Customer Focus

Customer Care: A 24-Hour Job

Although Superior Tape and Label has traditional office hours, there are hundreds of hours each month that the customers never see. The commitment to an excellent print every time keeps many of the dedicated staff members working long after the doors are locked.

Far from being compulsory, these "extra" hours are merely an example of how STL supports its staff and customers. The unique structure not only allows the staff to focus on maintaining a healthy work-life balance, but also provides international clients with more access to on-call services.

Sales Support team member, Tricia Davis, recently shared how this dedication affected a large development project that had a tight Christmas deadline.

"We have a customer who had promised their customer that they were producing something for them in time for Christmas. But the first design just wasn't working out."

This was a newly-designed product - a unique type of label that attached to a card and included a proprietary feature. It's real-world function did not meet the original goals of the product. This motivated STL to redesign and rerun the order - all within just a few days of the Christmas deadline.

"We worked hard to develop the product on a tight schedule. We had people working overtime, Saturdays. We overnighted materials, just so we could get it done within a three-day turnaround time to help them meet this customer deadline," Davis says. "We had to work frantically to get them something that worked, but in the end the customer was really happy."

Still, this type of service from the STL staff isn't just in response to customer emergencies. Reena Teeny, the Sales Development Representative, explains that working flexibly is something employees often do to help meet company goals.

"Superior Tape and Label leaves it up to the employees to find that work-home balance for themselves," Teeny explains. "The employees are willing and able to take care of stuff whenever necessary. This is not a 'punch your time clock' type of environment."

This personal investment in the client's goals and the desire to continually push the boundaries of what labels can do is what has made STL so successful at making and keeping loyal customers. According to Tricia Davis, it's one of the key reasons that the company has maintained its presence as the leader in the gift card and scratch-off label markets for a decade.

"It's really refreshing to see how great they are with their customers and how keeping customer relationships is such a big deal," Davis says. "They don't want to just keep business, they want to grow it. It's not just pride in our product, but pride in the relationships with our customers."