A Use For Snail Mail
With the advent of fax, email and automated bill pay, I was starting to seriously question to the value of regular postal mail. Except of course for Pottery Barn catalogs and NetFlix (until Tivo gets around to on demand delivery), I'm having a hard time justifying all of the junk mail.
Late last week we got an overdue notice in the regular mail from the water company. Note to travelers: pay your bills before leaving the country. As soon as I got the notice I hopped online to the water co's website to sign up for auto bill pay. Upon completing the registration form, I was met with a rare sight. A notice that said "Thank you for registering, we will be sending you a temporary password via regular mail."
WHAT?! Regular mail!? How could they!? My instant gratification alarms were going off immediately. Then some other random event occurred which took my mind off of it and I had pretty much forgotten about it.
Today the letter came in the mail. Very nicely written, the temp password was even bolded. I went to the website, popped it in, voila! Instant access to my account and I could pay my bill right there.
It wasn't until I got the letter that I realized the value of this process. They really really really NEEDED to know it was me who lived here. What better way to confirm someone's physical mailing address than to send them an actual letter. I can imagine all of the conversations and meeting that must have resulted in this letter being sent to me. There were probably brainstorms and whiteboards devoted to ideas on how to streamline the process: Put a code on the water meter to enter, put in my phone number and call me at home, verify my information three times...I guess I figured that since I got the late notice in the mail, and they would know my account number, then it would be a breeze...but whateva.
Kind of interesting to go cross-medium from web to regular mail and back on the web like that.
Update: It looks like people have figured out an even deeper way to integrate the online and offline mail worlds: Remote Control Mail: Check Your Postal Mail On the Web -- WOW!
Late last week we got an overdue notice in the regular mail from the water company. Note to travelers: pay your bills before leaving the country. As soon as I got the notice I hopped online to the water co's website to sign up for auto bill pay. Upon completing the registration form, I was met with a rare sight. A notice that said "Thank you for registering, we will be sending you a temporary password via regular mail."
WHAT?! Regular mail!? How could they!? My instant gratification alarms were going off immediately. Then some other random event occurred which took my mind off of it and I had pretty much forgotten about it.
Today the letter came in the mail. Very nicely written, the temp password was even bolded. I went to the website, popped it in, voila! Instant access to my account and I could pay my bill right there.
It wasn't until I got the letter that I realized the value of this process. They really really really NEEDED to know it was me who lived here. What better way to confirm someone's physical mailing address than to send them an actual letter. I can imagine all of the conversations and meeting that must have resulted in this letter being sent to me. There were probably brainstorms and whiteboards devoted to ideas on how to streamline the process: Put a code on the water meter to enter, put in my phone number and call me at home, verify my information three times...I guess I figured that since I got the late notice in the mail, and they would know my account number, then it would be a breeze...but whateva.
Kind of interesting to go cross-medium from web to regular mail and back on the web like that.
Update: It looks like people have figured out an even deeper way to integrate the online and offline mail worlds: Remote Control Mail: Check Your Postal Mail On the Web -- WOW!
posted by Andy at
9:03 PM
<< Home