Royal Mail have released their Q1 quality of service report which shows how service levels continue to be impacted by Coronavirus, more specifically due to sickness absence and self-isolation.
Although still under target the figures are not as bad as they were last year, the full-year adjusted 2021 results were 75%, not surprising considering the effects of the pandemic. For Q1 2021/22 Royal Mail delivered 87.2% of 1st class mail on time, missing their target of 93%. For 2nd class mail, they delivered 97.5% on time, barely missing their target of 98.5%. But if we compare these figures with Q4 2019/20 when they were making 91.6% of 1st class deliveries on time, we can see that the pandemic is clearly still causing a bit of trouble.
As a seller you are likely doing all you can to warn customers of the potential Royal Mail delays, however, when you offer a delivery service, it is understandable that you would be offering such, based on an expected delivery time scale of that service and expecting it to be accurate. Seeing that they are slightly under target it would be reasonable to continue warning customers of potential delays. Then again, if we ignore the targets all together we can see that during the first quarter of the year leading up to 27 June 2021, Royal Mail delivered 97.5 per cent of Second Class mail within three working days. The Company delivered 87.2 per cent of First Class mail the next working day with 97.0 per cent delivered within two days.
“We have been working hard to improve Quality of Service. While today’s report shows that service levels continue to be impacted by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are making progress with notable improvements across our First and Second class products compared to the previous quarter. Royal Mail has one of the highest Quality of Service specifications of any major European country and our postmen and women are working extremely hard to deliver high standards of service to all our customers across the UK.”
– Shiona Rolfe, Service Delivery Director, Royal Mail
