Royal Mail's Quality Of Service: The Customers' Viewpoint

New research carried out by MORI jointly on behalf of Royal Mail, Postwatch, the consumer watchdog for postal services, and Postcomm, the industry regulator into the current perceptions and requirements of the postal service is released today. This survey is part of a larger review process undertaken by Postcomm to ensure that the new Royal Mail Quality of Service targets, to take effect from April 2006 as part of the new price control, encourage the operator to reach and maintain an acceptable level of service relative to price and customer expectation.

Among the main findings are:

• Domestic and small business customers have a more favourable opinion of Royal Mail than account managed customers. Across all, favourability towards Royal Mail is below that of the Post Office
• Many customers say their opinion of Royal Mail has deteriorated over the last six months; including more than half of account managed customers
• Royal Mail is rated highest for its 'trustworthiness'. Only a minority of customers rate Royal Mail excellent or very good for 'reliability', 'delivery on promises', 'accountability' and 'meeting expectations'. In line with overall attitudes, account managed customers are more critical of Royal Mail's performance
• Experience of loss has a significant negative impact on Royal Mail's overall reputation; the first basic expectation, shared by all, is for customers' post to be delivered
• Most customers are more service, rather than price focused and place more value on an improvement in service than on a reduction in price
• Among most domestic and small business customers, the percentage of mail delivered on the specified day is more important than the actual time of delivery
• Very few customers are prepared to accept "tail of mail" of more than two working days
• Only a minority of account managed customers would be prepared to pay more than they currently do to reduce the frequency of loss. Domestic and small business customers are more indulgent; more than half say they would accept an increase in price to reduce the number of items that go missing

Technical details

The research was split into two phases a qualitative phase (identifying issues) and a subsequent quantitative phase (ranking issues).

Within the qualitative stage, MORI undertook 12 focus groups between 3 and 10 June 2004 across the UK: 4 with business customers and 8 with domestic customers.

Subsequently MORI interviewed customers as follows:

• Domestic customers. A nationally representative quota sample of 2,000 adults (aged 16 and over) was interviewed by telephone throughout the UK. The data was then weighted to the known UK population profile
• Small businesses. A random sample of 300 small business across the UK was interviewed by telephone. All businesses had a postal spend of less than 1634,800 per year
• Online surveys were also conducted among Royal Mail's account managed businesses (605 completed questionnaires) and among their Top 500 businesses (100 completed) from sample lists provided by Royal Mail. The research conducted by MORI can be viewed in full on the Postwatch website www.postwatch.co.uk
• Or download it here: Royal Mail Quality of Service - pdf document, 1220K