Royal Mail Quality of Service

  • Royal Mail’s latest Quality of Service report reveals that the company beat its Second Class target for the first three quarters, delivering 98.9 per cent within three working days against a target of 98.5 per cent.
  • For the same period, Royal Mail delivered 92.9 per cent of First Class mail the next working day. Adjusted for exceptional events outside Royal Mail’s control, the company achieved the 93.0 per cent First Class mail target.
  • Royal Mail has the highest universal service specification of any major European country.

Royal Mail’s latest Quality of Service report reveals that for the first three quarters, Second Class mail beat its quality target with 98.9 per cent of mail delivered within three working days, against a target of 98.5 per cent.

Over the same period, Royal Mail delivered 92.9 per cent of First Class mail the next working day against a target of 93.0 per cent. Adjusted for exceptional events outside Royal Mail’s control, the company achieved the 93.0 per cent target. The company may ask Ofcom to take this into consideration when it reviews Royal Mail’s year-end report.

The latest quarterly report for 2014-15 covers the period from 29 September 2014 to 30 November 2014. For that period, Second Class mail beat its target with 98.7 per cent. First Class mail was behind target at 91.8 per cent.

Royal Mail is the only UK mail delivery company required to publish Quality of Service performance against delivery targets every quarter and has the highest universal service specification of any major European country.

Royal Mail’s Quality of Service is measured by TNS Global, an independent research company.

107 of 118 individual postcode areas met or exceeded their Quality of Service targets over the eight months up to 30 November 2014.

The latest independent report on performance was published today on Royal Mail’s website at

http://www.royalmailgroup.com/customers/quality-service/quality-service-reports

Sue Whalley, Chief Operations Officer, Royal Mail said: “Our postmen and women work exceptionally hard to deliver to these demanding targets, which are some of the highest in Europe. We are more focused than ever on continuously improving and maintaining high standards of service.”

Notes The latest quarterly report for 2014-15 covers the period from 29 September 2014 to 30 November 2014 inclusive for all services.

  • Royal Mail’s Quality of Service is measured independently by TNS, a company with a long track record in this field.  The methodology used and the results obtained are verified independently of Royal Mail and TNS.  Royal Mail knows of no other measurement of its quality of service that gives results with the geographical coverage and degree of reliability and accuracy in the figures obtained by TNS.  In the third quarter of 2014-2015, TNS measured quality of service by sending more than 128,000 sample letters and parcels to more than 7,300 addresses.
  • Three of the UK’s 121 postcode areas are exempt from the Ofcom targets due to their remoteness – HS (Hebrides), KW (Kirkwall) and ZE (Lerwick).

Royal Mail has the highest universal service specification of any major European country, compared to Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

Top 10 reasons to use mail

Do you need a powerful and emotive medium which touches people’s lives? Read on…

For the last 300 years Royal Mail has provided the best and most trusted business delivering mail to every corner of the UK. Over that time many mass and direct communications media have developed.

However, mail still has a special place in people’s hearts and lives as well as an important role in the media communications mix for these reasons:

The inherent strengths of mail

  1. Personal
    Addressed mail is literally designed to reach an individual (unlike a mass market message via TV, the press or radio). Mailings can have a unique design to suit each particular recipient and mail comes straight into people’s homes into their hands and gets their full and focused attention.
  2. Universal
    Everyone consumes mail and Royal Mail provides access to virtually everyone in the UK. The Royal Mail network covers 99.9% of the UK population at 27million addresses.
  3. Tailored
    Mail can be personalised to individuals or groups. That unique flexibility enables greater relevance, delivering greater impact, often applying data already provided by the customer.
  4. Targeted
    Mail can focus on the relevant audience (e.g. by interest, demographics, purchase or behaviour). This reduces wastage – your message only goes to those you select.
  5. Direct Mail doesn’t compete with and is not dependant on other content like in a magazine, newspaper or online site. It is actively consumed so it delivers much greater engagement and understanding.
  6. Flexible & Creative
    Mail has few restrictions compared to other media (size, weight, shape, colour) leading to limitless creative possibilities. It lets you have a one to one communication which delivers more emotional intensity than any other medium. The creativity cuts through and gets people talking.
  7. Measurable
    Mail is one of the easiest media to measure, responses can be attributed directly to a specific activity.
  8. Portable
    A letter, leaflet, brochure or mail pack can be taken anywhere. You can take the mail with you to read on the train, in the garden, in any room of the house. Consumers love the fact that they are in control and can read the information when it’s convenient to them.
  9. Physical
    Affects all five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Mail is the only medium to provide the creative possibilities to engage the customers on all levels.
  10. Complementary
    As part of an integrated campaign, mail has a strong role in providing the personal, compelling message delivered directly to the recipients own hands and household. Case studies show how it not only builds short and long term effects but is often kept by the household for reference, prolonging the brand presence and deepening the communication effect.

