Aaron's
Real Opinions (Yikes!)
Going Postal
07-09-05
GOING POSTAL -- PART 1 OF 4
A recent visit to the Post Office was a reminder why FEDEX, UPS, DHL, and many other have taken much of the profitable business away from the U.S. Postal Service. My direct contact with the USPS typically is limited to my mail carrier -- who works hard and makes every effort to provide good customer service -- and my local Post Office in Lafayette, where the staff do the best they can with the limited resources they have, all while maintaining a positive attitude (OK, at least most of the time).
This time I was at a Boulder Post Office where I found a mailbox I had kept for almost two decades had been closed. I checked it only quarterly and had missed the renewal payment notice. The woman in charge of Post Office boxes -- who has known me for years -- told me all the mail for the past four months had been returned to the senders (yikes!) and the box had been closed.
I asked why I hadn't gotten a call and was told the Post Office doesn't have time for that. I asked if there were an automated e-mail notice procedure. The response was a laugh at the idea the Post Office would use free e-mail for such a purpose. I asked if the Post Office had an automatic payment plan where one could register a credit card and have payments made automatically. A puzzled look was the response. I was told to go to the service counter and pay for another year if I wanted the box reopened.
While my conversation was pleasant, it reminded me how uncreative, rigid and bureaucratic government operations could be. The Postal Service employees I spoke with had no concept of real customer service. They had no sense of needing to provide customer service. They felt they did not have the support of their managers or the resources to modernize their own operations. Even though the same Post Office was advertising the leasing of Post Office boxes and despite the fact they were a significant profit center (after all, once the fixed cost of building a Post Office box was covered, the annual fees each one generated were almost pure profit -- which is exactly why private mail box businesses have done so well), it never occurred to the Post Office to establish programs to retain Post Office box customers. Instead, we were anonymously.dispatched without any fanfare.
With my little daughter in tow, I headed to the counter. Unbeknownst to either of us, our experience in Customer Disservice was about to expand greatly. (See Parts 2, 3 and 4 for more of this story.)
GOING POSTAL -- PART 2 OF 4
After finding out my Post Office box had been closed without anyone notifying me (except for a payment notice in the box, itself, which I never saw), I encountered a Post Office bureaucracy which was seeking new Post Office box customers but had no program to retain the ones they had. In the business world, this would be seen as grossly inefficient. If you already have a customer, in 99% of the cases, it's much less expensive to retain that customer than to go out and find a replacement.
Now I was standing in a line to pay my fee to re-open the box. There were about a dozen people ahead of me and the line didn't appear to be moving. As the wait and line grew longer, the gentleman next to me, Chuck, observed that we could be there all day. The line was now up to 23 people and went out the door of the service area in which we were lined up. Out of about eight or so service counters or stations, there were only two Postal Service employees working the counters at 12:00 pm -- the time many people were likely to go to the Post Office during lunch time.
Neither employee was setting the world on fire. One was working at a reasonable, measured rate. He methodically, if not quickly, assisted customers. One could see, however, he was pacing himself -- as many people in repetitive, boring jobs do. He had a good attitude but was not about to burn himself out. The other counter staffperson also was pacing herself and it was this languid pace which forced Chuck to roll his eyes.
This employee was doing everything at one-quarter speed. It was as if we were watching someone moving in slow motion. In one instance she had three packages to place in a bin. Rather than gathering up the boxes and taking them all at once to the bin, she slowly and methodically took one at a time (sometimes using just one hand to carry the package), slowly walked the 15 feet to the bin, dumped each one in, and repeated the process two more times. Given her glacial procedure and pace, she easily took 400% longer to do the task than a normal person would do. Some of us were ready to jump over the counter and help her!
Because the line was not moving much at all, we had plenty of time to observe how this person was able to use a full day to accomplish what probably was a quarter of a day's work. It made me wonder what her motivation was -- or if she had any at all. I was curious how management might meet the challenge of increasing her productivity. It didn't look like it would be an easy task! Stay tuned for the next installment.
