As News Limited and Fairfax migrate more newspaper customers from newsagent acquired newspaper home delivery to publisher controlled subscription arrangements and the management of distribution of newspapers moves from inside the newsagency shop to separately run depots, newsagents need to let go of their customers.
Losing ownership of the direct customer relationship is proving difficult to navigate for some newsagents. It won’t work some say, how can they help customers from so far away others say, they don’t know our area others day.
None of this matters of course as the decision is made and the course of action set. Newsagents need to focus on letting go in a way that respects their long-term customers yet serves the business decision made by newspaper publishers.
The new arrangements don’t give newsagents the opportunity to provide the level of customer service they have provided in the past. This is the way of the world being pursued by newspaper publishers. So, let go in a way that helps customers understand and still think good of the newsagency.
Newsagents facing this, losing ownership of newspaper home delivery customers at their shop, need to develop a strategy for navigating this. Such a strategy needs to have at its heart good customer communications – explaining what is happening and why and how the business will continue to serve them in other ways. At the same time, the newsagency should have a process or mechanism of keeping any predominantly newspaper delivery customers engaged with the business – for the future of the business.
I see too much energy being spent complaining about what is happening and not being spent on how to mitigate the situation for the newsagency and its customers.
Newsagents transitioning to retail only need to focus on that and let go of distribution customers. Newsagents focusing on distribution need to be clear about what they can manage and control and focus on that. Publishers who want to own the customer need to take responsibility for that and own it through professional processes that do not harm the supply and service chain.
If News Ltd is migrating customers why am I currently setting up new subscriptions that are not pre paid?
Would it not make more sense for News Ltd to take these up now as publisher paid. Creating more work in the long run for all parties involved!
Jenny I WILL not except them if there not pre paid. And even new customers I will no longer accept over the counter they can go subscription or no delivery for News papers.
Happy to follow your advice Mark & not get too wound up about the transition but News & Fairfax need to understand that in our area (and I suspect many others) their actions in demanding control of the total customer base will destroy home delivery for those companies.
The average HD customer is er, mature & resents having to deal with head office instead of their local business & annoying them will just lead to the early transition of their reading activities to the grandkids’ iPad.
In country areas like ours there is and only ever will be one option for home delivery (us), once they have poisoned the well & delivery volumes drop below our critical threshold, it’s all over red rover.
I should also point out that News Ltd’s iServices disaster-area & their complete ineptitude in the handling of any customers directly is just accelerating the whole process.
May First, Your right the only thing I’d add is if the average HD customer gets jacked off with the new distribution system or distribution ceases in an area,instead of reaching for the ipad some may just start walking through the front door of their local newsagent every morning.
Jenny if you have a News Ltd rep talk to them or Subscriptions, if you can get through, about all new subs being prepaid. I did this some time ago and have had no real problems. A couple of carrier collect have come through and i just contacted News and asked them to contact THEIR subsriber and inform them it is only prepaid. Found that if you mention T2020 and all will be prepaid they understand why i want all prepaid.
Thanks Gregg, I did speak to cust servive a while ago about this. I think these are coming thru tele marketing, who should be pushing upfront payment, but are probably not wanting to missing the sale.
The thing is May … that battle of ownership of the customer was lost ten years ago. You cannot reverse it. This sits at the core of my post – focus on what you can control. Yes, you will lose some customers connected with newspapers but you could win new customers for products you do have more control over.
This is the challenge of a restructuring over which newsagents have little control despite the noise from some industry associations.
We have not done deliveries for a few yrs now but when we did and the Tele started “migrating” our customers and would not help we got business cards made up basically saying who now “owns” them and who handles customer complaints and a contact.
On the back we put that it was not our doing and we would do everything we could to help and thanking them for supporting us.
It cost us about $50 for the cards but when old Mrs x came in blowing up we could give her a card and tell her to put it on the fridge and use when needed.
This seemed to work as we offered a solution and passed blame back to the publisher.
We still got calls but we could then say call the number on the card.
Since then we still send our old paper customers something at Christmas be it card or diary etc to keep contact and while a lot have stopped getting papers most still come in.
The way I see it is when the deliveries are taken out of my retail shop the only customers the shop should lose are the ones that only ever visit to pay a paper bill and never purchase anything else.
Hopefully the customers who visit to pay account and make other purchases will still visit their Newsagent to make those purchases.
When customers talk about ‘their’ Newsagent I don’t think it’s just paper deliveries they are referring to, it’s the whole experience they have when they visit the store.
Good input Mark & others, our situation is slightly different to most in that our major circulation product is the Border Mail (Fairfax owned, but they haven’t completely stuffed it yet) & we have control of all of ‘our’ customers. So I guess we are a few years behind…. I am quite looking forward to the transition to a full retail focus in our business, the open question is whether small town newsagencies that have historically relied heavily on circulation product for profit have a future without it. It’s very hard to generate new foot-traffic without feet!