Andrew Field discusses how he turned the nation's first e-commerce printer into a customer service king, one order at a time.

By: MATT ALDERTON

Lined with mountains and peppered with dude ranches, Montana isn't exactly the kind of place one would expect to find an Inc. 500 company. More than 1,200 miles from Los Angeles or Chicago, and more than 2,000 miles from New York, the "Treasure State" is better known for its livestock than its commerce.

That didn't stop Andrew Field, however. He decided that Montana—"big sky country" to the locals—was perfect both for working and for playing, an ideal place to march forward while kicking back. So in 1996, Field opened Express Color Printing, a small local print shop in Livingston, Mont.

As Express Color Printing, Field and five partners bought a Heidelberg printing press and set to work printing brochures, postcards and stationery for area businesses. By 1998, however, they'd saturated the local market. They needed to think bigger.

"In 1999," Field says, "an experience with a customer made me realize that small businesses were taking advantage of new desktop publishing software geared for the masses, yet couldn't get their self-designed materials printed. Other printers were turning them away, if the prices hadn't already."

Inspired by his fellow entrepreneurs—self-starting folks who needed things printed, but had nowhere to print them—Field launched PrintingForLess.com in March 1999. The country's first—and at that time, only—e-commerce commercial printing Web site, PrintingForLess.com was conceived of as an instant pricing and ordering tool for small and medium-sized businesses. It was Amazon.com meets Kinko's, and it was enormously successful.

PrintingForLess.com has enjoyed double- and triple-digit growth every year since its founding click. In fact, the company has grown so quickly that for three of the last five years it has been named to the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest growing private companies. What was once a small staff of six entrepreneurs has ballooned to a much larger staff of 190 employees, serving more than 60,000 customers and producing more than $25 million in annual revenue. Field's small business isn't so small anymore.

Still, success hasn't gone to Field's head. His company may be larger these days, but his customers aren't. To keep them satisfied, PrintingForLess.com has kept its small-business spirit strong—and for the past eight years, that's meant keeping its customer service even stronger.

Spectacular Service

The secret ingredient in PrintingForLess.com's success-tinged stew is something most small businesses know an awful lot about: good customer service. Field doesn't just cook with a dash of it, though; he cooks with handfuls' worth.

That wasn't always the case, however. When the Web site launched, Field assumed that PrintingForLess.com would be entirely technology-driven, with very little human interaction. He thought being an Internet company meant his employees could hide behind their computer screens, fulfilling orders.

He was wrong. Customers tracked down the company's phone number and called it often with questions, comments and concerns. Surprised by the calls, Field and his team were happy to answer them—and their customers noticed. Thrilled with the personal attention, they put the word out that PrintingForLess.com was a company that cared.

One of the company's expert co-founders answered those early calls, but as the company grew, so did the number of customers on the phone. "An issue we faced early on as orders were climbing was how to ensure that our customers could continue to get a knowledgeable expert on the phone when they called for any reason," Field says. "The solution was a small team system comprised of a brand new job position, called a 'technical service representative,' which combines sales, customer service and digital pre-press duties."

In other words, it wasn't enough to train some employees to be friendly and others to be knowledgeable; Field decided he needed to train everyone to be both. And by combining three jobs into one—so that the folks you're speaking with can actually help you—he succeeded in creating a company culture that thrives on customer satisfaction. And that doesn't just mean being helpful on the phone, either.

"[Our] mission is to help our customers be successful as they define it," Field says. "This requires us to really dig in and find out about our customers' businesses, goals and challenges."

Upon digging, Field and his team find all sorts of ways to make their customers say, "Wow." "We build relationships," he says, "thank them on each call and e-mail, send nice tchotchkes, including Montana gift baskets. We call to follow up on every order, actively seeking out any dissatisfaction with the product and experience while seeking feedback so that we can continually improve."

How to Wow Your Own Customers

Good customer service is something that all companies chase, according to Field, but few capture. "Everybody talks about customer service, but few companies are willing to resource it enough to really get it right," he says. "We go beyond customer service, concentrating on what we call 'creating remarkable interactions.' How do we do this? We invest in hiring great people, train them well, give them broad autonomy and equip them with powerful tools that enable them to meet any need a customer might have."

PrintingForLess.com gets many of its new customers—over 40 percent, in fact—from word of mouth referrals. Delivering a satisfying customer experience, therefore, isn't just important; it's essential. "It's core to our business model," Field says. "It solves the problem of differentiating ourselves and enables us to build a national brand in a highly fragmented industry."

Customer service can differentiate your business, too. To create a killer customer experience, consider Field's three Ps: