Royal Mail met two thirds of its targets during summer

Royal Mail achieved most of its service quality standards over the summer, hitting or exceeding eight of its 12 targets. Its latest service results reveal that the UK postal service achieved its First and Second Class quality targets, along with business bulk mail, Standard parcels and European international mail in the three months up to September 2011.

For First Class, 93.2% of deliveries were made for the next working day during the second quarter of 2011, two tenths of a point above target.

Second Class came in at 98.7% for delivery within three working days, again two-tenths of a point above requirements.

Targets that were missed came “narrowly” under target, Royal Mail insisted, including numbers of collection points and delivery routes completed each day.

Royal Mail partly blamed the riots occuring in London, Bristol, the Midlands and the North West during August, however, it also said there continued to be issues related to its GBP 2bn modernisation programme.

Special Delivery services narrowly missed their 99% target with a 98.8% on time performance.

Data came from independent measurements by Research International, based on 245,000 sample letters, parcels and packets.

In the year so far, some key services at Royal Mail remain below target, with the operator warning it will be “challenging” to hit targets for the full year given the scale of Royal Mail’s modernisation programme.

Mark Higson, Royal Mail’s managing director for operations and modernisation, said the company was working through its difficulties in certain places, doing “everything we can” to see that changes have a minimal impact on customers.

He said: “While the operational changes we are making to modernise the business are being implemented in many areas without any impact on customer service, we do recognise that in some localities there has been an adverse impact on customers.”

Modernisation

Royal Mail, which collects and delivers mail six days a week, said its best First Class service was seen in the Aberdeen area of North-East Scotland, with other areas achieving above-96% service quality including Halifax, Motherwell and Perth.

First Class quality levels were below the minimum acceptable threshold of 91.5% in 14 of the 118 postcode areas, Royal Mail said, adding that it was doing everything possible to lift the “unacceptable” performances in these areas.

Higson paid tribute to the hard work of Royal Mail staff as most of the targets were achieved during “one of the biggest transformation programmes in UK industry”.

Royal Mail has been deploying new mail sequencing machines, restructuring its delivery rounds and revising its processes in an attempt to cut operating costs in the light of declining mail volumes.

A significant rise in complaints came at the start of this year regarding lost mail, although at the time Royal Mail placed blame on the winter’s severe weather.

Higson said yesterday that the maximum period of change at Royal Mail was now underway.

He said: “The jobs of more than 100,000 postmen and women are changing, we’re giving them better equipment to take the weight off their backs of higher packet and parcel volumes, and large amounts of new technology are being deployed.

“We remain determined, however, to complete our transformation while delivering the highest possible quality of service to all our customers,” added the Royal Mail MD for operations and modernisation.