Post office forges new partnership
THE King’s Square Post Office in Gloucester is joining forces with a
well-known stationery supplier this month to offer a wider range of services
to customers. The city’s main Post Office branch will be taking part in a trial during which
it will close the post shop and open a more specialist outlet run by
stationery suppliers Partners. The trial follows a report analysing the set-up of the Post Office which
recommended that to be successful, it needed to focus on its primary services. “If a member of staff was ill on the shop till, a member of staff from the
post office counter would have to cover, making the service less efficient and
queues larger,” said Rob Tilley, retail concessions manager. To solve the problem, the post office decided to bring in an outside company
to increase the choice of products as well as profitability. “The point is, retail is Partners’ area of expertise and not ours,” he said. “They can organise special offers and satisfy customer demand far better than
we can and offer a wider range of services. “If all goes well, and the trial is successful for both companies, we would
like to roll this out over a period to be decided.” Tony Nicholls, business development manager for Partners, said: “We are very
confident that this will be a success and that we will be giving the people of
Gloucester a better service.” Mr Nicholls said that as far as he knew there were no plans to re-employ any
of the staff that had lost their jobs during the recent closure of the
Partners outlet in King’s Walk, and that this was a separate venture. Apart from the usual post office services, Mr Tilley said there would also be
a full range of stationery products including packaging, general office
supplies, writing materials, cartridges and a range of greetings cards. Postage stamps and National Lottery tickets will continue to be available,
along with mobile phone top-up cards and BT phone cards. Customers can expect to find the new-look post office in place on August 22,
but the existing post shop will close this Saturday.
CITIZEN, 07th August 2001
