Tag: Royal Mail

The Royal Mail needs to improve its game considerably if it is to keep an area of its business worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year warned the CIPR’s Local Government Group today. Results of the CIPR Group’s survey of Members who use the Royal Mail to distribute their civic publications, published today, deliver a resounding ‘thumbs down’ for the quality of service received. The findings echo those found through earlier work carried out by LGcommunications, which represents local councils on matters relating to communications across the country. LGcommunications subsequently received a commitment from Royal Mail to address the issues of concern and for the best part of a year, has been working with the Royal Mail through a special joint working group to achieve improvements to their distribution service.

Pat Gaudin, chairwoman of the CIPR Local Government Group, has warned that the Royal Mail will lose business unless it revamps its newsletter distribution package for councils. In a recent survey conducted by the group, 92 per cent of councils described Royal Mail as ‘inflexible’ or ‘very inflexible’ when it came to meeting their requirements. Only 13.5 per cent of councils said they were satisfied with the service they received, while 38 per cent were ‘actively dissatisfied’. Nearly 65 per cent of users said they often complained to Royal Mail about aspects of its distribution service, while 90 per cent said the organisation did not handle their complaints well. Gaudin said: ‘It has been the case to date that many councils have had little or no choice of provider for regular newsletter distribution, but this is changing. Royal Mail needs to up its game or accept it will lose out.’