Customer relationship management (CRM) is building profitable customer relationships while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the Postal Service. While there are many meanings of CRM, the Postal Service's strategy includes the following basic principle that is commonly found throughout industry:

Align people, processes, and technology to build one view of the customer and one view to the customer.

     During the past year the Postal Service focused on two primary CRM opportunities: using customer knowledge to improve internal processes and create outstanding customer interactions, and improving the customer experience by making it easier for customers to do business with the Postal Service. To improve interactions through a better understanding of customers, the Postal Service established a new service that enables the aggregation of customer information from various channels creating the "complete view of the customer." As this service integrates information from a larger number of sources the Postal Service will have a greater ability to customize services to better meet the specific needs of customers.

     The second opportunity — improving the customer experience by making it easier to do business — resulted in the deployment of the Customer Gateway, a business portal through which the Postal Service's largest customers can access multiple Postal Service systems and services. The initial Customer Gateway provides one-stop-shopping for Postal Service information and access to systems such as PostalOne!, CONFIRM, ADVANCE, Centralized Account Processing System, and Drop Shipment Appointment System. The gateway enables the aggregation of data, offers customer service options, access to service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and provides customers the ability to manage the flow of information to and from the Postal Service.

     During 2003 the Postal Service continued its commitment to improving the business customers' experience at acceptance through the innovative use of advanced technology. Across the organization, activities are focused on building the systems, policies, and procedures that will usher in a new era of ease and convenience for customers, and that will dramatically improve acceptance, streamline and improve the overall payment and account management process, and significantly enhance customer access to mailing and postal information.

     One of these innovations is the PostalOne! system, which establishes a single point of electronic access for business customers to detailed mailing, payment, quality and other consolidated postal and mailing information most frequently requested by mailers. The PostalOne! system will replace the aging PERMIT system (customer PERMIT account financial and mailing transactions), and support more flexible payment and account management options while enabling a new consolidated reporting capability. The national infrastructure deployment of PostalOne! system will be completed this year and iterative developmental releases are planned through 2004.

     The Postal Service also continued to deploy the Mailing Evaluation Readability Lookup INstrument (MERLIN), the transportation management function of PostalOne! system and the electronic verification system (e-VS) efforts that began during 2001. MERLIN technology electronically verifies presort mailing makeup, barcode readability, tray label accuracy, meter identification, piece counts, and mailpiece characteristics, enabling postal acceptance units to more effectively accept and verify discounted mail. By December 2003 the Postal Service will have deployed 1,203 machines. Mail preparation quality (of discounted mailings) has improved significantly through the use of MERLIN technology.

     The transportation management component of PostalOne! system made tremendous improvements during 2003 to more effectively