Our
Mail on the Digital Trail (The Other Side)
By Ronald Williams, Jr., 1/27/2010 |
Delivering mail six
days a week to every household and business in America is an
extraordinary task that binds the people of the nation together. If you
were to take a field trip to a mail processing or distribution center in
any nearby city or town you would be amazed at the technology,
equipment, and amount of employees required to deliver freedom (in the
form of mail) for this federal agency. The cost of first class postage
is considerably inexpensive compared to the rest of civilization outside
the United States for the same type of universal service. In this essay
I will share my thoughts, experiences, observations, and future
expectations for U.S. mail. I say, buy American! I would rate my
customer experience with the Postal Service a 9 on a scale of 1-10. I
personally spend $4000 a year mailing and shipping all kinds of mail. I
enjoy buying and receiving mail services from the professional men and
women of the United States Postal Service but...
"The Postal Service is the core of the trillion dollar mailing industry
that employs more than 8 million people."
Every day I relax by my window looking out into the cul-de-sac watching
life pass by as though it were a video right in front of my window. I
watch as residents arrive throughout the afternoon into the evening
making their way to their personal mail boxes. I see smiling faces as
people walk away from the mail box. People read and walk as if they are
concentrating intently on the letters in their hands. I can hear
neighbors talking aloud to themselves. Another resident drives up to the
box, leaves empty handed, and breaks traction as he speeds away toward
his driveway only fifty feet away. It's always fun to watch one
particular family van circle the street and stop at the mail boxes and
see the two little girls jump out cheerfully running to the mail box to
get the mail. After retrieving the mail they race each other down to
their house while the mom driving the van follows closely behind.
Watching all this activity reminds me how surprising it can be to pick
up the mail.
These days the mail volume appears to be on a drastic decline. I'm sure
I receive less mail with each passing year. The mail carrier used to
arrive mid afternoon and now arrives before noon. When I ask him why he
is early he usual says in a depressed tone that the amount of mail is
seriously slowing down and he is not sure if it will ever pick back up.
He says that his regular route was readjusted to keep him busy and he
arrives earlier because he doesn't have as much mail to sort out in the
morning in preparation for delivery. I generally get around six pieces
of mail but only bother to open one or two pieces and the rest generally
goes straight to the recycling bin or shredder. Don't say the words
"junk mail" around a letter carrier or you might get a nasty snarl as
they rightfully consider everything they deliver essential to their job
security. Some might call that job insecurity for being satisfied with
the status quo and lacking an entrepreneur spirit which is an essential
quality next to empathy for those who wish to remain in business with a
competitive advantage.
About one month ago I mailed a letter with a check inside and invested a
few extra dollars for expedited shipping with tracking and the letter
never made it to its destination. The check was never cashed. The
tracking number on the Postal Service website displays the tracking
number, date, and time the letter was accepted. To this date no one at
the Postal Service can tell me where my letter could possibly be. Did my
letter fall into a black hole somewhere? I was smart to mail my letter
and payment one month earlier than the deadline or else I could have
paid a hefty fee in penalties to my servicing official. I had enough
wait time to see if the loop would close on processing. Since it didn't
close I resent the letter. This time I requested a return receipt for
proof and accountability which I quickly received and the new check was
cashed at its destination. I wondered if this could possibly be an
isolated incident or a wake-up call to transition to the digital mail
platform. I hope I won't have to keep adding on services if I expect my
letter or parcel to arrive at its destination. The tolerated margin of
error with paper delivery is very small when other options are
available. The first time important documents or contents are delayed or
not received then the customers will begin to vote for a new service
with their feet and it will probably be in an electronic form.
A friend of mine who lives in southern California told me that regional
fires caused the post office to be closed sometime around the end of the
month. His elderly mom was awaiting her monthly pension check that was
days late, and she was being harassed by her landlord. I think she
should consider receiving her payment through direct deposit. That
unfortunate and untimely "act of god" situation can leave a lasting
impact from unreasonable penalties and a poor service experience. We all
know the unwritten customer service rules that remind us when we have a
good experience we tell ten people, and when we have a bad experience we
tell twenty five people. That is never good for business.
The 21st century has arrived with the speed of transmission. The
electronic age unexpectedly challenges the way businesses provide
services. We are quickly becoming a global society engaged in a
proactive paradigm shift regarding the way we live on planet earth. We
are a green culture that is environmentally conscious and insistent on
reducing, reusing and recycling to save our planet for many generations
to come. The Postal Service of the new millennium is one that will have
to improvise and adapt to remain relevant and reinvent itself among
electronic forms of communication such as email, text messaging, social
networking, online bill pay, and competing with a green environment.
Times are changing and moving at a pace consistent with the theme of a
New York minute, now commonly known as a New York second. Today if you
ask people when they need something, chances are they will say yesterday
making everything urgent even if it is not important. The pony express
needs to convert itself into electronic horsepower and chart a course
for the postal supersonic eagle (post office logo) to rendezvous with
the paperless coalition.
