USPS Office of Inspector General

There’s an adage in business that it’s cheaper and easier to retain existing customers than to find new ones. It’s been estimated that it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain ones. This explains why businesses work so hard to keep customers happy.

As we celebrate our sixth year of blogging, you might think we’ve covered it all. Surely we’ve hit on every postal topic and angle there is, right? Well apparently not. We have a backlog of issues we want to share and people keep giving us excellent insights and feedback.

People care a lot about their local post offices, at least if the number of news stories on the topic and the comments we receive on our blog and Audit Project pages are indications.

For some, the neighborhood Post Office serves as everything from the source of a community’s name and identity, to a spot where neighbors can connect and keep track of each other. Of course the Post Office is also the place where folks drop off holiday goodies and care packages, or buy stamps and other mailing supplies. And rentable Post Office boxes create physical addresses for local entrepreneurs.

Pretty soon, Americans will have no reason to leave their homes. We can order everything online and have it delivered to our doors – even groceries. That’s good news for package delivery companies, if not for Americans’ Vitamin D intake.

Tea leaves, crystal balls, palm readings: There are lots of ways to try to predict the future . . . and most of them are useless. Still, careful examination of measurable indicators — and a little imagination — can yield some clues as to what may lie ahead. That’s good news for the U.S. Postal Service, because if there’s anything that faces an uncertain future right now, it’s the nearly 240-year-old institution that delivers your mail every day.