Westchester Publishing Services

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Terry’s Thoughts on: Customer Service

Production

by Terry Colosimo, Director of Operations

Before joining Westchester, I was a Production Manager at an academic publisher working with both printing and composition vendors. Though quality and cost were of importance, the vendor’s level of customer service weighed heavy in my decision-making process, and sometimes projects were awarded to a vendor due to the level of care that the customer service representative (CSR) would bring to it. Even though I have not purchased services for quite some time, I still have contact with some of the very first CSRs I was introduced to.

Once I started working here, my responsibilities transitioned from seeking out vendors to ensuring that Westchester’s reputation for quality and service was maintained. Fortunately, this has been an easy task to carry out, in that the representatives we have on our team exhibit the same traits which I sought out when I was on the publisher’s side of the desk.

Ask yourself whether your current editorial or production vendor embodies these qualities:

Responsiveness—responding to a customer in a timely manner would seem to be obvious, but I think we have all experienced that uneasiness that comes while waiting for a response. Many times your representative may not have all the information they need to answer your question, but this should not stop a representative from sending out a quick acknowledgment to let you know that they are looking into your query or working on your request. Once that acknowledgment is made, they should then get back to you in a timely and thorough manner.

Experience—a customer service team should have extensive knowledge in all areas of publishing services. Their combined experience comes from grasping the nuances of client’s production workflow. An experienced CSR knows what to ask if you are uncertain about the particulars of a job. What may be a new product or workflow for you may be familiar to your CSR and they should be able to help navigate the process with you. Not each customer is the same, but what a CSR learns from each customer helps build a knowledge base for each one on the team to use.

Flexibility—because not every client is going to follow the same model and not every one of your own projects is going to be the same, good customer service requires being flexible. You should get reassurance, and not resistance from your CSR that they can handle a time-sensitive or high profile project. Systems should be adaptable enough so that a unique project does not negatively affect the rest of your projects or schedules.

Ownership—you should feel like your CSR fully owns your account and acts on your behalf. A CSR’s responsibility is to make sure that everyone in the organization understands your SOPs; sees that any changes get implemented within each department and cross-trains others so that there is seamless service if they are away. Based on their knowledge and the relationship they have built with you, they should be able to work with you and offer suggestions if needed. Ownership also means acknowledging when mistakes are made and working on getting those resolved to your satisfaction.

Proactive—if a problem does occur, your CSR should be able to determine its cause and how to get it resolved as quickly as possible. They should work with production to determine ways to avoid such situations from happening in the future and give you a sense of confidence that an issue has been thoroughly addressed. And given their experience on your account, they should understand your needs well enough to resolve as much as they can internally before raising a query with you.

These five traits are what I believe set a vendor apart, and propel them into becoming a trusted partner to a publisher.  At Westchester, these are far more than a list of desirable qualities – they are key components guiding the approach we take with every project each of our valued clients provides us.

I hope my thoughts about customer service were helpful and informative for you. In my next post, I will share my thoughts with you on the subject of client visits.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

Maybe it sped by due to how busy we are here at Westchester, but spring has bloomed into summer. Join me for a quick rewind of some of the key events that occurred during the months of April, May, and June at Westchester Publishing Services:

London Book Fair 2018, and Guildhall

Several members of our management team were in attendance at the 47th Annual London Book Fair in April. The Book Fair provided us with the opportunity to affirm our business growth in the UK, formally launching Westchester Publishing Services UK, with Managing Director, Tim Davies. It was a productive event for us, and our preparations are already underway to return next March.

While in London, our Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler M. Carey was bestowed the prestigious honor of the Freedom of the City of London by the Stationers’ Guild. A unique benefit granted by this recognition is that he can now legally drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge. If you don’t believe me, you can read more about it in this blog post.

An alphabet soup of conferences

In addition to London Book Fair, Westchester staff attended several conferences and trade shows this spring throughout the U.S., including NCTM(National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), CSE (Council of Science Editors), SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing), BEA (BookExpo),  SIIA(Software and Information Industry Association), AUP (Association of University Presses), and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). We catch our breath in July and August but as you’ll see from our Conferences page, the pace picks up again in September with Publishers Weekly StarWatch, IPG Autumn Conference, and The Bookseller Children’s Conference.

Publishers Weekly Whitepaper, and Dropbox Partnership

Westchester sponsored production on a whitepaper that was published and distributed by Publishers Weekly in April, with in-depth analysis about how publishers of various sizes and types are able to effectively scale their programs through the use of prepress vendors. Following on this successful venture, Dropbox shared news last month about the work they do with companies in the media and entertainment vertical, including publishers and vendors. We also had an informative Q&A session with George Baier IV, from Dropbox, which provided a useful perspective on this topic.

