BRIAN HUGHES: Going postal on post office
Before I tell you about my beef with the U.S. Postal Service, I need to make it clear it’s not with our Crestview post office. Postmaster John Blair and his team are the friendliest, most dedicated batch of couriers I’ve ever encountered. Their enthusiasm for customer service is unsurpassed.
However, the pseudo-independent-but-government-bureaucracy for which they work leaves a lot to be desired.
My beef dates back to when the post office lost a collection of film posters I had started in college. It was Dad’s fault. He didn’t pay the post office’s protection money, euphemistically called “insurance,” which assures they will treat it like they should treat every piece of mail, insured or not.
My beef has been exacerbated over the decades by everything from callous and rude counter clerks to when, after Hurricane Katrina, despite filing forwarding addresses, most New Orleanians’ mail from the end of August through October 2005 completely vanished.
One of its main problems is that while pretending to be an innovative company, at the slightest hint of challenge, the USPS scurries back to the protective folds of Uncle Sam. Because it knows the government will cover its rump, the postal service has no incentive to innovate. Without the unfettered freedom of a private, enterprising American company, the USPS stagnates and wallows in government complacency.
Now, after decades of indifferent at most, negligent at worst, “service,” the USPS professes astonishment that customers don’t trust it and prefer to go online for everything from paying bills to keeping in touch with grandma.
But with true government mentality, rather than seeking ways to innovate and offer customers opportunities to find relevance in their services, the federal courier wants to cut delivery on Saturday and raise rates again.
I’ve got better ideas:
• Start by casting off the mantle of government bureaucracy and work like any innovative American company. The USPS says their difference is rural delivery to every home. Years ago I FedEx’d my parents’ anniversary gift to our family home in the boonies after the USPS lost the gift I’d sent the year before. Except for the gift actually having been delivered the second time, what’s the difference?
• Keep business hours that customers can actually use. The library staggers its opening times so patrons can stop by some evenings after work. But with the post office’s banker’s hours, an average working person can only visit the counter during limited Saturday morning hours.
• Make it easy to use USPS services. Put stamp machines and self-service postage machines in the lobby so we can buy stamps or mail stuff 24/7.
• If you think the service you offer is good enough, prove it by guaranteeing it. Instead of making customers buy Mafia-like “insurance” to assure mail arrives at its destination, track all mail. The technology exists. FedEx proves it.
• If you screw up, don’t shrug and say, “Oh well.” That’s not how you retain customers. In the aftermath of Katrina, I complained—bitterly—to the post office about our missing mail. (The Crestview post office was the only place I found a sympathetic ear.) Eventually, after a month or so, I heard from the USPS regional office. The storm and its aftermath were “unprecedented,” they said. It “overworked” the mail system.
To make me feel better they sent me a nice sheet of 20 stamps. I would’ve preferred receiving my missing mail, or better still, covering the collection agency’s fee when an unexpected bill went unpaid for three months because my statements were never delivered.
• Be creative. Partner with other companies to diversify products and services. French Post, for example, makes a profit, even in this economy, by offering banking services at its post offices. Imagine: a branch of your bank everywhere there’s a post office! Other European post offices provide banking, telephone and—gasp—Internet services.
• Put that cute little lobby boutique to use. In addition to stamps and shipping boxes, team up with Staples and sell basic office supplies.
• Learn customer service skills so people will want to return. (Maybe other postal workers can train at the Crestview P.O. to see how cheerful, courteous customer service actually works.)
Cutting services and raising prices because you’re losing customers is no way to boost a failing enterprise. American business knows that very basic rule. Government, of course, is oblivious to its blinding obviousness. It’s time to turn the United States Postal Service into a real business.
