Delivering Excellent Service
“ Improving the customer experience is one of our core business strategies. Our customers expect a great experience every time they mail or ship with the Postal Service — and delivering on that promise of a great experience is foundational to our future.”
Patrick Donahoe
Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer
More than ever, the Postal Service is focused on competing for customers — and that requires providing excellent service by making every customer experience a great one.
Over the past year, the Postal Service performed at a very high level, showing significant improvement and often exceeding service standard targets in nearly every product class and point of interaction. These advances reflect a strong commitment throughout the organization to meet ever higher customer expectations.
Retaining and growing our customer base depends on more than just delivering mail and packages effectively. We also have to deliver excellent service — which is just what we did in FY 2012.
A Workforce Dedicated to Customers and Community
The 629,000 employees of the Postal Service are part of America’s communities in ways that go far beyond delivering mail and packages. We get to know our customers and we help communities connect.
We assist with efforts to find missing children and we support bone marrow donor matching programs. Our letter carriers take a leading role in the annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive. We take pride in these large national programs, but we take just as much pride in the individual heroic acts and small services we provide our neighbors on a daily basis.
In spite of numerous natural challenges, ranging from forest fires and flooding, to hurricanes and tornadoes, to heat waves and widespread power outages, our letter carriers and Postmasters and all of our employees who process and transport mail helped ensure a quick return to normalcy.
It’s a testament to the hard work and dedication of 629,000 Postal employees that even in times of distress and challenge, the mail continued to reach its destination. Postal Service employees delivered excellent performance and service and continued to play a vital role in America’s communities.
Service Standards
The Postal Service abides by the old admonition to “measure what you treasure.” We measure every aspect of our operations and we set annual targets against established Service Standards. Performance against nearly every standard improved throughout 2012, meaning that customers benefited from record-high on-time delivery percentages.
Single Piece First-Class Mail Delivery Performance by Service Standard
Overnight 96.48%
Two-Day 94.84%
Three-Day 92.29%
Customer Experience Metrics
Making every experience a great one starts with measurement and strong strategies for improving scores. The Postal Service focused heavily on employee engagement throughout the year to help all aspects of the organization create better experiences for our customers. We developed improved diagnostic tools, invested in training and heightened internal communication — and it paid off in every major measurement category.
Customer Experience Categories
National Residential 88.36%
National Small/Medium Business 84.07%