Westchester continues to grow

By providing quality products and services to our valued clients, our business has grown and flourished over the past several years. To further ensure accounts continue to receive the high level of support we pride ourselves on, we recently welcomed Keri Goldberg to our sales and marketing team in the role of Business Development Manager. Current and prospective clients alike will find Keri’s background in publishing to be helpful as they consider prepress solutions for their particular needs. Westchester is also looking for editorial and production talent as various areas of the company expand, visit our Careers page for more information.

Westchester K-12 Summit

Our K-12 Services team held their annual summit at their Dayton, Ohio headquarters to strategize on how to build on the successes of the past year to achieve continued forward momentum. Having the entire team – who are located throughout the country – come together in one location was beneficial for all involved. It gave our staff an opportunity to discuss the student books, teacher’s guides, assessments, leveled readers, and other projects that the teams have been working on. It also allowed them to explore the expanded capacity and additional service offerings they are now able to provide clients as a result of hiring additional staff earlier in the year.

Summer Reading

Reading isn’t a seasonal pastime, but it seems especially enjoyable to read the latest bestseller or a book from the stack on your nightstand during the somewhat more carefree days of summer. My colleagues and I shared a few of the books we plan to read this summer, along with recommended reading lists in this recent blog post, in case you’re searching for ideas. Happy reading, and enjoy the rest of your summer!

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by Kevin J. Gray, Managing Director, Westchester K-12 Publishing Services

We launched the K-12 division just over a year ago, debuting at the AAP Content in Context forum. Westchester K-12 was founded on the belief that educational publishers deserved a higher level of product development support than they were receiving, and I was confident this fledgling division could deliver on that promise.

Over the course of the past year, Westchester K-12 has grown from a group that highly leveraged the assets of our academic, journal, and trade group into a freestanding division that is a significant part of the company footprint. Our team of dedicated, experienced professionals built impressive careers with other successful publishers and vendors before joining Westchester K-12 to lead content development, art, design, and production in all subject areas for our clients. We’ve added processes and resources unique to the needs of educational publishers while retaining the best practices of our parent company.

Members of the Westchester K-12 team are located throughout the country, so last week, we brought our geographically dispersed workforce into our Dayton, Ohio K-12 headquarters for our first WPS K-12 Summit. The summit provided team members an open forum to review what’s working, while also determining how we sustain that model as we continue to grow. There were two full days of workshops with an emphasis on reflection and planning, examining who we work with, what seats we’ll need to fill, what processes need to be codified, and how we tend to the nascent culture we’ve established, ensuring its scalability and continued relevance. The meetings were collaborative and the team left energized, taking with them both a shared vision and concrete steps for implementation that will lead to continued success.

You may be wondering what it all means to you. I share news of this summit so that you have a better understanding of Westchester K-12’s commitment to the high quality work we create and to continuing the positive experiences of our customer base. As we grow, we expect to hold these summits regularly, allowing us to make conscious decisions about how we retain the core vision from which the organization sprung. I’m proud of what our division has accomplished in its first year and I look forward to what the next 12 months will bring.

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

Olympia, London

A week and a half following my return, and I have finally dug out from a very productive London Book Fair. Westchester once again exhibited at LBF, where last year as you may recall we had a prime location next to the scholarly publishing seminars at The Faculty. This year, instead of being in an independent stand, we relocated to The American Collective Stand which provides fantastic service to the publishers and vendors that use their collective area for meetings and exhibiting. We also were able to attend the IPG stand party (read their  LBF recap here) to network further with our clients and potential partners. This different approach was very effective, with Dennis, Tim, and I having about 40 meetings over the three days we were at the Fair. Those of you who caught the New York Times coverage of the Fair and the rights business may have even had the opportunity to play some Where’s Waldo (Where’s Wally to our British customers) – yes, that is me in my powder blue blazer in the lower left corner of the crowd shot.

It’s worth noting that while the London Book Fair is indeed a global event that allows us to meet with publishers from many countries, this year our emphasis was focused on the British publishing market. Over the past year, Westchester staff have returned many times to the United Kingdom, where we have continued to build out our presence, UK-based staff and freelance resources, and most importantly, our customer base. The level of interest in Westchester’s services from the British publishing market has been so substantial that earlier this Spring we brought on Tim Davies to helm our UK operation.

