As consumer and business habits change and global e-commerce sends more goods through the post, Posts must provide customers with services they actually need instead of services Posts “think” they need.
“We have to look at our complex range of services through the customer’s eyes and be prepared to review and change these to meet the ever-increasing marketplace changes and requirements,” said Chris Powell, from Great Britain’s Royal Mail, chair of the UPU’s products strategy and integration group.
The group recently met at UPU headquarters ahead of the upcoming session of the Postal Operations Council (POC) this April to review progress and discuss next steps.
Simplifying the UPU’s range of global services is an important activity during the UPU’s current work cycle. It is essential to keeping the network sustainable, said Powell, especially as the organization deploys its new e-commerce programme, ECOMPRO.
Designed to foster confidence in global online purchases and deliveries, ECOMPRO provides the building blocks Posts need to provide solutions to many of today’s e-commerce challenges in areas of delivery, customs processing, merchandise returns, quality of service and payments, among others.
In late 2014, the UPU made progress in creating services customers and e-tailers want when the POC adopted specifications for a new optional parcel service covering goods up to 30 kg and offering track-and-trace features. Efforts are now being focused on making this service operational by January 2016, with pilot projects expected to start by July. Proposals for a remuneration model and delivery standards linked to the new service will also be presented at the upcoming POC session.
Status quo risky
For Terry Dunn, co-chair of the POC’s committee dealing with physical services, modernizing, integrating and ensuring the viability and sustainability of the UPU’s physical product portfolio must be done in parallel to the development of regulations to foster global e-commerce.
“The world is changing. Are we (postal services)? The status quo carries risks,” he said, recalling that satisfying customers’ changing needs was central to the UPU’s mission of stimulating “the lasting development of efficient and accessible universal postal services.”
“There is a fundamental change in how people and businesses are transacting. How they are using postal products is also changing and what they expect from postal services is changing as well,” he added.
The POC is set to meet from 15 April to 1 May, right after the UPU’s World Strategy Conference in Geneva.
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