Ever wish you could see all your invoices in one place instead of digging through emails? Or track exactly where your custom tag project stands in production? MasterTag just made both possible.
The company rolled out two major updates to its online ordering platform last month, both driven by grower requests.
“We built this tool in collaboration with our customers,” said Korey Minnebo, Senior Manager of Customer Service & Success at MasterTag. “We could have come to the table with everything that MasterTag thought was what our customers needed, and we wouldn’t have hit the mark.”
Since the platform launched in 2020, that collaborative approach has driven steady improvements. Here’s what’s new, what’s coming, and how MasterTag uses customer input to shape the ordering experience.
The One-Question Survey That Drives Improvement
At the heart of MasterTag’s development process is a simple feedback mechanism: after placing an order or proofing items in the online environment, customers see a brief pop-up asking them to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 10.
“We ask one simple question: ‘How is our service for you?'” Minnebo said. “They can answer anonymously, or they can leave their information so we can contact them at a later time.”
The MasterTag team watches these responses closely for trends, concerns, and new feature ideas. The survey also creates opportunities for one-on-one connections with customers who may not realize certain capabilities already exist.
“It allows customer service to connect with those customers,” Minnebo said. “To say, ‘If you have a few minutes, I can actually show you that that’s something we have available.'”
Beyond the survey, MasterTag’s customer service team is always speaking with growers using the platform.
“We are constantly asking, ‘How was your experience? Is there anything we could do better? Hey, we just delivered a new feature. Have you given it a try? Did it meet your needs?'” Minnebo said.
This ongoing engagement ensures that even when a new feature hits 90% of customer needs, MasterTag can quickly identify and address the remaining 10%.
Major Updates: “My Documents” and “My Projects”
MasterTag rolled out two significant new features approximately one month ago: “My Documents” and “My Projects.” Both aim to give growers a single-source location for tracking all their activity with MasterTag.
My Documents: A Repository for Invoices and Reference Materials
The “My Documents” section provides a centralized hub for important order documentation.
The most impactful addition is invoice access.
“When a customer places an order, once we’ve shipped the order, we invoice the order,” Minnebo explained. “Prior to this, they would get an email with the invoice attached to it. Now they’ll actually be able to come in here and look at all of their invoices.”
Instead of searching through email for past invoices, growers can now access their complete billing history in one place.
A “Quotes” section is in development and will work similarly.
“This feature is coming soon,” Minnebo said. “When a customer requests a custom quote — for something very specific — we’ll be able to load that quote directly into the system instead of sending it via email.”
The third component is “Reference Documents,” which houses program information, scheduled run details, sell sheets, and other informational materials MasterTag shares with customers.
“This gives our customer service team an area to load all of that information for a customer,” Minnebo explained. “So again, they’re not sifting through email blasts or things we’ve sent them, but they have one area to go to to find all of that information.”
My Projects: Visibility Into Custom Work
For the first time, growers can now see exactly where their custom projects stand in MasterTag’s workflow.
“Previous to this, they would have had no visibility to any of the open projects we had for them,” Minnebo said.
The “My Projects” section includes two main areas:
Service Requests cover custom activities like creative design work, new shape development, and custom quoting. When customers click into an open project, they see a visual timeline showing where the project stands.
“It’s essentially going to tell them where this [project] lives in the process,” Minnebo explained. As it moves through different stages, the customer will see checkmarks next to completed phases. “And it would give them an idea of, ‘Okay, there are nine steps here. I’m on step five. I see my due date is this.'”
Item Builds track new varieties being created for a customer’s account — for example, 50 new tomato varieties being prepared.
“They would be able to see the list of those here and when they’re due to be completed,” Minnebo said. “We’re giving them timeline information that they wouldn’t have had here before. We’re setting expectations on when they’re going to hear from us next, [and] when some of those projects are completed.”
The next phase of “My Projects” will connect completed work to “My Documents.”
“Once that project output is completed, you will see it in your ‘My Documents’ area,” Minnebo explained. “So once your quote was completed, you could see the timeline here, [in ‘Item Builds’]. And now you could see the quote output in my ‘My Documents.'”
Coming Soon: Favorites and Enhanced Sorting
Two highly requested features are in active development.
My Favorites
MasterTag is building a “My Favorites” capability to help with reordering and long-term planning.
“When you’re shopping, if you find something that you want to be able to go back to, but you’re not ready to add it to your shopping cart, we would give them a ‘My Favorites’ option,” Minnebo said.
This feature will also help growers maintain a shorter list of frequently ordered items instead of searching through the entire catalog each time.
“That would also help with reorders,” Minnebo noted. “Or [if] they know they’re going to want to order it again in the future, to help maintain a shorter list of items that they’re interested in.”
Shopping Cart Sorting
Currently in development, this enhancement will allow customers to sort their shopping cart contents, similar to the filtering options available during the browsing phase.
“When they’re in that shopping cart environment, to still give them the ability, like they have when they’re shopping, to sort it by variety or sort it by shape, things like that,” Minnebo said.