New Research Reveals Journey of Mail in the Home

  • Advertising mail presents multiple opportunities for people to engage with brands and remains in the home for an average of 17 days, a study into the role of mail in the home has revealed
  • Royal Mail MarketReach’s investigation into how mail is interacted with after it lands on the doormat, revealed how mail is filtered, handled, shared, discussed, kept and filed away for longer than previously thought
  • The study, which involved observing more than 800 hours of video footage, also revealed that four in ten people (39 per cent) have a dedicated display area for mail in the home
  • The findings which are part of Royal Mail MarketReach’s 18-month research programme brings together unprecedented insight into the role of mail in people’s homes, hearts and heads, plus the impact this has on advertisers’ ROI
  • The research shows that mail helps keep brands top of mind. Multi-media campaigns including mail were 27 per cent more likely to deliver top-ranking sales performance and 40 per cent more likely to deliver top-ranking acquisition levels than campaigns that didn’t include mail
  • Marketing industry leaders recently joined forces with Royal Mail MarketReach for the ‘MAILMEN’ campaign to demonstrate that mail has a vital role to play in the today’s digital world and continues to be a powerful weapon in the marketer’s armoury.

Advertising mail presents multiple opportunities for people to engage with brands and can remain in the home for an average of 17 days, a study into the role of mail in the home has revealed.

Royal Mail MarketReach’s investigation into how mail is interacted with after it lands on the doormat found that mail is filtered, handled, shared, discussed, kept and filed away for longer than previously thought. In addition, the study, which involved observing more than 800 hours of video footage, found that door drops remain in the home for an average of 38 days.

Displaying and sharing in the home

The study also revealed that four in ten people (39 per cent) have a dedicated display area for mail in the home. Of those who have a dedicated display area for mail, 51 per cent said this could be found in their kitchen. 31 per cent displayed their mail in the living room and 18 per cent displayed it in the hallway.

In shared households, the research found that 35 per cent of promotional mail is passed on to others. Since people living in shared households tend to be younger, this has particular implications for mail. The IPA Touchpoints research (2014) found that 15-34 year olds are:

  • 42 per cent more likely to find mail memorable
  • 27 per cent more likely to welcome it
  • 71 per cent more likely to trust advertising mail they receive
  • 21 per cent more likely to have switched a supplier as a result of mail than the UK population as a whole.

Unprecedented insight

The findings which are part of Royal Mail MarketReach’s 18-month research programme, The Private Life of Mail, which brings together unprecedented insight into the role of mail in people’s homes, hearts and heads, plus the impact this has on advertisers’ ROI.

The research shows that mail helps keep brands top of mind. Multi-media campaigns including mail were 27 per cent more likely to deliver top-ranking sales performance and 40 per cent more likely to deliver top-ranking acquisition levels than campaigns that didn’t include mail.

Marketing industry leaders recently joined forces with Royal Mail MarketReach for the ‘MAILMEN’ campaign to promote The Private Life of Mail and demonstrate that mail has a vital role to play in the today’s digital world and continues to be a powerful weapon in the marketer’s armoury. The campaign contains an advert featuring Robert Senior, Worldwide CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi Group with the following line: “Charming. Persuasive. Motivating.  And for once I’m not talking about myself.”

Jonathan Harman, Managing Director Royal Mail MarketReach said: “As it flows through the household, a single piece of mail represent multiple opportunities for people to engage with a brand, reminding them of it and reinforcing its values, and ultimately becoming part of everyday life.

“Observing over 800 hours of video from our ethnographic study, we noticed that in some cases mail occupied an amount of overall daily time comparable to that of other media. In fact, the latest IPA Touchpoints survey shows that adults read their mail on average for 22 minutes a day- more than magazines at 14 minutes per day.”

A dedicated direct mail campaign, devised by Publicis Chemistry, has been created to promote the findings of the ethnographic study looking at mail in the home. The campaign targets over 9,000 marketers and agencies and the first DM uses a blueprint to demonstrate how mail can get your brand noticed in the home. The full research report can be downloaded from www.mailmen.co.uk.

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