When people ask each other how they are doing we often hear the phrase
S.O.S meaning same old stuff and they add different day, changing the
acronym to S.O.S.D.D. These days there is no such thing as the same old
stuff. The digital age is in full effect and if there was a banner to
hang up it would say "It's changing everything." Communication is one of
the most important tools needed for success in the tool bag of life.
This high tech era offers a vast variety of inexpensive alternatives to
marketing, digitized signatures, buying postage stamps, the problem of
un-deliverability, mechanical malfunction, inclement weather, and
environmental disasters. If you are the family or the business chief
financial officer you can easily add up the savings on labor, paper,
fuel, and whatever impacts a sound business or stimulus plan. Cost
savings can be transferred to charitable contributions, improved
employee benefits or whatever it takes to leave a smaller corporate
footprint.
Open it! Pay for it! File it! Wireless connectivity keeps us mobile and
flexible at the same time. Computers allow us to send animated online
greetings cards, read the daily newspaper, or save your favorite
magazine to your desktop. The bank that finances my car is cutting down
on mail costs by mailing three payment envelopes at one time and putting
the responsibility on getting the monthly payment mailed on time on me
without a paper reminder. They pay once to mail three envelopes, and I
pay three different postages to mail my payment for each of the next
three months. A reduction in paper also means less transportation costs.
The Postal Service reported on their website that for the year 2008 they
used 121 million gallons of fuel. Another article I read said that every
time the gas prices go up one cent, their costs go up by $8,000,000. I
don't understand how that contributes to a less dependent or energy
efficient anything. People are fighting back with the junk mail
advertisements inside of bill payment envelopes by retuning the
advertisements back to the mailer with their payment in the return
envelope for the creditor to add to their bottom line recycling costs.
According to one website, the average household recycles around 41
pounds of junk mail annually. Do-not-mail lists are gaining interest and
momentum around the country. As another point of interest, it is also
reported that "The manufacture of junk mail releases more greenhouse gas
emissions per year than the emissions released by 9,372,000 million
average passenger cars."
With the internet option anyone can select their own hours of operation
on the twenty-four hour clock at home, from their desk, in transit, or
on vacation. There are a great number of people from all generations who
prove to the rest of us that everyone is not internet ready and many who
are reluctant to have anything to do with this era of electronics. Many
people say they are paranoid with images of the government tracking
their every move. Payphones have slowly been removed from the
environment and anyone who wants to stay connected only needs to get a
mobile phone. A senior citizen friend of mine in his seventies who used
the payphone everyday to check lottery numbers was very upset when he
showed up to work one day and the payphone was gone. This is a play
right out of the book about change titled "Who Moved My Cheese." He
vowed to never get a cell phone and he called the people who took it out
of the building every name in the book. That makes me think of the many
faces of change; frowning from being forced to change, smiling when I
change on my own, wide open eyes when there is a big change and the
hardened look of a dinosaur from refusing to change. Similar attitudes
to my payphone friend can be expected in the near future when post
offices begin to close and cut back services to keep their organization
leaner, meaner and more relevant in this electronic and unstable
economic time.
Movies by mail are slowly being replaced with direct digital download.
If you every received a disc in the mail and it was damaged for whatever
reason you would probably consider purchasing some kind of hardware that
will eliminate the need to wait for delivery in the mail. Many cell
phones are capable of doing as much as computers. We now live in a world
with electronic translation devices, electronic readers, navigation
devices, and super useful gadgets like iPods to keep us organized,
educated, and entertained at the same time. Paper anyone? Would you like
to access your mail when you are out of town? Maybe you would you like
the post office to charge you a small fee to hold your mail for you. I
don't think anyone would like to have their identity left on their
doorstep at anytime.
In closing I shared some of my personal postal experiences,
observations, and future expectations about our Postal Service. This
other side is not meant to be personal, but it has a lot to do with a
new business trend that can have a devastating impact on the millions of
people employed by the direct mail industry. It will get tougher for
this industry to compete with offers of reward points, cash back,
airline mileage incentives, green grade report cards, the threat of
anonymous mail, and the state initiatives toward a paperless society.
Because representatives from the Postal Service deliver to every
doorstep six days a week it's time to keep them engaged about
eco-friendly packaging, new and improved services, and monitoring how
they are supporting a greener environment. Tell them they have to engage
their fleet of feet employees at the bottom of the corporate structure.
They are the ones with the greatest ideas in every company for
innovative ways to improve efficiency and keep the jobs alive. I am told
the Postal Service alone has more than 600,000 employees and that tells
me that this agency alone probably has enough people to keep them in
business for a long time if they believe in, purchase, and utilize their
own services.
And by the way, my dog loves the mailman! Now that's the other side.
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