Tim Davies, at the London Book Fair Westchester stand

Tim’s engagement with publishers on behalf of Westchester at the London Book Fair was a big game changer for the company. Tim has an innate understanding of publishers’ needs having been a publisher himself, and is also quite attuned to the consultative nature of Westchester’s business (no two clients really have the same workflow). This both-sides-of-the-desk expertise, if you will, has allowed Tim to have meaningful dialogues with British publishers, to help them evaluate their publications programs, areas where they may need some assistance, and explore ways that Westchester can provide affordable, scalable solutions to help publishers with as few as 2-5 titles per year or as many as 500+ address their specific editorial and production needs. Publishers we spoke with found our consultative approach towards working with clients and their authors to be very compelling. Shortly after the Fair, our Director of Operations, Terry Colosimo, released a blog post that expands upon this, and echoes much of what was discussed with our partners at the Fair.

Receiving the Freedom of the City of London honor

Lastly, a trip to London for me is not complete without trying to attend an event with my colleagues from The Stationers’ Company, London’s publishing guild. While the Westchester team did indeed catch up with several of The Stationers’ at the Fair and at surrounding events, I was fortunate enough to be granted my Freedom of the City of London from the Company. For this second round of Where’s Waldo/Wally, eagle-eyed readers of the Westchester blog may recall seeing a similar photo from our friend Lorraine Shanley’s ceremony, last year. It was humbling to be one of the few Americans offered this tribute, and in joining the ranks of Morgan Freeman and Bill Gates, I’m quite confident that the wrong Tyler Carey was nominated. Nonetheless, I was happy and grateful to join my friends, family, and colleagues at Guildhall for this ceremony. I was also amazed to learn that I am now eligible, under the privileges bestowed by my Freedom of the City, to drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge.  (No joke, every Fall Freemen get to do this.)  Anybody based near London with an available flock of sheep that can be leased (option to buy, negotiable) is encouraged to contact me directly.

IPG Spring Conference, and gearing up for the London Book Fair

By Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

IPG’s annual Spring Conference, held at the Crowne Plaza Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire, is an exceptionally well-organized event welcoming small-to-mid-sized publishers for an intensive two days of sessions and networking, to help address the pressures distinct to publishers of this size. The grounds of the Crowne Plaza are beautiful, looking a bit like a Downton Abbey manor house placed in the midst of a sylvan Tolkien tale.

There are truly few better places to have a conference!  A particular benefit is that it’s removed from the London trade publishing world, bringing Great Britain’s publishers to an area outside the city, thoughtfully disconnecting them from the day-to-day distractions that can pop up when you’re just a quick tube ride away from the office, or the sense of obligation to play tourist should you find yourself in London having come from a place far away.

Westchester’s Interim Director, UK – Tim Davies – and I were excited to exhibit at the conference. Tim came on board just prior to the conference, providing a great opportunity for him to meet with some of our existing clients as well as talk with other publishers in the industry about their current workflows for editorial and production on their publications. Tim has a longstanding history within the IPG and had been invited to host a very well received workshop with smaller publishers about managing growth and operations. He has also dived in to his new role at Westchester and has provided wise guidance on the resources we will continue to expand to support the particular needs of British publishers.

For Westchester overall, finally getting to attend an IPG event was very valuable. The sessions ranged from the topical (the BBC’s Amol Rajan discussing the trends of fake news and the trust in content), to the geopolitical (MP Ken Clarke providing a perspective on Brexit for the publishing industry), to specific publishing topics (workshops, presentations, GDPR and AI sessions, and a keynote by innovative designer Alan Moore). The feedback for IPG following the conference was very positive. You can read their post-conference wrap up here, which is like a mini-summary for those who missed it.

The footprint of IPG’s membership aligns quite closely with the size of clients Westchester typically supports, especially those that are in growth mode and are at the point where they need to evaluate the choice of hiring on a vendor to help support growth, or hiring on more staff and having enough work to keep them constantly busy.  Within the coming weeks, a white paper sponsored by Westchester Publishing Services will be released exploring that idea in greater detail.  Make sure you subscribe to this blog to stay up to date on that. While that paper has been in production for a while it was really valuable to revalidate that position in discussions with many publishers that are approaching that tipping point of growth.

In closing, the IPG conference also served as a great opportunity to meet with several of Great Britain’s independent publishers in advance of attending the forthcoming London Book Fair. It helped us to reaffirm the services that Westchester provides are in alignment with their requirements as we continue to expand our support for publishers in this important market.

Are you headed to LBF? You can find Westchester on Stand 6B107b.  Contact Us to arrange an appointment at the Fair, or just come by our Stand to meet some of our management team and discuss your particular publications needs.