A Bill of Rights for the Post Office

people-at-post-officeDecember 7, 2015
Some people just love to complain about the Postal Service, but the vast majority of Americans are pretty happy with the service they receive at their post office. In fact, several new surveys show once again that people think the post office is just fine.

According to a new Gallup poll, Americans rank the customer service they receive at post offices among the best in the nation — third behind banks and pharmacies. The survey found that 30 percent of adults say they received “excellent” service at a post office they visited during the past month, and another 49 percent said the service was “good.”

Another new survey by Pew Charitable Trust found that 84% of Americans have a favorable view of the Postal Service – the highest rating among 17 agencies and departments tested.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Customer Experience Index (a product of Forrester Research) similarly found that the Postal Service was at the top of the list for federal agencies.

As Jim Nemec, vice president of Consumer and Industry Affairs at the Postal Service, told Nextgov.com in an article this week, “With customers, with employees — especially our mail carriers — we’re obsessed with customers and gaining their trust. Everyone has a vested interest in being customer-centric.”

While postal employees may be doing a great job gaining the trust of customers, the Postal Service is not doing all it could to improve things at the place where most people experience the Postal Service — their neighborhood post office. Unfortunately, the Postal Service doesn’t always give post offices the attention they deserve.

After all, the big mailers (who are responsible for the vast majority of mail volumes) drop their mail at processing facilities and don’t use post offices. In fact, the Postal Service would prefer that regular retail customers found other ways to do postal business, like online at USPS.com or at a private shipping company or at a counter in a Staples store — all of which are cheaper ways to bring in retail revenues than post offices. (There’s more on that in this previous post.)

As a result, the Postal Service puts a lot of money and effort into encouraging customers to “migrate” from post offices to the alternative channels. But vast numbers continue to use the post office anyway.

Read More: A Bill of Rights for the Post Office | Save the Post Office

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