SBH Shorts - Interview with Kelly Kuester from Printware LLC

[A spin-off from our regular "Small Business Heroes" podcast series, this interview is in a readable/blog format. Thus, SBH Shorts.]

I'm glad to introduce our next guest - Kelly Kuester on our "Small Business Heroes" series. Kelly is a member of Minneapolis ZUG and is responsible for achieving and maintaining super Customer Experience at Printware LLC, a digital printer Sales and Service company located in Eagan, MN. We asked Kelly a few questions to understand how Printware is scaling today. Let's dive-in to her answers.

Tell us about yourself, Kelly:

I am the Customer experience specialist at Printware and joined the company in the summer of 2018. Printware sells and provides support on our commercial plate, inkjet, and HP based printers which are offered in several different sizes ranging from short run, small tabletop units to larger units based on the customers production needs. We have over 2000 machines in the field and are growing rapidly.

Being the main point of contact for customers between our Service and Sales teams, I help in the onboarding of new customers as well as setting up install appointments and training for our Printware equipment. I also am the first point of contact to help troubleshoot issues for our customers who are subscribed to our service and support program. In addition, I work to keep customers engaged with our team by sending regular communications through monthly newsletters and surveys. Another part of my day to day is entering supply orders for customers either through phone or email requests or setting them up with direct access to ordering in our Online marketplace that we launched in late 2019. Needless to say, there are several hats I wear throughout the day.

What is the idea behind Printware LLC?

Our Mission Statement is “Delighting our customers with support and keeping them Printing profitably”. While we have some larger companies using our equipment, a good portion of our book of business is small companies, (aka the 'mom and pop shops') that have a high attrition in their operators/staff. We don’t ever want our customers to feel like they are alone when a problem occurs that gets in the way of them getting jobs or being successful. A customer that has a machine that isn’t printing like it should is an emergency to us and we want to help them get a resolution for that issue as quickly as possible, You can check out our products by visiting our website www.ijetcolor.com.

How is Printware LLC partnering with other businesses in their growth journey?

We work to keep them informed and supported in their day-to-day needs using our Technical Support Team to help them stay productive. We offer FREE and unlimited training to those customers that subscribe to our iJetAdvantage Supply and Support program. We have a well-trained team of Service Technicians that answer the calls 24/7 to help our customers when a support need arises. Through our monthly customer service letters, I highlight articles and support content in our “iJetColor Wizard” that may help a customer with an issue before they have that emergent need to call in.

By using the ZOHO Surveys, we now have a deeper understanding of our customers’ needs and have also been able to capture data for updates in contact information.

By adding custom fields in ZOHO CRM, I have been able to capture even more data than before so that we could continue to grow our support capabilities. As an example, by starting to log calls in the cases section of the CRM and sharing the report to the management showing the volume of our customers’ needs, has enabled us to justify the addition of 2 new technicians so we are better equipped to manage calls.

How do you think Zoho is helping Printware LLC streamline the business processes?

It has helped a great deal! There is better communication among the team, which helps us serve our growing customer base better. Printware had previously been using a non-supported version of CRM when I came on. Being new to the company, I was able to implement the use of cases [module in Zoho CRM] in March 2019, and since we have been able to collect data around what our customers' biggest support needs are. With these insights, we are also able to provide additional training resources and video content to our customer base. Use of reporting in Zoho has helped us grow revenue in additional customer support subscriptions.

Do you have any favorite Zoho CRM feature or a Zoho product?

My favorite is the reporting options in the Zoho CRM as it is very versatile. We are satisfied with all of the products since upgrading to Zoho One after I attended Zoholics in Spring 2019. I had no idea of how much Zoho could do before then! Upgrading to Zoho One gave us more options that we are slowly starting to implement. We hope to move from using cases [module in Zoho CRM] for recording customer support needs to Zoho Desk tickets by the end of Q2 this year.

Any word of advice for small businesses?

Always look for ways to work smarter and not harder even as you help your customers meet their demands.

• Topic Participants

• Vinit Tibrewal

  

• Kelly

• Sticky Posts

• How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

  Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

• Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

  Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

• Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

  <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

• Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

  Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

• CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

    Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

• Recent Topics

• Improved RingCentral Integration

  We’d like to request an enhancement to the current RingCentral integration with Zoho. RingCentral now automatically generates call transcripts and AI-based call summaries (AI Notes) for each call, which are extremely helpful for support and sales teams.

• Cannot reject empty expense report

  Hello, We are currently having issues with two empty expense reports where if we try to reject them, either manually or through the REST API, we get error 114016, which says some of the expenses have already been billed and must be removed. I'd appreciate

• Having Trouble Opening The Candidate Portal

  Recently am having trouble opening the Candidate Portal. It keeps loading but cannot display any widgets. Tried Safari, Chrome and Edge. Non of them work. Please solve the problem ASAP.

