The Postal Service and Amazon are using the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) improvement process to strengthen the way the two organizations serve customers.
Through a pilot project, Amazon will drop off shipments at Post Offices near the customers who are supposed to receive the packages. Previously, Amazon took the shipments to USPS mail processing plants, where the packages were sorted and transported to Post Offices.
“This change in approach will increase volume for the Postal Service and provide significant savings to Amazon,” says Consumer and Industry Affairs Vice President Jim Nemec. “It’s a triple crown win for us, Amazon and the customer.”
The project also aims to improve the quality of the information provided to Amazon customer service agents. The Postal Service plans to provide Amazon with more self-service tools so Amazon customer service agents resolve customer issues themselves without having to contact a USPS customer care center.
The pilot was created by representatives from USPS Consumer and Industry Affairs and Amazon’s customer service and transportation teams. The participants conducted an LSS Kaizen effort to identify and implement improvements.