New Tool to Help Postal Service Improve Customer Service

System Measures End-to-End Experiences

WASHINGTON, March 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- When it comes to customer service, the U.S. Postal Service doesn't rest on its laurels, so it recently launched a new measurement system designed to better understand customers' total experience doing business with USPS at every level of the organization.

The Customer Experience Measurement (CEM) assesses end-to-end service with the Postal Service by allowing customers to provide ratings on four separate Postal Service experiences:  receiving mail, sending mail, visiting the Post Office and contacting the Postal Service for assistance.

"Through added insights and actionable data, CEM will help the Postal Service more precisely identify customer needs across all channels and find new ways to provide greater customer service," said Delores J. Killette, vice president and Consumer Advocate. "We will now be measuring and reporting on areas that really matter to our customers, and this information will help Postal Service managers take actions to improve service," added Killette.

CEM replaces the measurement system that has been used since the early 1990s. The new system provides ongoing assessment of customer experiences through a series of diagnostic questions for both residential and business customers. The surveys are administered by an independent market research firm using both mail and online surveys. And, unlike the previous system, CEM allows customers to provide separate ratings for various kinds of experiences.

For the Postal Service's first fiscal quarter, beginning Oct. 1, 2009, and ending Dec. 31, 2009, 86.2 percent of residential customers and 81.3 percent of small and medium business customers surveyed reported being "very satisfied" or "mostly satisfied" overall with doing business with the Postal Service. Other responses included:

Customers surveyed who were very/mostly satisfied

• Receiving mail:  89.7 percent for residential and 86.1 percent for small and medium business customers
• Sending mail:  88.8 percent for residential and 84.7 percent for small and medium business customers
• Post Office experience:  81.8 percent for residential and 76.6 percent for small and medium business customers
• Contact experience:  61.7 percent for residential and 51.4 percent for small and medium business customers

"These results set the baseline," said Killette. "Now that we have more specific, actionable information, we will be able to target improvement initiatives and monitor progress."

The Postal Service also maintained high levels of delivery service performance during the first part of its fiscal year. On-time national performance for single-piece First-Class Mail overnight was 95.8 percent, up slightly from the same period last year (95.6 percent). Other results were as follows:

• 92.3 percent on-time service performance for two-day single-piece First-Class Mail
• 89.1 percent on-time service performance for three-day single-piece First-Class Mail
• 83.8 percent on-time service performance for single-piece First-Class Mail international

Lifestyles and ways of doing business have changed dramatically over the past two decades. Better understanding of customer patterns is an important part of expanding access to Postal Service products, creating increased choices and convenience for customers.

The Postal Service receives no federal tax dollars to fund operations and relies upon the sale of products, services and postage to support operations.

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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no direct support from taxpayers. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world's mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 28th in the 2009 Fortune 500.

SOURCE U.S. Postal Service