Royal Mail improves third-quarter quality of service

by Daniel Farey-Jones,, Brand Republic 15-Feb-05, 07:00

LONDON – Royal Mail has registered some of its best October–December quality of service figures for 10 years, delivering 91.9% of first-class letters the day after posting.

It achieved its best third-quarter service since the mid 90s for first and second-class stamped and metered mail, Mailsort 1, 2 and 3, Presstream 1 and first-class PPI.

Adam Crozier, chief executive of Royal Mail, said: "This is a tremendously encouraging result for everyone in Royal Mail and for our customers, but we know we have more to do. These results clearly buck the usual seasonal trends and show a continuing improvement in underlying performance during the busiest three months of the year."

Every service indicator was up significantly on the same period last year, which was marked by industrial unrest.

Performance slipped slightly on the July–September 2004 quarter, when Royal Mail managed to outperform seven of the 15 service targets set by Postcomm for 2004-5.

It hit only four of the service targets during October–December; second-class stamped and metered mail, Mailsort 1 and 3, and Presstream 1.

The organisation came within touching distance of most of the targets, with the exception of first and second-class response.

Postcomm's investigation into Royal Mail's performance against its quality of service targets for 2003-4 continues.

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