Royal Mail are upgrading customer service points at a number of its delivery offices, the upgrade programme covers 45 delivery offices (this year) from Belfast to Darlington, Pontypool to Manchester.
The improvements include installing new open-plan customer service counters – removing the glass screens to create a modern, lighter and brighter environment in which to serve customers.
At a number of offices, Royal Mail are trialling a new customer service point IT system. This will improve the tracking of mail that is returned if the customer was not at home and/or could not be left with a neighbour. The system will also help Royal Mail to identify returned items more quickly and reduce waiting times for customers collecting these items.
Royal Mail have also carried out general building maintenance and repairs at the sites which has upgraded the facilities for both customers and delivery postmen and women.
They are also providing additional training for workers in the customer service points in many delivery offices. These people play a vital role in serving customers face-to-face. Nearly 3,000 of our people have so far undertaken this training to help them to serve customers more efficiently and ensures Royal Mail deliver a high class service to customers.
Whilst these improvements might seem unimportant, it’s actually vital to the future growth of Royal Mail. The UK postal service is still one of the favourite delivery methods for many consumers but they’re lagging behind in the ease of parcel collection. Local Collect is a great step forward, but that relies on the retailers adopting it as an option leaving millions of parcels to be collected from Delivery Offices.
Mike Newnham, Royal Mail’s Chief Customer Officer agrees with the importance of the collection experience, saying “Royal Mail is proud to operate in the heart of communities across the UK and we are delighted to be able to serve our customers from these new-look offices. Whether we have moved our delivery operations into a new building, or have refurbished an existing site, these improvements to our delivery offices will help us to continue to provide a consistent and high quality service to our customers.”
4 Responses
This is the way forward, Royal Mail! What about some lockers outside the delivery offices too?
I’m not surprised they decided to upgrade the customer service point in the image above, this is in the heart of Manchester’s student population and I remember from my time there about 10 years ago it was always heaving even then. God knows what it will be like now!!
this seems to have happened around 3-6 months ago at my local middlesbrough office,
it used to be a room which was around the size of 2-3 phoneboxes. NO exaggeration.
now its large and has room for seating for waiting.
The Cambridge DO has also been revamped as part of its move from another site and now looks very similar to the above and much more spacious than the previous place.
Very nice indeed & good to see some investment at long last.
However there does not seem to be any obvious space or access provision for an out of hours locker collection service which is a pity given the nature of this particular site.