It seems most of the emphasis in customer experience these days is on websites, social media, online shopping, and internet customer portals. Those all play important parts in the overall custom

Websites are still important marketing tools, so have you looked at yours recently? An unscientific audit of random print/mail service provider websites by this author revealed plenty of improvement o

Data mining sounds geeky and complicated, but document service providers can use information extracted from their clients’ print image files to improve messaging, lower costs, or make document

Print and mail service providers may believe hackers aren’t interested in the customer data they use to create and distribute documents. Compared to financial institutions and healthcare provi

Print and mail service providers understand they need to stay in contact with their current and future customers to keep the revenue flowing. I recommend reaching out about once a month, but that's a

Some of the most common causes of HIPAA violations are compliance problems associated with what the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) calls “willful neglect.” The OCR is a government entity

As documents become more personalized, containing variable text blocks, graphics, offers, and individual recipient data, the risk of creating documents with errors increases

The first jobs run on your new inkjet press are likely to be legacy applications previously run on toner-based printers or offset presses. That's not a bad strategy. You’ll be starting with s

Does your company create documents containing information like patient health data, credit card transactions, or student records? Is some of that mail occasionally undeliverable?

Clients of print/mail service providers aren't usually customer communication experts. They view their vendors as the last steps in a process. Data goes in, and mail comes out. When it comes to

Suppose a client sends you a common name and address list. Your instructions are to merge the data with a marketing letter, stuff it into window envelopes, and mail the job. If you do those step

Ever since multi-station mail inserting machines were invented, mailers have struggled with pre-printed inserts. Mailing operations must receive the inserts, add them to inventory, stage them for prod

Print and mail operations job documentation can be a nuisance. As jobs change, keeping records up to date is a chore. Documentation is usually the last thing service providers address as they develop

If you believe your monochrome toner printers should get you through the next couple of years, think again. The customer communications business is transforming. Money is pouring into research and dev

I recall discussing customer data quality with a print/mail service provider sales rep. "It's not our problem," he explained. "We print what they send. If the data is bad, that's their problem."

Most organizations view the effort to produce and distribute transactional documents as a necessary cost of doing business. Money spent on paper, printers, inserting equipment, postage, and production

Stephen Covey always advised to "begin with the end in mind." As I look at the way many organizations approach customer communications, they seem to have lost track of true business goals. They base

Experts predict that by 2020, customer experience will outweigh price and product as the key differentiator among competitors. Print and mail service providers can prepare for this transition by chang

Document operations departments handle lots of data. Sometimes the information is in ready-to-print form. Other times, data arrives in raw format, awaiting processing by document composition software

Does your company have a content marketing plan for this year? Many organizations have identified the value of published content to achieve brand awareness or nurture leads, but initiate thei