Yes Response

The Royal Mail have recently commissioned a UK nationwide study that has revealed that the number of online-only e-retailing businesses has more than doubled over the past five years. The report shows that e-retailing is an increasingly strong area for business start-ups and that growth of online shopping is continuing to increase in the UK.

This is good news for Royal Mail as online retailers need a reliable delivery partner to ensure that goods are reliably and efficiently delivered to their customers.

Yes Response are working with several e-retailers to store and despatch their goods, to manage mailings of catalogues, to send emails informing customers of special offers, to process orders by telephone or post and much more.

So if you’re an online retailer that needs the headaches of offline customer communications to be taken away, speak to Yes Response today about our comprehensive range of customer communications and fulfilment solutions on 01889 561 400 or enq@yesresponse.co.uk

Yes Response are always keen to review the Quality of Service reports published by the Royal Mail to see how they have performed against their targets. The latest report provides the figures for the period of 24 September 2012 to 2 December 2012, and the statistics show a bit of a mixed result:

• First class mail next day deliveries were achieved for 91.2% of mail, against a target of 93%
• Second class mail deliveries within three working days were achieved 98.5% of the time, meeting the target
• The on time delivery of standard retail parcels fell from the previous quarter to 94.8%, but this was still above their 90% target

So overall, the results from this later quarter are mixed, and it’s difficult to comment on how well Royal Mail are meeting standards. We must also bear in mind that these figures come from the busiest period for postal services with a seasonal increase in mailing volumes and bad weather.

If you’d like to take advantage of Royal Mail’s postal service to communicate with your customers or prospects, don’t hesitate to contact Yes Response, who have a comprehensive range of customer communications services to take away all the headaches. Call us today on 01889 561 400 or email enq@yesresponse.co.uk

Since the end of 2011, Royal Mail has been trialling a new scheme to reduce the frustrations of customers receiving parcels and other items that are too big to go through the letterbox. The ‘Delivery to Neighbour’ scheme has been trialled across several areas of the country and, as the name suggests, means that postal carriers will leave large items with a neighbour if you are not there when they call. This eliminates the need to arrange for a redelivery or take a trip to your local sorting office.

Royal Mail reports that following the trial, the scheme was well received with 92% of people reporting that they were satisfied with having their items left with a neighbour rather than returned to the sorting office. Plans are now in place to launch the ‘Delivery to Neighbour’ scheme nationwide from the end of September, subject to regulatory approval.

Of course, Special Delivery items and international post requiring signatures will continue to be returned to the sorting office, and a compensation scheme will still be in place for items that go missing.

As with all initiatives of this kind, the true success of the scheme will soon be seen following the reactions of the public after launch. At Yes Response, we feel that the scheme is likely to be successful, but only if it is implemented correctly on the ground, with the postal carriers using good judgement in where items are left. We are also hoping that this will be the first of many initiatives aimed at improving the delivery of parcels for customers living increasingly busy lives which mean that staying in awaiting deliveries is impractical.

Royal Mail have recently announced that they will be adding a “Delivered by Royal Mail” slogan to all machine-sorted letters and parcels delivered within the UK. The reasons that are being given for the addition of this new mark are that it will be clearer for recipients receiving items at the wrong address to know who to contact about the problem.

Others suggest that the mark is simply a means of free advertising for Royal Mail. The Direct Marketing Association has asked what right Royal Mail has to stamp a marketing message onto property that does belong to them. And of course it must be noted that although at present Royal Mail delivers 100% of the post, whomever processes it, trials are underway by TNT in London to deliver their own processing and delivery service.

At Yes Response, we believe that the various indicia used by the different providers already make it clear who has processed the items and therefore who to contact. So could it be that Royal Mail is trying to market themselves to householders with this message telling them who delivered their mail?

Following the annual conference of the Communication Workers Union, the group has decided to restart the “Keep the Post Public” campaign which was initially run in 2010 and 2011 before Parliament passed the Postal Services Act which essentially laid down the framework for privatising Royal Mail.

Huge debate is still going on as to whether privatisation is the right move for the postal service. The Government coalition passed the enabling legislation last summer to allow the sale of Royal Mail in an effort to modernise the UK’s service provider as mail volumes decrease.

At Yes Response, we support the “Keep the Post Public” campaign and don’t wish to see privatisation of Royal Mail. There may be criticisms of the service provided, but overall it is important to remember the great cost-effectiveness of sending items across the country using our postal service. Deregulation often results not in the intended competitiveness and increased service offerings, but rather in a much poorer service for customers – we need only to look at the utilities companies to see this. At the same time, however, Royal Mail does need to become more commercial and ensure that they are not only doing what they need to in order to be profitable and enable ongoing investment, but are focusing on their customers and responding to the industry’s needs.

Of course, with the ever-increasing popularity of online shopping, e-commerce companies continue to grow and expand, and of course an efficient postal service is key to their success.