A trip on the WABAC Machine.

Unless you are a cartoon aficionado or a bit older like yours truly, the WABAC Machine (pronounced wayback) might not ring a bell. But each week in a segment on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Mr. Peabody and Sherman would get in the WABAC and ride back in history to explain very tongue in cheek how certain historical events came to pass. (If you want the full scoop on the WABAC, you'll find it here http://bit.ly/ceybFD)

Well, the year is 1990 and above the old Kline's department store in beautiful downtown Oshkosh, a budding young promotional products marketer is interested in hearing directly from customers about their experience with his fledgling little company. And that was the year in which Nelson Marketing sent out its first post-order survey.

Yep, after EVERY custom imprinted order, a first-class "thank you" letter was sent to each customer and in the letter was a response card with a stamp already affixed to it. And when the responses came in, they came right to my little desk and I'd start every day looking at feedback from our customers, the good and the bad.

We would pass around the good ones and be sure they made it to the folks who worked with the customers but the ones that were the most valuable were the "bad" ones... the ones where we had not lived up to the customer's expectations.

Things are clearly different today. Post-order surveys, like many other things, are rarely sent via mail any more. (Just the other morning the post office announced a massive loss blaming it, in part, on the way we now pay our bills online.)

And you know as well as I do that it is easy to send surveys today. Just dream up a few questions and fire off an email and presto... you have a survey. We get surveys constantly from car companies, hotels, restaurants and about everyone else these days. Could be we are now "over-surveyed" if there is such a word.

But when you order promotional & meeting supplies from us, you are still going to get a short post-order survey and it will come directly from me. And it's not because we want you to tell us how great we were although that's what 99% of our customers tell us!

We really want to know if you are NOT happy.

One thing that has not changed since the surveys in those early Nelson Marketing days is this, we still cannot fix what we don't know is wrong.

If you are not reaching out to your customers for post-order or post-event feedback and want to talk to me about our experiences, please drop me a note or give me a call. I don't profess to be an expert but we have found this to be VERY effective. And if you do contact me you just have to keep in mind that the advice you get might be worth what you pay for it!

And yes, good old Nelson Marketing was the forerunner of what today is 4imprint...and they own that great name!