Ways in which Royal Mail could save its business
By @edent
· innovation post office Royal Mail · 9 comments · 550 words · read ~324 times.
With the news that Royal Mail wants to end Saturday delivery, I got to thinking about how I'd try to innovate a way out of the mess they're in.
The facts are that the critical mass of letter delivery has gone. It isn't coming back. Yes, I know your grandad likes receiving his bank statements in the post, and it's occasionally nice to receive a postcard from your mum when she's on holiday, but email and IM have comprehensively won. Sure, vinyl sales are up, but stamp collectors aren't going to sustain this industry.
Royal Mail should embrace this. The US Postal Service offers something called Informed Delivery. They email you a scan of the front of any envelopes they're due to deliver. That - hopefully - tells you if your Very Important Letter is going to arrive today.
The USPS already scans envelopes for internal tracking, so adding a customer facing service probably wasn't the hardest thing to do.
Royal Mail could do that. And possibly even go a step further. Why can't I pay RM to open my main, scan it, then email it to me? If I'm away from home, I get the information I want. If I need the hard copy I can ask for a physical delivery. If I don't, they can shred it.
There are services which do this - but they're mostly focussed on businesses and require you to change your primary address.
Speaking of changing address, why can't RM sell me a virtual address? I know they have a PO Box service (for £400 per year!) but with the rise in Internet shopping, privacy conscious citizens, and fears of identity theft wouldn't it make sense to offer a "PO Box light" option? Or sell one-time disposable addresses? Or let people post your things using only an email address?
Most people don't need deliveries every single day - although I'm old enough to remember the "second post" each day. Perhaps people want to specify when they want their postal mail? I work from home on Mondays and Fridays, so there's no point delivering to me outside those days. Why not let people opt-out of Saturday delivery? Or opt-in to only Saturday delivery?
Hell, combined with envelope scanning, I could tell my postie not to deliver certain items. Let them shred the junk for me! Or let me automatically "return to sender" anything for the people who used to live here.
Ultimately, Royal Mail is right - their only future is in parcel delivery. With, perhaps, a small legacy business for people who can't or won't use email. Any investment they make into innovation for letters is money down the drain.
The saddest thing is; this was inevitable. Even if they'd embraced innovation 20 years ago, that wouldn't have stopped or slowed the decline in their core business. They are selling a steam-powered product in a solar powered world.
John says:
"second post" The local office for what ever reason delivers parcels by van in the morning an then comes back later to deliver letters by foot, so not the old second post but just as odd. "Let them shred the junk for me! " Not round here as the post service makes extra income to deliver junk mail too, even if you have no standard mail. "Saturday delivery" Erm I was informed they started the sunday delivery during covid an still apparently do so as I recieved an unexpected parcel a few months ago from the Crewe depot for a service I didnt know even existed. I believe the PO is bound by charter to deliver "letter" sized mail even though the competition can cherry pick the profitable services such as parcel.
@Edent they're never ever ever shredding junk mail - it's one of their profit centres.
@Edent Great article! Having a virtual address is definitely something I could consider paying for (having moving out a few weeks ago...). Especially if this address could be shared with other parcel delivery services to reduce fragmentation.
@Edent and hell to the yes for my RM email address being valid for deliveries too 🤣 it’s always a little unnerving chucking my address at random PRs on the internet 😬
@Edent
I rekon Occado could do with some competition for multi-provider shopping delivery, RM have one of the largest local networks, although Amazon are catching up fast and will inevitably eat their business to death.
Another service worth paying for would be to have a virtual printer driver where they print and deliver letters for you. I believe the French Post Office does this, also for personalized postcards (upload your own souvenir photo).
I pay $20/month for a service that scans and optionally shreds letters sent to my old US mailing address.
Don Thompson says:
This is a topic I’ve thought a lot about recently. Royal Mail, in my own experience, has been the most reliable and consistent of delivery services. The company’s recent offer for home collection to send parcels is very useful. Whereas receiving of parcels leaves some room for improvement, I’ve been posting items to a family member, in London, who is now rarely at home during the day. A locker option, located at RM Delivery Offices (DO) would be a useful service. Another observation is that Amazon, Evri, DPD, et al, compete to best the RM small parcel service direct yo my door. My posties are familiar, they’ve even continued to provide a redirection service after a recent move (former and new addresses served by same DO). Perhaps RM could offer a ‘wholesale’ local delivery service via their established DO network in the same way telecom network providers offer access to ISPs (an aside, I have three TNPs running FTTP outisde my home). Lockers might fit well into such an offer. Perhaps I should write to RM!
Thorsten Rissom says:
In Germany you can pay your postage by app. All you get, is a code that you write on the envelope.
@edent says:
We have something similar in the UK. You can buy a stamp online and print it out yourself. I don't think it can be handwritten though.
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