Thursday, October 15, 2009

With the impending industrial action at Royal Mail, Altus Post is offering some practical advice to its clients and all other business postal users.

Read on to find out how the strike is likely to develop and our advice on what you can do about it

What will the strike look like?

Following the ballot for strike action on 8th October the CWU is trying to bring Royal Mail management back to the table on the CWUs terms but if this fails we can expect a national strike.

It is unlikely that the CWU will call for a complete walk out because it will want to protect its members incomes during any strike action but also because it can achieve the necessary service disruption with a tactic of rolling stoppages.

The Royal Mail network can be divided into different operational functions collections, sorting, distribution, delivery and geographically. By sequencing rolling stoppages in different functions and different geographies on different days the CWU can effectively bring the network to halt by only removing some of its members at any one time. Once this disruption is underway it will have a domino effect and can be sustained for a long period.

Royal Mails Response

Royal Mails management will do what it can to keep the mail moving but its an impossible task to provide any more than a token service for some products. In reality Royal Mail will:

● Suspend all non essential work in the company, drafting in management, sales and administration staff to support essential areas of the operation. The backroom work at Royal Mail will also be severely disrupted as a result.

● Prioritise certain services notably Special Delivery.

● Set up mail holding facilities, in the main at the point of entry into the network

● Suspend collections from Retail business customers

Even without a full walk out the service disruption will be severe after only a few days. When geographic / functional areas come back to work the focus will be on clearing backlogs of stored mail but the disruption to the flow of mail means that there will be too much mail in some places and no mail in others. Some postal staff will find themselves with a massive overload of work (for which Royal Mail will NOT sanction overtime) whilst others will have little to do. Therefore regardless of the eventual outcome of talks, service standards will suffer for a number of weeks. Businesses can also expect a sharp increase in lost and damaged mail and packets which is always a consequence of piling up mail in a network designed to move it through as quickly as possible.

In order to apply some damage limitation (reduce costs, reduce backlogs and create a faster return to normal working levels) and bring the CWU back to the table Royal Mail may have to take drastic action. It will close the network completely which will entail locking the gates, sealing the post boxes, accepting NO mail at all and suspending payments to striking workers.

Our Advice

Clearly any industrial action will impact all postal users and whether they are sending letters and documents or packets and parcels this is going to hurt and the honest news is that options are limited because Royal Mail still provides the final mile delivery for most letters and packets, regardless of how many other postal companies now operate in the UK. But there is some hope.

Letters, Statements, Documents

● Contact your customers NOW (even by post) and make sure you have an e mail address and permission to use it.

► Advise these customers that you will suspend physical mail and communicate with them online, at least until the industrial action is over. Some may be happy to stay that way. In doing this you will be at least saving the cost of production and postage.

● If you have access to a branch or retail network, set up the facility for customers to collect urgent documents from their nearest one by providing a postcode defined alternative delivery address.

► There are a number of companies who can deliver pouches of mail to business addresses without the need to use the Royal Mail network.

● Consider creating your own mail storage capacity. If you do have to prepare physical documents and the mail is to be held (mixed up with lots of other peoples) you may consider it better to store it yourself. You can do this under your control, sequenced and ready for dispatch when the network comes back on line. There will be less chance of loss or damage and you will be able to tell your customer where their mail is.

OR

● If you dont already, speak to an alternative (downstream access) postal operator. Its true that they rely on Royal Mail for the final delivery but in the short term they will:

► Collect your mail clearing out your production space

► Deliver it to Royal Mail at the point nearest delivery. This means that when that area returns to work your mail will have bypassed many of the pipeline backlogs and will have a better chance of being delivered with less delay.

► Provide tracking information letting you know when and where your mail entered the Royal Mail network.

We say this is a short term option as these companies rely on Royal Mail providing them with mail bags etc to keep their operation going and if the mail bags are not being emptied the supplies soon dry up.

● For international mail consider using an international consolidator who will collect your mail and route it out of the country without touching Royal Mail

OR BETTER STILL

● Use a hybrid Electronic / Physical distribution service. These services allow you to download your print file with some very clever software and have each document sent electronically, fully tracked to a printer near to the point of delivery where the electronic document is turned into a physical document and posted locally at local rates. Strike or no strike this is the fastest, cheapest and safest way to have international documents delivered.

Packets (Up to 2 3 kilos)

This is the hard one because you cant send packets electronically and because packets are hard to sort by machine so once there is a backlog of packets in the Royal Mail network it takes a time to clear. Also packets often contain goods that people have specifically asked for so the customer expectation is higher.

But there are still things you can consider:

Ask customers for a business address you can deliver to for them. Not all employers will allow this for security reasons and because they dont want their internal mail system blocked up with private packets but some companies will deliver packets to businesses at a reasonable cost that they wont deliver to homes.

There are also some companies who will deliver packets to homes at a competitive price. Hermes is one and we understand that Home Delivery Network is about to launch a fully tracked home packets service that will compete with the best Royal Mail has to offer.

Offer your customers an alternative (non home) delivery location.

► Collect+ has recently launched in partnership with Pay Point to allow parcels to be delivered to and collected from petrol stations and convenience stores.

► Useyourlocal.com offers a similar option with Public Houses

► Use a high street branch or retail network

These options may add some cost to the operation but at least you can keep your customers happy.

Parcels

Fortunately there are many parcels companies who can deliver without any reliance on Royal Mail so you should be able to find a competitive contingency. However if you only expect to use them while the strike is on, dont expect their best rates.

Whatever you do keep your customers informed and if you do have to delay or suspend dispatches tell them before they order something and give them the option to:

● Defer dispatch

● Upgrade to a non Royal Mail service even if it costs a little more

● Go elsewhere? If someone else is saying they can deliver then you should be able to as well but if they say they can and dont thats their problem. We would advise an honest and up front approach youll keep more customers that way.

At Altus we are here to help you to get through this difficult time and to help you manage your postal operations for maximum cost benefit and efficiency in the future.

If you need to discuss the strike or any other postal matters please contact us on:

0845 602 7336

or Email: info@altuspost.com

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