It has been interesting watching people’s and the media reaction to the strikes that have been going on now for over a month. It was the first time this weekend that I saw any significant coverage in the media with the Mail on Sunday’s article on mail being sorted in the streets by Royal Mail managers. The headline was something along the lines:

“Postal strike chaos as Post Office managers are forced to sort mail on the pavement”

Royal Mail Managers sort mail on the street

The story being that the managers, who are now delivering priority mail two days per week, couldn’t get in to the delivery office to sort the mail so were doing it in the street. As an aside I am still amazed that the media get Post Office and Royal Mail confused! The story read that there are millions of letters piled up waiting to be delivered. I guess my question is – does anybody care? A quick pole in my local high street in St Albans suggests that few people actually knew that Royal Mail are on strike and more worryingly for the postal industry is that few people seem that interested in what comes through the mail. The view of the majority was that it was probably a good thing as bills would be delayed and it would mean they had a bit more time to pay them! I realise that this might not be a representative sample as it was only 10 people stopped at random on St Albans High Street but it gives an interesting indication of what is to come.

I think that the Royal Mail managers should be applauded for trying to keep the service running and at least keeping the mail flowing to businesses who depend on the mail for thier business. However I think the industry needs to take a step back and look at what this is doing to the industry itself – can it recover or has it really become the carrier of junk – not really valued by the sender or the reciever.

I wrote an article a few months ago whilst I was working on the US around the need to move from a volume based industry to a value based industry which, I believe, is key to its survival. We really need to understand what the receiving customers value and how we can increase this rather than continue to go down the volume route of finding ways of keeping the pipeline sort of full. OK end of rant

What are your thoughts on the value argument, how do you think the public view mail today and do you think it can and will recover?