Kinko's, or FedEx Office? My Two Cents

As our in-house search engine optimizer, social media networker, public relations guy, etc., I do a fair amount of research on what's being said about us and our "competitors" on a regular basis. One place where I can always get up-to-the-minute feedback is on Twitter. I frequently search to see what's being said about other companies in our industry, and of course the one company that's always a-buzz is Kinko's (or, as they are called now, FedEx Office).

Most posts are simply people sending status updates to their friends like, "I'm off to Kinko's (again), then to Starbucks, then to the gym..." (Actually, you would be surprised how many people follow up a trip to Kinko's with a trip to Starbucks. I read this as saying that Kinko's is right across the street from Starbucks, which seems almost too perfect -- people can get their overpriced copies from a huge corporate chain and walk right across the street to get overpriced coffee from another huge corporate chain! But I digress...)

Other times, the Tweets are qualitative judgments on the Kinko's experience (e.g. "The customer service at Kinko's is terrible," or "The guy who helped me at Kinko's was super nice."). Now I'm going to make a rough estimate here, since I haven't done any scientific quantitative studies on this, but it seems to me that those types of Tweets are roughly 5-to-1 in favor of bad experiences. When they're bad, it's usually something to do with A) outrageous prices, or B) bad service from under-trained employees. Regardless of the reasons or the exact ratio, it is safe to say that the bad comments outnumber the good.

Over the last year or so since FedEx and Kinko's merged, the brand name has been in constant flux. I believe that most recently, they have done away with the Kinko's name all together in favor of FedEx Office.

Though I'm not really a Public Relations expert (I have a BA in Journalism, thank you -- the Light Side to PR's Dark Side), I think FedEx corporate would do well to fire their head PR officer over this.

For a lot of people, their brand name has become synonymous with "bad service," "high prices," and "unreliability."

Regardless of how the general public viewed FedEx before the takeover, it simply cannot be good for the all-encompassing FedEx name to replace the Kinko's name. It seems to follow reason that, eventually, all the negative qualities associated with the Kinko's brand are going to be passed on to the larger FedEx name. I wonder what sort of exchange FedEx's PR department has with their customers, specifically Kinko's customers, and whether this was ever a topic of discussion among top managers when they considered switching the brand. It seems like a no-brainer that this should have been given serious thought.

Unless FedEx is going to make a concerted effort to lower their prices and actually train their employees on how to run the machines and treat customers like their business matters, they are going to absorb all the negative connotations associated with the Kinko's name. If they're not going to increase the quality of their services, they might as well change the name back to Kinko's and forget FedEx Office ever existed. After all, it's only a name. Why not stick with the name that's already been sullied with years of bad customer satisfaction?

For the record, I know not all Kinko's are that bad. The one I occasionally had to go to for last-minute prints in college had a staff that was mostly very courteous and helpful. I am basing this purely on what I have observed in the Twittersphere, and even then there's still that roughly 1 in 5 that had a good experience. But they should not discount the other 4.

Ultimately, it matters not to us, because the more displeased people become with the large corporate brands they are used to dealing with (Staples, Office Depot, Kinko's), the more likely they are to look for alternatives and end up finding us.

But I thought I'd share my 2 cents on this... maybe, just maybe, someone in the FedEx corporate offices will read it and take it to heart.