III. IMPROVE SERVICE
Service is the heart of the Postal Service brand and the key to increasing competitiveness and profitability. Evolving customer needs, shaped by the Internet and a new generation of customers, are redefining expectations for service and convenience. Continuous service improvement, aligned to customer needs, is essential for all products, services, and channels.
Service improvement strategies are concentrated in two broad areas — the quality and consistency of service provided at all customer contact points and the speed and reliability of end-to-end mail delivery across all product lines. Although the requirement exists only for market dominant products (or mailing services), service standards for all products will continue to be refined to address changing customer needs. In the near future, the Postal Regulatory Commission will issue its decision on the Postal Service‘s proposal on the process and systems to measure service performance. The proposal relies primarily on the use of Intelligent Mail.
1. Improve the Customer Experience across all Channels
Postal customers define quality as reliable, courteous, and responsive service. They expect quality service whether they come to a Post Office, initiate contact by phone or the Internet, or ask their carrier about a service. Opportunities to enhance service exist at all contact points and the Postal Service will accelerate efforts to provide a level of service that exceeds customer expectations.
To stay abreast of changing customer expectations, the Postal Service is benchmarking best practices to redesign processes that customers use to request information, obtain service, register concerns, and provide feedback. New systems will collect more timely data closer to the point of customer contact and track postal response and follow-up. New customer satisfaction data will be actionable and bring heightened management accountability. The Customer Satisfaction Measurement (CSM) survey has long been employed to track service from the customer‘s perspective. CSM design improvements will enhance its usefulness by making data more focused, timely, and actionable. CSM data is already bringing new insight to service improvement strategies. For example, it has helped confirm that customers are noticing improvements from the Postal Automated Redirection System (used to forward mail), expanded Post Office business hours, and self-service kiosks. CSM data has also guided management action to address issues such as misdelivered mail and waiting time at the Post Office.
When obtaining information, requesting service, or attempting to resolve service issues, customers expect to receive a quick, accurate response. CSM data related to the quality and ease of obtaining information are showing significant gains. This is a reflection of improvements to the speed and consistency of postal information services. For example, the Postal Service recently redesigned its phone and online interfaces making it easier for customers to complete transactions at their first contact. Soon postal customers will also be able to request services and register complaints online. Besides offering more choice, logging contacts electronically is expected to help the Postal Service ensure more timely responses.
Restructuring the Business Service Network (BSN) is also improving customer satisfaction among large-volume mailers. The BSN serves as a critical liaison with large commercial customers, primarily to help resolve service issues. BSN representatives are assigned a specific set of customers and trained to understand those customers‘ unique business needs. This restructuring of BSN responsibilities gives business customers a single point of contact.