Last summer, I got a call from a reader complaining about our reader service program. He had gone onto the EEPN web site, clicked on “Reader Service” and expected to find links to all the information he was looking for. Instead, we asked him to fill out a form and told him that we would forward the information to him by mail. He asked me, “What sense does that make?” And then said, “I need information right away. And by the way, I don’t want to fill out the form every time I visit the site.”
His comments got me thinking about reader service and how it might be improved. This year you’ll see how we’ve improved the program, which launches with the current (March) issue. Back in January, we made a change in the print edition of EEPN. The Reader Service card was eliminated—again. We discontinued it a few years ago, but then brought it back. Now we’ve let it go again. I’m sure a small percentage of our readers who depend on this card for their information will not like the change. Hopefully, our new system will do a better job for them.
I’ve tried to think of the ancillary material you would most likely want after reading about a product that appears in one or more of the different media we publish: EEPN, the digital edition of EEPN, our Products of the Week e-newsletter, our companion publication eepn2, and our web site www.eepn.com. I’ve come up with the following: datasheet, application note, sample request and e-mail contact information (we’ll continue to list telephone numbers in our writeups). From now on, our reader service page will have direct links to these four pieces of information. And if any of them are not available, we’ll let you know.
I expect this new system, called EEPN At Your Service, will provide you with an easy way to find most or all of the information you need for a particular product. And if the items I’ve listed above are not the top four items on your list, I’d like to know about it.
Sorry to see the RS card go, even though I don't use it as much as I used to. Just a quick suggestion: the sticky mailing label on the release sheet backing can probably go, too, since its only use was for the RS card. It'll probably cost you less and will be less likely to get stuck in some Postal Service machine!
As to your list, I would also like to see location information. Even with a 'global economy', knowing where a company is located can be important to a decision, especially those of us in still depressed economic areas. I for one would rather spend my, and my clients', money closer to home.
keith tarbell -March 29, 2007 (Article Rating: )
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