As a former printer, I prefer the white envelope; it prints better and looks cleaner. Unfortunately it doesn't hold up well enough in the mail. Every month we receive several complaints from readers who received a damaged envelope, sans contents. We are hoping that the stronger brown envelope will reduce the number of magazines lost in transit.

Of course, when we learn that one of our magazines didn't arrive, we send a replacement immediately — whether the cause be a torn envelope, a changed address, or a postal error.

I say "of course" because automatically sending the replacement copy just seems natural to us. Recently, however, we were reminded that what is natural to us isn't natural to everyone. One of our readers called us to report a change in address only to find that we had already learned of his new address via the post office (after we had already mailed a copy to the old address) and taken it upon ourselves to send a second copy to the new address. The reader was flabbergasted. Apparently the other magazines to which he subscribes don't take the initiative in sending replacement copies.

I take pride in relating this story because that's how I define quality: delivering just a little more than the customer expects. Like any human organization, we're not perfect — we sometimes disappoint customers, and we sometimes disappoint ourselves. The joy, though, comes from surprising customers with a little more than they expected. Thus, we work hard to identify and eliminate the systematic sources of customer disappointment — such as an envelope that has a tendency to lose its contents.

We sure hope you all get your magazine this time.

Sincerely yours,

Robert Ward
Editor/Publisher