4. Retail Operations: Reaching the Customer
Today’s society demands the convenience of one-stop shopping solutions. In response, the Postal Service is making strides to develop convenient alternatives to post offices that assist the customer with their mailing needs. Instead of requiring customers to come to us, the Postal Service will instead serve them where they live and work. This means moving from a more or less one-dimensional brick and mortar strategy to one that integrates our physical branch network into a flexible set of customer contact options (on the web, through letter carriers, through partnerships, and so on).

Contract Postal Units and other commercial agents and partners allow the Postal Service to reach customers at times when post offices are deemed inconvenient or are closed. Typical locations for these units are shopping centers, local malls, and other locations that customers may frequent. Extended evening, weekend, and holiday hours of these facilities provide postal customers with the utmost convenience.

Similar to CPUs, new services are being developed to implement basic mailing services, First-Class and Priority Mail under 20 lbs., into additional retail store locations. This will not only give postal customers more access channels to postal services, but it will provide them with those services at actual post office prices.

The development of mapping and functional analysis tools has significantly aided in finding optimum locations for the alternative access channels listed above. Mapping allows the Postal Service to analyze specific areas of the country, and make customer-focused determinations for the placement of CPU’s and other new services.