Customer service operations will remain largely unchanged, as will Saturday Post Office hours. No Post Office will be closed as a result of the change to five-day delivery and no Post Office service reductions are planned with the implementation of five-day delivery. Mail will be delivered to Post Office Boxes, and mail collected Saturday at Post Office counters, lobby drop boxes and Automated Postal Centers will be processed on Monday.
The major change to Post Office operations will be adjustments to back-office staffing and scheduling, due to a shift in the mail distribution workload from Saturday to the rest of the delivery week.
The change to five-day delivery will affect local firm holdout customers, who, because they receive 50 or more pieces of mail a day, currently choose to pick up street-addressed mail at the Post Office daily rather than have it delivered. Business and residential customers have the option of renting a P.O. Box if they want Saturday delivery. Currently the Postal Service has a 37 percent P.O. Box vacancy rate nationally.
Overall, no operational savings are anticipated in Post Office distribution operations because the workload will shift to the remainder of the delivery week. However, some savings will be tied to activities directly related to supporting carriers, including handling signature-required mailings, firm holdouts and distribution setup activities. These savings are based on the current number of city, rural and contract delivery service routes, and could decrease as other Postal Service initiatives continue to streamline and reduce carrier routes.
Some additional costs will be incurred to help ensure customer satisfaction during the transition. For example, some Post Offices may have higher Saturday traffic as customers come in to pick up mail requiring a signature that the Postal Service attempted to deliver Friday, and would have redelivered on Saturday prior to the five-delivery schedule. Additional retail hours in some locations will give customers more time for pickups.
Customer service employees may find it necessary to explain to retail lobby customers how they will be affected by the changes in expected delivery days for mail accepted Saturday but not processed until Monday, adding time to retail lobby and window transactions.
There also will be one-time costs for address retraining for Post Office distribution clerks due to expected delivery route adjustments.
The total financial impact of five-day delivery on Post Office operations is a savings of about 688 full-time-equivalent employees.