• Checkboxes not adhering to any policy in mail merge - data from CRM

  I want checkboxes to appear depending on whether the checkbox in the CRM module is ticked or not. However, the tickboxes that appear are either ticked or not, but don't correlate to the actual selections in the CRM module. This is is despite updating

• Items Landed Cost and Profit?

  Hello, we recently went live with Zoho Inventory, and I have a question about the Landed Cost feature. The FAQ reads: "Tracking the landed cost helps determine the overall cost incurred in procuring the product. This, in turn, helps you to decide the

• Show elapsed time on the thank-you page?

  Is it possible to display the total time a user spent filling out a Zoho Form on the thank-you? I’d like to show the difference between the `form submission timestamp` and the `start time` (currently have a hidden Date-Time field set to autofill the date

• CC and/or BCC users in email templates

  I would like the ability to automatically assign a CC and BCC "User (company employee)" into email templates. Specifically, I would like to be able to add the "User who owns the client" as a CC automatically on any interview scheduled or candidate submitted

• All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

  The address field will be available exclusively for IN DC users. We'll keep you updated on the DC-specific rollout soon. It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition. Managing addresses

• Create Contract API Endpoint Unclear "inputfields" Requirements

  Hello, I'm trying to create a Deluge function that accepts inputs from a form in Zoho Creator and creates a barebones contract of a given type. See below for the current code, cleaned of authentication information. // Fetch form data // Hidden field client_name

• Empowered Custom Views: Cross-Module Criteria Now Supported in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone, We’re excited to introduce cross-module criteria support in custom views! Custom views provide personalized perspectives on your data and that you can save for future use. You can share these views with all users or specific individuals

• Kaizen #46 - Handling Notes through Zoho CRM API (Part 1/2)

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss Handling Notes through Zoho CRM API. What will you learn from this post? Notes in Zoho CRM Working with Notes through Notes APIs 1. Notes in Zoho CRM 1a. Why add Notes to records? Notes are a great way to summarize your observations on customer and prospect interactions and outcomes. By saving notes as CRM data, a sales rep will always be able to keep track of how a sale is progressing. To know more about notes in

• Marketer's Space - Why email marketing matters in ecommerce (and how to get started with Zoho Campaigns)

  Hello Marketers, Welcome to this week's Marketer's space post. Today, we'll discus why email marketing matters in ecommerce businesses. Running an online store is exciting but challenging. If you're running an online store, you've probably experienced

• Zoho Campaigns Event timestamps do not propagate to Zoho CRM

  We have integrated Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns. But when looking at Contact records, the Campaign event data is missing the actual timestamps: especially when a particular email was sent. They're not in the Campaigns related list, and the cannot be found

• Kaizen #121 : Customize List Views using Client Script

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting Kaizen post. In this post, we can discuss how to customize List Views using Client Script. This post will answer the questions Ability to remove public views by the super admin in the Zoho CRM and Is

• Setting default From address when replying to request

  At the moment, if I want to reply to a request, the From field has three options, company@zohosupport.com, support@company.zohosupport.com, and support@company.com.  The first two are really internal address that should never be seen by the customer and

• In place field editing for candidates

  Wondering about any insight/best practices for efficiently updating candidate records while reviewing them in a Job Opening pipeline. We can do in-field editing (e.g. update job title or City) only when we have the full candidate record open, however

• Explore Your Support Reach with Zoho Assist’s Geo Insights

  Understanding where your remote support sessions are happening can help you make smarter decisions, allocate resources effectively, and improve overall customer satisfaction. In this week's Zoho Assist's community post we will be exploring Geo Insights

• Error when sending emails from Zoho

  Hello, When trying to send an email from Zoho CRM I keep getting the below error: javax.mail.AuthenticationFailedException: 535 5.7.139 Authentication unsuccessful, the user credentials were incorrect. Any support on this will be much appreciated. Thanks,

• Direct Integration Between Zoho Cliq Meetings and Google Calendar

  Dear Zoho Team, We’d like to submit the following feature request based on our current use case and the challenges we’re facing: 🎯 Feature Request: Enable meetings scheduled in Zoho Cliq to be automatically added to the host's Google Calendar, not just

• Formatting of text pasted into Zoho documents

  Howdy, I'm a newbie and finding Zoho an improvement to MS Word. Consider yourself hugged. High on my wish list would be plain text cut-and-paste. When pasting text from the web to Zoho, presently Zoho imports the formatting along with the text. This means that every cut-and-paste operation brings in text in a different font, size, or style. Can we have at least the option of importing plain text without formatting (or better yet, is this option already out there?) ... Thanks Helen

• Add additional features to Zoho Tables

  Zoho Tables is a really great tool, why not add features like diagramming capability into the tool from applications like Draw.io which I believe is open source, you should be able to do wireframes, process flow diagrams, network design, etc. Please note

• Zoho sheet

  Unable to share zoho sheet with anyone on internet with editer option only view option is show

• The Social Wall: August 2025

  Hello everyone, As summer ends, Zoho Social is gearing up for some exciting, bigger updates lined up for the months ahead. While those are in the works, we rolled out a few handy feature updates in August to keep your social media management running smoothly.

