USPS Assesses Transformation Progress, Likes What It Sees

The U.S. Postal Service says it is on track to achieve the goals laid out in its Strategic Transformation Plan 2006-2010.

The report looks at USPS’s progress toward the completing the agency’s Postal Transformation initiative of 2002. It finds that last year the USPS saw its seventh straight year of productivity increases, along with four years of positive net income and sustained high levels of service and customer satisfaction.

Some of the improvement efforts the current report points to in 2006 include launch of new four-state barcodes and tracking technologies to give customers a continuous view of mail; expanding access to mailer services such as the USPS.com Web site, Click-N-Ship and free package pickup; enhanced automated mail sorting capabilities; and streamlined commercial mailing process.

In regard to commercial mail, Postmaster General and USPS CEO John Potter and Board of Governors chairman James C. Miller III point out in an introduction to the report that the USPS has incorporated “multiple enhancements to streamline commercial mail acceptance” that will reduce paperwork, simplify payment and lead to new diagnostic tools to improve service quality.

The postal transformation plan “recognizes the Postal Service is part of a much larger mailing industry, and our success can be sustained only in cooperation with our customers and industry partners,” Potter and Miller say in the introductory letter.

The USPS unveiled plans last week to restructure the delivery of business mail through “intelligent” bar codes, continuous tracking and real-time feedback to business customers. Those services are slated to go into effect for all commercial mailers by 2009.