gopost – Currently in pilot testing, gopost is the Postal Service’s convenient way to receive and ship packages. The gopost units are automated, secure, self-service parcel lockers that are placed in convenient locations, where customers can pick up or ship packages 24 hours/day, 7 days/week at most locations. Customers who sign up for gopost receive user ID cards and PIN numbers which they can then use to access lockers and retrieve or send packages. Roll-out of gopost began in 2012, in the Washington, DC metro area, and there are currently 12 units in northern Virginia and Maryland and 5 locations in New York City. The gopost program is one key component of Postal Service efforts to develop and execute comprehensive parcel locker solutions to help reduce failed first attempt package delivery and improve the customer package pick up experience.
Post Office (PO) Box Service – New Post Office services and features are currently available at all of the 8,400 competitive Post Offices (a competitive Post Office is one where the Postal Service will provide some of the same services offered by its competitors at comparable prices):
Additional PO Box services and features are currently available at many of these 8,400 Post Offices:
These new enhanced PO Box services — accompanied by extensive field outreach — have helped generate significant new revenue. In FY2014, the total revenue for PO Boxes including Caller Services was more than $1 billion, a new milestone for the services and a 2 percent increase in revenue over FY2013. Retail Services will continue to aggressively support growth of these services and improve the overall customer experience for PO Boxes.
Passports – The Postal Service’s partnership with the Department of State Passport Services is critical in successfully providing customer service for the American public. Postal Service employees accept more than 72 percent of first-time applications. The Postal Service currently has over 5,200 facilities that provide fee-based passport acceptance of first-time applications for customers applying for a U.S. passport book or U.S. passport card. Over 4,800 facilities provide both passport acceptance and photo services (for a fee), which promote customer convenience and one-stop shopping. A near-term goal is to improve contribution from passports by increasing efficiency, growing the number of applications accepted and improving service to meet the Department of State requirements. In particular, the emphasis will be to improve the percentage of passport mailings processed through automation and consolidate passport facilities. The Postal Service has implemented Passport Centers in larger cities, which provide passport services in a separate area/location, focusing on providing customer service and convenience.
Premium Forwarding Service – Premium Forwarding Service (PFS) provides customers the option of temporarily forwarding their mail once a week by paying the application and weekly shipment fees. The customer’s PFS mail is shipped via Priority Mail service with USPS Tracking. In January 2012, the Postal Service launched an online version of PFS, which offers customers the convenience of applying for and managing their account online at usps.com. PFS online continues to help grow revenue and create efficiencies by increasing the portion of transactions conducted online. Overall, PFS revenue grew 11 percent in FY2014, and PFS online revenue already represents over 25 percent of all PFS revenue.
Retail Revenue by Channel – The Postal Service strives to balance customer convenience and accessibility to our services with initiatives designed to control costs. We continue to see customers shift away from brick and mortar facilities to alternate forms of access as shown in the chart below.
Retail Revenue by Channel
Retail Operations – Retail performance is measured by the Retail Customer Experience (RCE) program, as well as by surveys of residential and small and medium business customers. The RCE program hires private “mystery shoppers” who conduct mailing transactions at over 8,600 of our large retail outlets. The data from these transactions are analyzed and evaluated and feedback is provided to help improve the customer experience. Other customer experience ratings, including overall satisfaction with Post Office visits, are collected quarterly via national surveys of residential and small business customers. One key measure of a customer’s retail experience is wait time in line. The service standard for this attribute is “Five Minutes or Less.” For FY2014, the national wait time in line average was 2 minutes, 24 seconds versus the previous year of 2 minutes, 29 seconds, an improvement of 5 seconds.
The Overall Retail Experience score from the RCE mystery shops was 93.86 percent versus the previous year score of 92.87, an improvement of 0.99 percentage points.
*Source: Retail Data Mart, Retail Customer Experience Program.
