The U.S. Postal Service famously promises that "neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow" will interrupt delivery of your mail. While weather may not be a problem, other factors are. The volume of mail has declined; much of it replaced by email. And, as anyone who has visited a post office knows, the quality of customer experience also is a major barrier to productivity and profitability.
The Postal Service looses billions of dollars each year. The latest estimate is that this shortfall will grow to $16 billion in 2016 unless someone in DC can come up with a fix.
So let's say you are a member of the Postal Service management team or a congressional staffer working on one of the committees with oversight of post office operations. You need to come up with some big ideas that will rescue the U.S. mail system and save the jobs of the almost 600,000 people it employs. (The Postal Service is technically non-government and is second only to Wal-Mart in number of employees.)
Several solutions that are under consideration were discussed in the Wall Street Journal article, "Post Office Wants More Than Mail" (October 19, 2011, p. B1). Here are some examples. The Postal Service should issue driver's licenses and hunting permits. It should sell music CDs. It should extend the revenue-generating capability of its fleet of trucks by pasting advertising onto the side panels. A congressman from Maryland has even introduced a bill that creates a "chief innovation officer" position at the Postal Service; whose job presumably would be to transform this tax payer funded behemoth into a break-even-or-better operation.
Before launching new products and services, the Postal Service must go inside the mind of the consumer to make sure it understands its customers. It needs to evaluate the psychological relationship it has with consumers. Marketers refer to this as "customer engagement."
The psychology of consumer engagement is based on three characteristics. These are that a product or service is necessary, usable and desirable.
- Because of digital technology, the Postal Service is not as necessary as it once was. However, it has been almost fifteen years since the trend toward an email dominant communication system was apparent. The Postal Service has not responded. Necessities that exist in the consumer's mind evolve as their world changes. The Postal Service needs to listen to consumers and alter its products and services to meet their changing needs.
- If you stick a stamp on an envelope and drop it into a mail box, the postal system is usable. On the other hand, usability disappears the moment a customer walks into a post office. In my local branch in New York City, long lines to reach an unfriendly clerk handling a bewildering array of stamps and delivery forms violate every principle of usability.
- Finally, engagement requires desirability, which must be based on a positive customer experience. Compare the experience of visiting a post office with almost any retail store environment and it is clear that there is no basis for consumer desire.
Historically, the top-down management approach that is practiced in Washington has proven to be a process for disaster. The Postal Service is in its current situation because it is bound to an outdated business model and is driven more by the interests of its management and employees than by those of its customers.
Ideas like those reported in the Wall Street Journal won't solve the problem. Trying to sell a wider range of products from behind the bullet proof glass partitions that separate postal clerks from customers is doomed to fail because it violates proven psychological principles of successful merchandising. The idea of using trucks as traveling billboards has been kicking around for decades and rejected by those who understand the psychology of consumer advertising. And while "innovations" can help offset annual operating deficits, it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to solve a problem of this magnitude.
The real solution lies "inside the consumer mind." This begins with an exploration of the entire category of written communication and package transportation; and extends to an evaluation of product and service extensions which could contribute to the customer experience. Until the government adopts a bottom-up approach based on an understanding of the psychology of consumer behavior, the problems of the Postal Service will remain unsolved.
