Survey of UK Royal Mail distribution published

The Royal Mail needs to improve its game considerably if it is to keep an area of its business worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year warned the CIPR’s Local Government Group today. Results of the CIPR Group’s survey of Members who use the Royal Mail to distribute their civic publications, published today, deliver a resounding ‘thumbs down’ for the quality of service received. The findings echo those found through earlier work carried out by LGcommunications, which represents local councils on matters relating to communications across the country. LGcommunications subsequently received a commitment from Royal Mail to address the issues of concern and for the best part of a year, has been working with the Royal Mail through a special joint working group to achieve improvements to their distribution service. However these latest results from an online survey of the Royal Mail’s service posted on the CIPR Local Government Group’s website do not look promising at present. CIPR members from 37 local authorities completed the survey and results show that 60% of councils are constantly on the look out for alternative service providers and 69% consider the service they receive from the Royal Mail to be of poor value.
The survey asked for feedback on a number of aspects of the Royal Mail’s service from those councils that currently use it. The results show that of those who completed the questionnaire: • 13.5% say that they are satisfied with the service they receive, 38% are actively dissatisfied • 92% say that the Royal Mail is either inflexible or very inflexible when it comes to dealing with their requirements. • 71% say that they are rarely able or never manage to deal with the same point of contact at Royal Mail (6.4% say that they can always or usually do so) • 71% say that it is either difficult or very difficult to speak with someone at Royal Mail about their contract. (6.5% say it is very easy) • 64% say that they often complain to Royal Mail about aspects of their distribution service, (33% say they sometimes complain and 3% say rarely) • 90% say that the Royal Mail does not handle their complaints well and of these, 45.5% think that their complaints are handled extremely badly.
When it comes to getting the newspapers through the door to their intended audience: • 50% of those responding to the survey say that they perceive the Royal Mail service to be getting to between 70 – 89% of their target. • 31% perceive that the reach is better at over 90% • 19% say that they perceive the service to be reaching under 69%. . Pat Gaudin of Chelmsford Borough Council, who chairs the CIPR’s Local Government Group, said today that the Royal Mail needed to improve its distribution service for councils or face losing out to more enterprising new providers. “These are very poor results for the Royal Mail and should prompt them to look hard at the quality of service they are providing to councils.
“It has been the case to date that many councils have had little or no choice of providers to help them get their newspapers and magazines out to residents on a regular basis, but this is changing. If the Royal Mail values the contracts it has with local councils it needs to up its game or accept that it will lose out.” The survey results have been passed on to LGcommunications for taking forward through their joint working group with the Royal Mail. Their annual conference in Liverpool from 13 to 15 April will give The Royal Mail a platform to unveil its new distribution package for councils. Contacts for Further Information • CIPR Local Government Group Joanna Hannam MCIPR – Member of the CIPR Local Government Group Executive and Head of Communications at Norfolk County Council. 01603 222969.
• LGcommunications Kevin Wilson, Heaton Wilson Communications Ltd. 01451 861117