Russian Post to boost customer service for small businesses

Russian Post is working to step up its customer service standards, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. The company is planning on introducing special areas within its post offices for SMEs and corporate customers, which it believes will also help cut waiting times for other customers.

It is also prioritising a new system of uniform customer service standards across the country, and will be using ideas like a “mystery shopper” scheme to ensure quality control.

And, Russian Post said it is also looking to further develop its hybrid mail capabilities for business customers. It will take forward efforts started in 2010 to provide a network of print facilities so that businesses can send mail electronically, to be printed locally to recipients, who would receive it as physical mail.

The Post said hybrid mail would mean sending letters “significantly faster” than the conventional means, since it would bypass much of the postal processing network.

Marina Goncharova, the head of Russian Post’s postal services directorate, said many particularly smaller business customers were unaware of the full extent of postal services available to them.

“These services are already available in some regions,” she said. “Russian Post is today effectively developing these high-quality services for the whole of Russia.”

Russian Post said quality control would be improved especially within the Central Federal District, around the Moscow area, the largest district in Russia by population, in which almost a quarter of all post offices are located. The district generates as much as 49% of all mail in Russia.

“The quality of postal services in the Central Federal District is an indicator of Russia as a whole,” said Goncharova. “That’s why the company will pay particular attention to the level of service in this area, and will then successfully transfer the accumulated positive experience for the whole of Russia.”