Tag: USA

USPS show benefits of digital signage

Posted by | Jun 9, 2008 | |

The US Postal Services has released results that show the effectiveness of digital signage in redirecting customers to in-store self-service options. With over 32,000 busy retail locations, encouraging customers to change their behaviour and help themselves to information and services is a central part of the USPS’s strategy.

In a recent test the Post Office installed 30-inch “Stop and Turn” screens in the main entrances, showing short, direct and simple 3-5 second messages such as “Get out line. Buy stamps at vending” or “Jump the line, Ship pacages at the APC”.

The USPS has 2,500 APC’s (Automated Postal Center), interactive kiosks that sell stamps and provide a mail service point for packages. The “Stop and Turn” digital signage screen had the effect of making customers more likely to use both the stamp vending (8.7% against 6.5%) and the APC service (7.4% against 3.4%).

The digital screens were also used to promote the availability of postal services in the 70,000 other non-post office locations (such as supermarkets). Again the digital signage tests showed a 22% jump in awareness – and to prove the point, revenues from stamp sales declined in the test sites, only to rise in the local alternative locations.

AKA COMMENT

It is easy to see why the Post Office is innovating in self-service. A reduction in human interaction of 2.2% and 4% across 32,000 locations would result in a vast saving of staff time. This not only opens up the opportunity to cut costs in-store, but as the banks have found, it frees-up valuable employee time for selling higher margin and more complex products.

Customers are proving themselves ever more comfortable with the concept of self-service, what started with the ATM has spread through the internet to cover a whole range of different product categories. The difficulty has always been persuading customers to use the silent ‘box in the corner’.

From this research it would seem that combining the kiosk with dynamic digital signage may hold the key.

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Digital signage used by USPS to spark interest in kiosks

Posted by | Jun 9, 2008 | |

Sometimes, when I speak at conferences, I joke about some of the long-standing traditions we have at the Postal Service: “More than 230 years of tradition unmarred by progress.”

Beyond that self-deprecating attempt at humor, I’m proud to say that there has been significant progress over the years – from simple innovations like self-adhesive stamps and flat-rate priority mail boxes to more complex ones like automated mail sorting and printing postage online.

The Postal Service also has made progress with the testing and deployment of large, complex communication networks. In 1996, we introduced Postal Vision, an employee communications network that now is integrated with our USPS-TV network. As an “early adopter” of digital signage, we began testing the impact of digital vs. static menu boards in retail lobbies in 1999. And in 2003, we laid the groundwork for a test of digital signage that began in selected post offices in 2004 – The Post Office Channel. This third effort took advantage of the advances that had taken place in a growing medium including content delivery methods and the declining costs of technology.

One of our challenges is to improve the customer experience in more than 32,000 retail locations. Digital signage can have a positive impact on the retail environment in several ways. One opportunity is to increase the range of information available to customers while they are waiting to be served. The Post Office Channel features product and service messages to educate and inform retail customers. For example, one message compares the product features of overnight express mail and two-to-three-day priority mail. Another compares delivery confirmation to signature confirmation and shows which form to use depending on which service the customer chooses.

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SMEs optimistic on intra-Asia trade

Posted by | Jun 9, 2008 | |

US economic woes are rattling Asian SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprices) and caution is the watchword amid chal-lenging times, according to a United Parcel Ser-vice (UPS) survey. Only 39 percent of the 1,200 respondents see growth in trade with the US this year, compared with 51 percent last year. But the majority of the SMEs (71 percent) are confident that intra-Asia trade will remain robust despite the economic woes in other regions.

The confidence in intra-Asia trade is a blessing in disguise for UPS as such enterprises provide the bulk of the freight forwarder’s business in Asia. Joseph Guerrisi, UPS vice-president of marketing for Asia-Pacific, said: “UPS is achieving better than the eight percent global growth it has forecast for freight business in Asia.”

However, surcharges that UPS imposes to help defray its surging fuel costs appear to be damping demand somewhat, and more customers are seeking cheaper shipment options, Woodward said.

A recent silver lining for UPS in Asia has been a higher-than-expected demand for its recent Anchorage-Nagoya-Shanghai service. Another positive development is that demand on some routes in Asia has been strong enough to justify a switch to larger aircraft, Woodward said.

Despite the general Asian bearish outlook, there are pockets of optimism among the Asian SMEs, according to the UPS Asia Business Montor. For example, in India some 87 percent of SMEs are upbeat about business growth prospects, which is most likely because of the country’s less dependence on US trade.

In general, Asian SME0 confidence in growth prospects for 2008 has slipped compared to the robust expectations last year, in light of the US economic slowdown, the survey shows.

Optimism has slipped across the region from 57 percent in 2007 to 52 percent in 2008 and a sentiment of caution pervades among SMEs. Half of the companies surveyed feel they will not perform quite as well as they did in 2007. China has slipped from second to fifth position in business prospects for 2008, surpassed by the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia while Japan SME’s confidence has dropped by 10 percent.

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A smaller carbon footprint? (U.S)

Posted by | Jun 9, 2008 | |

Agencies have been ordered to cut their energy consumption, buy green office equipment, and gas up their government vehicles on ethanol-blended fuels.

But these mandates have only hinted at the ultimate goal: cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s about to change.

The Environmental Protection Agency next year will order at least some agencies to start measuring and reducing their carbon footprint.

The U.S. Postal Service isn’t a member of the EPA program, but it’s also been taking steps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as part of a larger effort to make its postal routes more efficient. With help from IBM Global Business Services, the Postal Service in 2006 created a program to target inefficient highway routes driven by tractor trailers. In many cases, these trucks were operating at 60 percent capacity.

In two years, the Postal Service has saved 1.2 million gallons of gasoline, primarily diesel, and reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 28 million pounds. It’s also cut emissions of carbon monoxide by 60,000 pounds and nitrogen oxide by 400,000 pounds.
E.J. Matto, an associate partner at IBM, said the program targets just a small number of trips but illustrates how much savings could be achieved if the agency were to target additional routes. “The next step is for the Postal Service to expand this to a larger level,” he said.

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