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Improve Service

The Business Service Network (BSN) was realigned in 2006 to better serve commercial customers. The BSN is a customer service organization that serves as a critical liaison between the top 14,000 commercial customers and postal operations. BSN representatives are the point-of-contact for a specific set of customers and are trained to understand those customers' specific business needs. The realignment allows customers with multiple sites and complex issues to receive help from area offices and customers with less complex issues to receive service from district offices. The reorganization also created a Headquarters-level BSN Service Improvement Team to identify and resolve systemic issues that are not customer-specific.

To improve the consistency of information customers receive, a cross-functional channel integration effort established common, easy-to-understand product and service descriptions across all access contact points. Next steps will be to simplify contacts by reducing the number of product- or servicespecific 800 numbers and redesigning interfaces to make it easier to complete transactions online or by phone. More customer-friendly interfaces, improved awareness, and links from other Web sites drove up hits on usps.com. Nearly 300 million people used usps.com to obtain information this year.

The Postal Service Customer Contact center updated telephone applications to incorporate speechrecognition and touch-tone interaction. Customers now complete 15 percent of redelivery requests, 39 percent of requests to hold mail, and approximately 20 percent of COA orders via automated self-service applications. In addition, the contact center launched a special application for tax dayrelated inquiries and successfully handled more than 360,000 calls on tax day. The contact center is operational under contract, which was modified to include enhanced performance metrics and incentives for quality.

Each day managers in more than 29,000 Post Offices use the postal intranet to access MyPostOffice, where they can see requests for service issues that customers have raised. Enhancements to the site provide local offices with performance reporting tools summarized on a "dashboard." Also included are links to other resources, allowing managers to accomplish many daily tasks from one location.

Customers filing claims for damage to goods sent through the mail benefited from a standard claim form and procedures. The new form simplifies reporting. Many offices were creating their own forms, with varying degrees of detail. The new form standardizes the documentation, benefiting customers by speeding resolution.

3. Corporate Responsibility
Throughout history the Postal Service has provided universal service to the American people while respecting the needs of future generations. Along with its franchise to operate the nation's mail service, the Postal Service helps sustain the people, communities, and businesses that depend on it. The following new sections describe strategies and recent activities in energy, community involvement, safety, and the environment.

Energy
While the price of fuel is largely out of the Postal Service's control, the amount of fuel used is not. Each day the organization uses 1.6 million gallons of automotive and jet fuel. Through performancebased partnerships with air carriers, the Postal Service is balancing its service obligations and conservation goals. These contracts save on energy consumption and cost. They also reduce harmful emissions. With 37,000 alternative fuel vehicles (AFV), the Postal Service operates the country's largest AFV fleet. Each year it acquires additional vehicles that run on cleaner-burning alternative fuels. The Postal Service requires that 75 percent of its new light-duty vehicles can operate on alternative fuels — a requirement that for 7 years exceeded standards of the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Policy Act. This year the Postal Service was honored with a White House Closing the Circle Award for its biodiesel utilization program.