• The Social Wall: July 2025

  Hello everyone! July has brought some exciting new updates to Zoho Social. From powerful enhancements in the Social Toolkit to new capabilities in the mobile app, we’ve packed this month with features designed to help you level up your social media presence.

• Use Zoho Creator as a source for merge templates in Zoho Writer

  Hello all! We're excited to share that we've enhanced Zoho Creator's integration with Zoho Writer to make this combination even more powerful. You can now use Zoho Creator as a data source for mail merge templates in Zoho Writer. Making more data from

• Tagged problem !!!

  Damn it, we're one of dozens of construction companies in Africa, but we can't link purchasing invoices to projects. Why isn't this feature available?

• Enable Password Import option in ulaa browser

  Dear Ulaa Team, I noticed that the Ulaa Password Manager currently offers an option to export passwords, but not to import them. This limitation poses a challenge for users like me who have stored numerous credentials in browsers like Chrome. Manually

• Limited review (/questions) for Bookings 2.0

  Hi all, I'm writing this review of Bookings 2.0 for two reasons: 1) it may be of interest to others, and 2) I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong on any points. It's a very limited review, i.e. the things that have stood out as relevant, and particularly

• Syntax for URLs in HTML Snippets

  What are some best practices for inserting a URL in an HTML snippet? I've looked at Zoho Help articles on navigation-based and functional-based URLs, but I'm still unclear on how to incorporate them in an HTML snippet. For example, 1. How do I link to

• The Social Wall: June 2025

  Hello everyone, We’re back with June Zoho Social highlights. This month brought some exciting feature updates—especially within the Social Toolkit—to enhance your social media presence. We engaged with several MSME companies through community meet-ups

• Make panel configuration interface wider

  Hi there, The same way you changed the custom function editor's interface wider, it would be nice to be able to edit panels in pages using the full width of the screen rather than the currently max-width: 1368px. Is there a reason for having the configuration panel not taking the full width? Its impossible at this width to edit panels that have a lot of elements. Please change it to 100% so we can better edit the layouts. Thanks! B.

• Tip 7: How to fetch data from another application?

  Hi everyone, Following our Zoho Creator - Tips and Tricks series every fortnight, we are back today with a tip based on one of the most popular questions asked in our forum. This tip would help you fetch data from another application(App B) and use it

• The Social Wall: May 2025

  Hey everyone, We're excited to share some powerful updates for the month of May! Let's take a look! Reply to your Instagram and Facebook comments privately through direct messages Are you tired of cluttered comment threads or exposing customer queries

• Sub-Form Fields as Filters for Reports

  Hi, I would like to use the Sub-Form Fields as Filters in Reports just like we do for Main Page Fields. Thanks Dan

• How to change the format for phone numbers?

  Mobile phone numbers are currently formatted (###) ###-####.  How can I change this to a more appropriate forms for Australia being either #### ### ### or (#)### ### ###?

• Zoho CRM Formula - Current Time minus Date/Time field

  Hello, I am trying to prevent duplicate emails going to clients when more than 1 deal is being updated. To do this, I would like to create a formula to identify if a date/time field is >= 2 hours ago. Can someone please help me write this formula? Example:

• Per Level Approval for admins

  We need Process admins like Zoho CRM in Zoho Books for per stage approval Currently in books, admins only have the option for Final Approval But for example, in cases like when an employee is on leave, we can't just approval one level we only have option

• Default Sorting on Related Lists

  Is it possible to set the default sorting options on the related lists. For example on the Contact Details view I have related lists for activities, emails, products cases, notes etc... currently: Activities 'created date' newest first Emails - 'created

• Billing Management: #7 Usage Billing in Telecom & Internet Service Provider

  Telecom and Internet Service Providers operate in markets where usage varies drastically from one customer to another. While flexible, usage-based models align revenue directly with consumption, they also introduce operational challenges like real-time

• Zoho Sprints - Q3 updates for 2025

  The updates for the third quarter of 2025 are out. A few significant features and enhancements have been rolled out to improve user experience and product capabilities. The following are the updates: Manage tags and cluster tags Record and maintain project

• Next Page