5. Streamline Acceptance for Commercial Mailers
The Postal Service will continue its efforts to streamline postage payment, documentation, and verification for commercial mail entered through the business mail entry channel. Business mail entry handles 70 percent of all mail, represents a critical interaction point between the Postal Service and the business sector. With data-rich reports and automated processes, seamless acceptance will allow customers to use mail more strategically and to expand more readily into a full range of postal products and services. It also represents an automated way to achieve continual quality control in mail preparation, addressing, and deposit.
The Postal Service will deploy a performance-based verification model that speeds acceptance for proven mailers and provides resources for untested mailers. Mailers with consistent high-quality mailings require less time and attention than untested mailers. Performance-based verification will include dynamic modeling, using data from several sources to determine the verification frequency and sample size. When verifications are required, they will focus only on specific mail quality elements identified by the data.
The Electronic Verification System (eVS) for parcel mailings is an example of in-process verification already under development with several large shippers. In-process verification analyzes mail as it arrives and flows through the mailstream, using data from induction, processing equipment, and sampling scans, and then comparing this data with the mailer‘s manifest data to automate reconciliation processes.
Seamless acceptance, enabled by Intelligent Mail, will use performancebased and in-process verification for business mail acceptance. This new acceptance process will support a staffing model for the alignment of acceptance resources, an electronic payment model for universal customer access, and performance measurement data for mailers and the service performance reporting system. The Postal Service expects to complete development of seamless acceptance production by the end of 2008 and launch in 2009.
Service performance will be facilitated by creating the infrastructure that allows mailers to send electronic manifests of their mailings and the Postal Service to capture scans of containers, trays, and mail with Intelligent Mail barcodes throughout the movement of the mail. By analyzing the scan data and detailed mailing manifests from mailers, the system can determine service performance for each mailer and for each mailing. The data and comparative analysis from the integrated seamless acceptance system will be provided to the service performance reporting system for further data processing and reporting.
6. Make Online Services a Key Competency
Today‘s customers enjoy quick, easy, and convenient online shopping. Through usps.com customers can buy stamps, ask to have their mail held, print and pay for postage, schedule a package pickup, and even design an advertising mail piece. Packages can be shipped domestically or internationally online with options such as insurance, Delivery Confirmation, and Signature Confirmation using Click-N-Ship. In response to ever-increasing customer expectations for online service, usps.com will be enhanced with more services and more convenient features.
Checkout processes will be updated to create an experience that customers have come to expect from online shopping. Online payment options for postal services will expand to meet the changing requirements of today‘s customers. Popular payment methods like ACH debit and cell phone options give customers convenience without additional fees. As the online market evolves, the Postal Service will make continuous improvements to its online payment services to stay competitive in an electronic world.
Given the diversity and proliferation of today‘s Internet, it is unrealistic to expect all consumers to come to a single Web site for their mailing and shipping needs. Integration with third-party Web sites is key. The Postal Service partnership with eBay demonstrates the success of extending postal shipping services to a third-party site. The Postal Service will seek other partners to provide similar services. It will also ensure that postal shipping is clearly and accurately presented as a customer option on e-commerce sites.