Choose your language

Choose your login

Support

Blog

Chatting with the CEO about customer-championing choice

I recently explored  how PaperCut provides choice and flexibility  at a solution level. Everything from endless brand/device combinations, to having your network on the premises, in the cloud, or both.

But I also wanted to look at things through a more human, values-focused lens – and who better to do that with than our CEO Chris himself!

Join us as we dive into why customer-championing choice really matters, how it got us where we are today, and why print management that ‘just works’ is the best thing ever.

The choice origin story

Fiona: Hey, Chris! Thanks for sitting down for a choice chat 🤙 (sorry). Going back a bit… Was choice something you wanted PaperCut to be about from the get-go?

Chris: No worries! It’s an important part of the PaperCut offering and culture, so more than happy to get into it.

As for the question… I think so. It was definitely a product of being in the software industry during the 90s.

If you were a network administrator like I was back then, you’d know that compatibility was an absolute pain – you couldn’t plug a printer in without some sort of issue popping up.

So yes, that was a big problem I wanted to tackle, and it definitely defined PaperCut at the time.

Fiona: Makes sense! How did you go about tackling it in the early days?

Chris: Initially, it played really well into our values around being customer-first, as well as our ability to code with the best of them.

For example, you wouldn’t support Linux as a commercial play – it’s only 6% of the market. But for education at the time, it was a thing; customers wanted first-class support, and we wanted to provide it.

It was how we made the industry take notice, in a way. Offering wide support for things like operating systems is far from technically easy, but it’s what people wanted then – and they still want it.

Making customers and choice numero uno

Fiona: So we bang on about choice a lot at PaperCut, and rightfully so. But why do you think it’s so crucial to have as a product cornerstone?

Chris: Well, we’re for customers first and foremost. And choice to a customer is all about future flexibility, which is invaluable in print management – or any product, for that matter.

No business wants to get locked into a vendor; they don’t want to have to throw away old devices… They want to be able to change brands or operating systems within a truly cross-platform solution.

Fiona: I’m assuming all of this isn’t just a hunch – that you’ve seen some things in your time.

Chris: Haha. Yep, I’ve seen lock-in from brands in the past, and it’s a real headache. We don’t want to be a part of that problem – we want to give people something that just works, no matter what they use.

‘It just works’ = a most choice quality

Fiona: Ah, ‘it just works’. I’ve heard this do the rounds at PaperCut from employees and customers alike. Could you elaborate a bit on how it relates to choice?

Chris: Basically, we want to give customers something that installs easily right out of the box, and slots into whatever infrastructure they’ve set up.

They don’t need to ask themselves, ‘Have I got enough ram… Have I got the right browser… Do I need any apps?’ We’ve done the hard work to make those questions disappear.

Fiona: Do you think that’s at the top of users’ lists in terms of pesky things they’d love to see gone?

Chris: I think so. As a customer, you don’t know if or when a supplier’s going to come along with a cheaper, better option – so having the flexibility to pivot is crucial.

You want to evolve your business around your customers’ needs, not your software requirements.

Fiona: Love it. Thanks for your time, Chris!

Chris: 🤙

Newsletter

Subscribe for the latest in print management and product updates!

By filling out and submitting this form, you agree that you have read our Privacy Policy, and agree to PaperCut handling your data in accordance with its terms.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.