saving time and money).
I have had full setup with Switch clients and Pitstop server.
I also had "simplified" version to enable sales to do quick pass/fail verification for quotes that just told them files have proper page count and size with similar success, couple of them praised it as life saving (still in use today), most of the others just ignored it.
It was great experience for me and I learned a lot in process. With good will of Management/Ownership, and right team of people, it can do wonders.
I hope to get another opportunity to implement it.

The greatest obstacles to progress are fear and laziness.

 

[CalPress]

Currently work in two different shops (gotta feed the family somehow). One shop is still in the dark ages, no CSR, clueless owner throwing together incorrect tickets just to get the jobs off his desk, so then prepress (me) has to do everything to fix the job. The other shop embraces technology, uses Switch (supposedly to preflight files before CSRs even write up tickets)...problem is the CSRs can't be bothered to even look at the files or the preflight reports that are provided, they can't get the tickets off their plate fast enough. So what do we get? Wrong sized files, incorrect number of pages, no bleeds, RGB everything, no fonts, process builds for spot jobs...need I go on? They just shovel the pile of crap forward to prepress and expect us to spend hours trying to fix what would take mere minutes with the native files and linked fonts and graphics that should have been supplied anyway. Any push back to the CSRs gets the response; "we can't go back to the customer again, we'll lose the account", or "that's all the customer has" and that we "just have to find a way to make it work"...PitStop is a great tool but it can't fix everything!

 

[abc]

Somethings never change, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.
This is a growing trend we see to speed up the time of jobs to press.
Interested to hear if there are any other views or experiences about this?

 

[rcreveli]

My last job did this with my position. I was trained fully as a CSR and then trained in Prepress In previous positions I had done both. By the time I left I was 60-80% Prepress and the balance was CSR. The mix varied by time of year. My schedule was Tuesday-Saturday and the weekend crew loved it. I could check on questions, update tickets, reprint package labels or make plates. From an accounting perspective my time was pulled from both the CS & Prepress budget.

 

[photoshopdude]

Just left a shop where I was hired to be a prepress tech only to learn that I was also expected to be the CSR and Designer also....It was a nightmare, had to answer emails and phone calls constantly from customers inquiring about their jobs, or sending proofs via email and making alts as the emails came back from client while trying to work on other jobs that haven't been started yet. I had two screens in front of me, one for working on prepress tasks, the other for monitoring customers questions about job status, ok'd proofs...etc. With so much Multi-tasking and constant interruptions , not to mention being micro-managed to death by the shop owner, the one CSR they did have that was supposed be doing her job was suppling the prepress dept with incorrect job specs all the time, setting you up for failure and if you questioned her she gave an attitude like how dare you question me and wouldn't hesitate to throw you under the bus if there was a mistake, finally I had to walk away from this place to save my own sanity. I previously worked at larger shops where we had many CSR's that did the job of being the gate keeper before jobs were sent to prepress with insufficient info, files....etc. My point is watch out for the Mom and Pop shops, the smaller the shop the more hats you will be expected to wear.