In a competitive environment, “good enough” isn’t “good enough”. Customer expectations continue to rise. They want to receive their documents with the correct information, and expect a printing job to be error-free. They want the right statement, with the right address, in the right envelope to be delivered at the right time.
With quality control, the goal must be 100%. Integrated processes and tools, best-in-class procedures and tight quality control processes minimize the opportunity for mistakes. But no print and mail operation is perfect. Even in the best run shops - a faulty line of software code - or a malfunctioning piece of equipment - or a distracted operator - can cause an error.
The two most common errors are print quality and inserting errors.
Print quality issues include:
- smudges, smears or damaged paper that causes any field in the print output to be illegible
- incorrect document orientation (i.e. portrait versus landscape or print fields printed upside down)
- printing documents on the wrong form or letterhead
- incorrectly printed fields, omitted fields or transposed fields
Inserting errors include:
- an incomplete set of documents is sent to a recipient
- collateral (e.g., return envelopes) are missing from the envelope
- the wrong collateral is included in an envelope
- the documents intended for one recipient into the envelope addressed to another recipient
- the envelope isn’t properly sealed
How often have pieces left your department with one of those errors? How often has a vendor sending mail for you made one of those errors? Honestly?
Since we haven’t seen an industry report or survey that asks those questions, we’re asking them now. Here’s a link to an anonymous 8-question survey about the number of errors reported about your mailings. And by “anonymous”, we mean no names, no locations, and no IP tracking. We just want to know how many pieces you mail in a year, and how many errors were reported in the last 12 months. If you use a service provider, we’ll ask how many errors they have made. If you are a service provider, just answer the first 4 questions.
We will keep the survey open until November 20, 2014, and publish the results on November 26, 2014.
Take the survey today!
