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Got Mail? Maybe Not for Long

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How many people still get excited about getting mail delivered to their home?

I remember waiting for the mailman to pull up to the mailbox as a kid and running to see what came. Was there something for Me? A new flyer from my favorite store? A card from Grandma? It is something that stays with you as an adult and gets passed down generations. My son is 4 and gets very excited when the mail truck pulls up in front of the house and he can’t wait to go see what came.

Is this the next thing in our technological society that will cease to exist with the invention of email and the internet? Could be….for the postmaster general of the United States, John E. Potter, has gone to Congress and officially asked for permission to do away with Saturday mail.

According to Bob Greene, CNN writer, he states “His reasoning is hard to argue with. In the e-mail age, usage of the U.S. Postal Service is plummeting. Just about everyone claims to love the look and feel of a handwritten letter, the giddy anticipation of seeing the mail carrier strolling up the sidewalk and wondering what he has inside his bag for you, the orderly, set-your-watch-by-it routine of mail delivery to your home every day of the week except Sunday.” Potter goes on to say stopping mail delivery on Saturdays could save more than $3 billion a year.

In 1957, because of budgetary reasons, the postmaster decided to end Saturday deliveries. This lasted only one Saturday for the public was outraged and forced Dwight D. Eisenhower to sign a bill to provide more funding.

As our society continues to remove the human element from the way we communicate, will we hunger for it even more, and I wonder if we are doing that right now but fail to realize it? We know the importance of the human element and continue to blog and present the importance of the customer experience because we understand that it is needed and is crucial for businesses.

Joseph Campbell, one of my favorite authors and great mythologists states in his book, The Power of Myth, “It’s important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery and your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor.”

As we continue down the road of the “e-world” it will be interesting to see if our society does in fact remove all human elements, imagination, mythology and all the wonderful places the human mind can go or will we realize there is something missing and long for it again.

Maybe the reason why loyalty and the customer experience is so effective is that is gives the customer “good feelings” that email and text messages cannot. Please join in for this discussion with your own thoughts.

Here are some questions I would love to hear your thoughts on:

  • Do you like to receive hard mail and does it make you feel good when you get something in the mail such as a greeting card?
  • Would you care if Saturday mail is stopped?
  • Will the Gen Y and Millennials miss the human element or do they not understand this?
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Brian Kryzanski

Three Words for Customer Loyalty in 2017

Three Words for Customer Loyalty in 2017

The 3 Words Process Each year, Loyalty Truth completes an exercise to select 3 words that we believe will define the course of the Customer Loyalty business over the next 12 [...]

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