Tag: Europe

U.S. Postal Service Renews Contract with Convergys

Posted by | May 11, 2007 | |

Convergys Corporation, a global leader in customer care, human resources, and billing services, announces a contract renewal under which it will continue to deliver service to customers of the United States Postal Service (USPS). The USPS has extended the current 4-year agreement with Convergys for two years.

Convergys will continue to manage the entire postal customer contact experience across all channels through live agents, automated speech services, e-mail, and Web support. The Convergys professional services team will also continue to provide consulting and analytics for a customer intelligence program that constantly measures customer satisfaction. The USPS serves over 7 million customers a day at more than 37,000 outlets, and delivers 202 billion pieces of mail a year.

To obtain immediate “voice of the customer” performance feedback, Convergys uses its Point-of-Service Evaluation customer satisfaction feedback system to support decision-making. This real-time analytic approach offers online information giving managers dynamic, actionable data to ensure customer satisfaction levels are maintained and improved.

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An Post's next-day delivery rate falls to 72%

Posted by | May 11, 2007 | |

Just 72 per cent of the standard mail handled by An Post last year reached its destination by the following day, according to figures published yesterday by ComReg.

This represented a decline of one percentage point on 2005 and is well below the 94 per cent next-day delivery target agreed by the State group with the regulator. The statistics also showed that 97 per cent of all mail was delivered within three working days, below the 99.5 per cent target set by ComReg.

In addition, just 70 per cent of mail posted in Dublin for delivery around the State reached its destination the next working day. This was down three percentage points on 2005.

The only positive for An Post came from figures for the final quarter of last year, which included the busy Christmas season, when next-day delivery service levels were up three points on the previous year.

News of the performance drew a sharp response from consumer representatives. Ann Fitzgerald, executive chair of the National Consumer Association, said she viewed the “poor service with concern”. She said the agency was seeking a meeting with ComReg to discuss the issue.

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DHL investigates the use of biodiesel for its fleet in the UK

Posted by | May 11, 2007 | |

A UK division of the international DHL logistics group, DHL Exel Supply Chain, has started to investigate the possibility of operating its delivery vehicles using 100% biodiesel.

DHL has undertaken this project in partnership with JD Wetherspoon and Argent Energy UK, a producer of biodiesel. The project will involve recycling and re-processing cooking oil, previously used to cook meals in Wetherspoons pubs, for further deliveries back into the pub estate.

Test runs on an initial trial vehicle will begin end of May to prove the feasibility and assess maintenance and operational requirements before rolling out the program to the wider distribution fleet.

Bill Bacon, National Account Director from DHL Exel Supply Chain said: “We are committed to being an environmentally responsible business and are always looking at innovative ways to create sustainable supply chains. This is a superb example of everyone’s collaboration into exploring new technologies and alternative fuels that could potentially lead the way into long term sustainability. As the leading provider of contract logistics services we have a responsibility to set best practise solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of our vehicles.”

Andy Hunter from Argent Energy, said: “We specialize in producing biodiesel by recycling by-products of other industries, specifically tallow and used cooking oil which are both by-products of the food industry. Our stringent quality assurance procedures ensure that all our output is of the highest quality and that we can produce biodiesel to customers’ precise specifications. More and more businesses are looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint and we are delighted that our expertise has been called on in this innovative project.”

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Sharp suit with an iron hand in a woolly glove

Posted by | May 11, 2007 | |

The Guardian photographer is trying to make Adam Crozier relax. He tells him to loosen his shoulders and Crozier, sitting stiffly and gripping a Royal Mail mug, makes an effort to shrug a little. The photographer asks him to stand. “If you can get your back against the wall,” he says. Crozier does as he is told and looks like he is facing a firing squad.

I had first met Crozier some 12 years earlier, on the day he and Tamara Ingram were named joint chief executives of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Maurice and Charles Saatchi had just walked out and taken most of the senior staff and some of the biggest clients with them. Crozier was just 31 and looked even younger. The more energetic Ingram did much of the talking. Against the odds, they held the business together. She went on to carve out a successful career in advertising and now manages the USD 1bn Proctor & Gamble advertising account. But Crozier was the one to step further into the public eye. He was chairman of the Football Association at 36 and chief executive of the Royal Mail by 39.

It is an odd career path on paper – Crozier admits with a laugh that his CV might suggest he is someone who doesn’t know quite what he wants to do. But there are common threads. Each has involved periods of painful upheaval. A business studies student might call it change management. Each of them has also been high profile – he was a familiar fixture behind former England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson during FA press conferences – but still the spotlight makes him shudder. “I hate it,” he says in his soft Scottish accent. “Absolutely hate it. The bizarre thing about the last three jobs I’ve done is that I don’t like [the public profile] at all. I will go to enormous lengths not to do public things – because it is just not me.”

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Royal Mail fears exodus

Posted by | May 11, 2007 | |

The exodus of big business from the Royal Mail could see as many as one in five letters being handled by competitors such as Dutch group TNT and the UK Mail arm of courier group Business Post, it has emerged.

Senior Royal Mail executive Stephen Agar has admitted latest figures show that about 12.5% of the post was lost to the competition last year.

But with major customers continuing to ditch the Royal Mail at alarming rates, Agar said that figure could rise to 20%.

The defection of companies with major bulk billing operations to Royal Mail’s rivals has become increasingly embarrassing for the former state postal monopoly.

Earlier this year, the £8m-a-year BBC TV licensing operation took its postal needs to UK Mail, following an earlier decision by the Department of Works and Pensions to switch its £12m-a-year contract to the same operator.

That followed the decisions, recently revealed by the Evening Standard, of BT and British Gas group Centrica to move to TNT for their mail needs, together worth GBP 150m over three years.

Most of the mobile phone companies, banks and utilities have also decided to quit Royal Mail, citing price and quality of service.

Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier, pictured, today defended the business’s ability to handle competition.

‘We’ve gone through the process [of market liberalisation] that BT went through over 25 years,’ he said. ‘We’ve concertinaed it into three.’

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