GOING POSTAL -- PART 3 OF 4
While I waited in line at the Post Office and watched the minutes go by, I was able to observe a number of people in the background. Once in a while a gentleman -- who appeared to be a management-type from the way he observed the counter situation -- would peek from a doorway to see if the line was moving any faster. It wasn't.
While I joked with the gentleman behind me in line, Chuck, about the reasons why the Postal Service was in such trouble (it loses billions of dollars), a man behind him told us we should be happy to be standing in line in an air-conditioned building. It was over 90 degrees outside and he felt we should be thankful we could spend time in an air-conditioned environment. I was amazed at this defense of the Postal Service. All the people in line near us were incredulous. They were trying to get postage or packages mailed during their busy day and this guy was telling them how great it was to spend time at the Post Office. Hello?! From what planet did this guy arrive?
I politely told him I preferred to not spend my afternoons waiting in line but that, if he liked air-conditioning in public areas so much, he certainly was free to spend as much time as he wanted at the Post Office or any air-conditioned government building. OK, I was being a bit over-the-top but it got a good and much-needed laugh from the frustrated postal patrons in line with me. Maybe I helped avoid an "incident." I imagined the headlines -- "Customers Go Postal Over Slow-Mo Customer Service."
Finally, one of the employees scurrying in the background volunteered to open another counter location. The manager consented and then came out to tell us he would have two other people working in a matter of minutes. Chuck and I joked that managers had scheduled everyone for lunch at lunch time. Suddenly there were five stations operating and the line began to shrink noticeably. Unfortunately, it now was well past 1:00 pm and my guess was that most of the people who had joined me in solidarity had waited up to half an hour and were going to be late returning to work or making their next appointment -- except, perhaps, for the gentleman who was thankful to be waiting in line in an air-conditional government office.
Next: How do you motivate career civil service employees who have the equivalent of tenure?
GOING POSTAL -- PART 4 OF 4
Looking back on my experience going to the Post Office and finding it lacking in customer service as well as lagging technologically, I had two questions. The first was, "How do we bring the U.S. Postal Service into today's Computer Age?" The second was "How do you motivate minimally-producing career civil service employees with the equivalent of tenure?"
In the recent episode I had experienced, there clearly were a number of management failures. One involved poor hiring decisions -- i.e., getting people who wanted career jobs and would work as little as possible. A second was management's unwillingness or inability to automate operations by using existing technology. A third was management's own failure to adequately monitor its key contact point with customers -- the service counter -- and jump in to help when needed. And where was cross-training when you needed it?
Hiring is a complex issue because managers at institutions such as the Post Office often do not get to choose the actual employees they end up managing. That is done through a faceless civil service process. Using technology sounds easy but, in a bureaucracy as large of the USPS, it is likely on-site managers have little flexibility and are required to use whatever Washington gives them. And cross-training can run into union issues as well as limited training resources. Managing the service counter, however, is something every on-site manager should know how to do. In this instance, their management performance rated a "D" at best. It was too little, too late.
After some thought, I realized that perhaps the Free Market system is working and, in a certain way, is phasing out the Byzantine Postal Service. As private businesses take away more of the Postal Service's business and as we move towards more paperless communication, the USPS will continue to decline in activity and importance. The majority of growth in communication, deliveries, revenues, et cetera, will be taken over by private businesses who do all of it faster, more efficiently, and with a smile.
Some people argue it is time to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. Doing so certainly would create higher levels of accountability, customer service, and responsiveness which don't exist today. But it already seems to be happening as more people pay bills online and avoid the theft or tainting of mail by sending their messages electronically. Perhaps the best public policy for the Postal Service is to do nothing. As its key business operations continue to shrink and as employees retire, the once mighty U.S. Postal Service will simply become one of many options available to the public. And maybe that's OK.
