Nine out of ten first class letters consistently arrive next day – Royal Mail reliability continues to improve
Royal Mail has now been delivering nine out ten First Class letters the next working day after posting for nine consecutive months, Consignia said today.
The company announced that Royal Mail’s First Class mail quality of service result for February and March was 91.6 per cent against a licence target of 92.1 per cent. Second Class mail achieved 98.9 per cent, exceeding its target by 0.4 per cent and Special Delivery – Royal Mail’s guaranteed service – achieved 99.1 per cent, just ahead of target. Overall, Royal Mail achieved 8 out of 12 product performance regulatory targets.
Jerry Cope, Consignia’s Group Managing Director for mail services said: “It is disappointing that we failed our First Class stamped mail target by a small margin. But equally it is encouraging that we exceeded our targets on Second Class mail, business contract mail and Special Delivery. The improvements in the performance of our First Class service demonstrate strong foundations for meeting our licence target of 92.5 per cent by March 2003.”
Performance for First Class mail has risen from 86.5 for the first quarter of the financial year when it was affected by severe industrial action. Days lost through industrial action fell dramatically from 42,500 days lost in industrial action in April and May last year to around 2000 in February and March this year. “The efforts of our staff alongside improvements in industrial relations have had a positive impact on quality of service,” said Mr Cope.
“The rail network performance has also been generally more stable although services have still been erratic and unreliable on some lines.”
Mr Cope added: “Our basic services are good value for money and Special Delivery, which competes with private courier services that are priced far more highly, is exceptional. Well over half of our postcode areas are meeting or exceeding targets and some of our offices are world class, consistently delivering quality of service of around 94 per cent. But this is contrasted against a few, particularly in London, where performance is only around 85 per cent. In these blackspot areas of the country, where we are not giving our customers good enough service, we are spreading the ‘best practices’ from the centres that continually exceed targets.
“We are concentrating efforts on meeting minimum standards, agreed with Postwatch, at every single Royal Mail centre so that we close the geographical gaps in mail reliability and give all our customers consistent and sustainable service.”
Parcelforce Worldwide delivered 81.6 per cent of Standard Retail Parcels on time against a target of 88 per cent. At Post Office branches 94.1 per cent of customers are served within five minutes, exceeding the target of 94 per cent.
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