Kinko's - The Free-Agent Home Office

Copies and Community

It's late afternoon at a Kinko's in Seattle, less than an hour before the FedEx deadline. A tall man with unruly hair and a wild look pushes open the door and rushes to the counter. "Can you read this disk?" he asks, thrusting it at a clerk. The guy needs a resume for his portfolio. And he needs it now, so he can overnight it to a prospective client. He says the resume looks great on his computer screen at home but comes out screwy on the printer: "I have no idea what I'm doing wrong."

Thirty minutes later, the Kinko's clerk has not only printed out the resume but also made several clever suggestions to improve its content and layout. After the once-flustered customer expresses his utter delight "Whoa! Cool!" he leaves with a stack of new resumes, matching envelopes, and seriously positive feelings about his Kinko's experience. "There is nothing better for us," says Paul Orfalea, "than some guy who comes into the shop feeling angry and confused."

Why does Kinko's welcome angry customers? Because what distinguishes it from its rivals is not the speed with which it prints resumes or the knowledge it has about life as a free agent. What distinguishes Kinko's is the nature of the in-store experience. Its staffers don't just operate machines; they provide counseling for frazzled professionals. They don't just do what customers ask them to do. They help customers figure out what needs doing. Lots of customers "come in without knowing what they want or need," says Wendell Wilson. "They use our people to discover the solutions available to them."

Kinko's customers are tough customers. Early on, staffers learn to size up who's in the store and to provide the appropriate level of service. Some customers like the guy in Seattle with the resume are in full-panic mode. And they get the full treatment: step-by-step assistance with transferring files, selecting paper stock, making choices about design, color, presentation style. Customers who are at the other extreme "the totally confident ones who know exactly what they want and act like they own the store," jokes Sophiea often require nothing more than directions to the self-service area. Whatever their specific needs, though, Kinko's customers are all "taking care of business," Sophiea says. "We can break down customers demographically all we want, but what unifies them is that they are all business-minded."

And more than anything else, business-minded people want results. That's why everything about Kinko's projects an aesthetic of crisp functionality and an ethic of expertise, of getting things done. Staffers (80% of whom are full-time employees) move up a hierarchy of competence. After two weeks of basic training, new employees become apprentices. Over time, and with more training, these apprentices become operators. Roughly a third of all operators then go on to become specialists highly skilled staffers with know-how in everything from color theory to Internet technology to the store's business operations. All Kinko's staffers wear name badges that announce their length of service another sign of their expertise, another source of confidence for customers.

"We look at our coworkers as consultants for the 'digital-on-demand' era," says Susan Moore, director of corporate training. "We want to hire people with a service orientation, people who have a positive attitude toward what they're doing."

But this "consulting" relationship, however robust, also has its limits. Sophiea recalls a series of focus groups in which Kinko's tested a new marketing campaign: "We were talking about, 'We're with you; we're helping you close the deal; you and Kinko's make a winning team.' People said, 'It's me, not us. You helped bring my ideas to life, but I did the work. My butt is on the line.' That was a good thing for us to learn."

Kinko's has also learned that there's more to business than crisp transactions. Its stores play an increasingly social role in Free Agent Nation. Kinko's has become a '90s version of the neighborhood watering hole, a place where free agents swap war stories, share gossip, learn from others. Time and again, focus groups report that one of the most satisfying aspects of the Kinko's experience is not what customers learn from staffers it's what they learn from other customers.

"Big companies do some things right," says Sophiea, herself a refugee from H.J. Heinz Co., the consumer products conglomerate. "Health benefits. Social benefits. Friends. Free agents can feel lonely, isolated, abandoned. They come in and say, 'I need copies and a fax.' But then they hang around and chat. Customers help one another out at the computer. They see what someone else is doing and say, 'Hey, that's cool.' We function as a business connection and a social connection. You get the strokes here that you used to get at the office."