Past Improvements That Made a Difference
Several customer-driven enhancements have already become integral to how growers use the platform.
“Order Via Upload”
Perhaps the most impactful feature addition, launched around 2021, was the “Order Via Upload” capability. This allows growers to upload spreadsheets directly instead of manually entering line items, especially valuable for operations that already work in spreadsheets or extract data from their own systems.
“This came along from customers who would come to us and say, ‘Well, typically I would have just emailed this spreadsheet to you. How can I still do that?'” Minnebo recalled.
The feature serves two customer groups: those who maintain their orders in spreadsheets and collaborate with teams before submitting, and those who extract order data from their own POS or database systems.
“Prior to the ‘Order Via Upload’ option, they would have to take that spreadsheet and find all of those items,” Minnebo said. “We’re giving them a shortcut.”
Simplified Account Creation
Around 2022, MasterTag streamlined the new customer onboarding process, reducing the amount of information required upfront and adding automation to prevent duplicate accounts.
“It’s changed over the years from the customer’s experience. The amount of information we ask them to provide before they can start ordering with us has lessened,” Minnebo said.
Ongoing Small Refinements
Beyond major features, MasterTag continuously tweaks smaller elements based on user experience. “Sometimes there are little tweaks here or there regarding how they add items to a cart, things like that,” Minnebo noted.
Even when a feature launches successfully, customer feedback can reveal opportunities for refinement.
“There are definitely tweaks that we’ve made along the way where maybe we output a feature that hit 90% of the need, but it didn’t find all customers,” Minnebo said. “[Then it’s], ‘Okay, what can we do next then to hit some of those other customers?'”
Managing Custom Inventory with “My Tags”
Separate from the stock catalog, MasterTag maintains a “My Tags” section for each customer’s custom items.
“If I’m doing custom business with MasterTag, that’s where my items are going to land because they’re custom to me,” Minnebo explained. “If they’re doing custom activity with MasterTag and it’s only for them to order, that’s what ‘My Tags’ is for them.”
This section helps growers evaluate their custom catalog season to season.
“It’s giving them visibility to their custom offering with us so they can tweak, enhance, and make changes as they need,” Minnebo said. They can identify varieties they’re no longer ordering, items that need to be added, or products that should be refreshed.
“That ‘My Tags’ area definitely helps them as far as their item inventory, what they’re ordering from us, and how to maintain and keep it clean and fresh,” Minnebo added.
Mobile Accessibility
MasterTag’s online ordering system is accessible via mobile browsers on phones and tablets, though usage patterns show most customers still prefer desktop. In October, less than 8% of users accessed MasterTag Online via a mobile device.
The mobile experience does have its use cases, particularly for iPad users.
“There have been a few [responses] from our online surveys where customers might use an iPad in the greenhouse,” Minnebo said. “And they want to go check to make sure, ‘Oh, I need so many more of these.’ An iPad has worked for what they need it for.”
Most mobile usage appears to focus on checking order status rather than placing full orders. “Phone [usage] is probably more that they’re checking to see when their order might ship as opposed to actually placing an order via a cell phone,” Minnebo noted.
Desktop ordering remains the norm for most operations: “In most cases, you have someone in an office setting that’s being given, ‘This is what we need you to order with MasterTag,’ and someone else is out in the greenhouse compiling what that list looks like,” she said.
The Role of Korey and Her Team
As Senior Manager of Customer Service & Success, Minnebo serves as the bridge between customer needs and MasterTag’s development team.
“A lot of what I’m doing is educating customers, engaging with customers, and making sure that [online ordering] is successful for them,” she said.
Her team includes customer service representatives, quality staff, production scheduling, and pre-production — all the “upfront operations teams” that work between creative and actual production. With 27 years at MasterTag (15 in pre-production, 12 in customer service leadership), Minnebo has deep knowledge of both customer needs and internal capabilities.
When feedback comes in through surveys or direct conversations, Minnebo collaborates with the IT and development teams to evaluate options.
“A lot of the success of this platform weighs on, ‘What am I doing? How am I doing it? What are the things we’re making a priority?'” she said.
Sometimes that means delivering exactly what customers ask for. Other times, it means finding better solutions. “[Sometimes, it’s] ‘The customer asked for this. I think we actually have a better option, let’s do this, deliver it to them, and see how it goes,'” Minnebo said.
What’s Next: Getting Feedback on Recent Features
Over the coming months, MasterTag’s primary focus will be gathering customer reactions to “My Documents” and “My Projects.”
“Getting their feedback on those features to understand, ‘Is it working for them? Is it giving them the visibility that they’ve been asking for? Is there more that we can do there?'” Minnebo said.
As customers begin using these new tools, their input will shape the next round of refinements, continuing the collaborative approach that has guided the platform’s development since 2020.
So if you’re using the system and something could work better, speak up. That one-question survey, a quick call to customer service, even an offhand comment during an order — it all gets heard. And more often than not, it gets built.
