The quality of Royal Mail services worsened in the year ending March 2010, mostly due to strikesand severe winter weather.
Most services of the UK postal operator fell short of their quality targets in 2009-10 despitethe record high quality performances delivered last spring. This was due to industrial action in2009 along with disruption caused by severe winter weather, Royal Mail said in a statement.
In the last six months, however, Royal Mail has significantly improved the quality of service ofits First and Second Class Mail, according to the company’s Quality of Service Report2009-2010.
The latest quality of service report covering the 12 months until March 2010 showed thatStandard Parcels, European International Delivery and some business bulk mail beat theirtargets.
However, the figure of 87.9% of First Class mail arriving the day after posting was below the93.0% target for the year but more than ten percentage points above the 78.9% figure in the autumnduring a period of several national one-day strikes by the CWU. Second Class mail missed its 98.5%target for the year to the end of March 2010 with a 96.7% performance.
Mark Higson, Royal Mail’s Managing Director, said: “Everyone in Royal Mail is focused onrestoring quality of service to the target-beating levels we achieved a year ago and I’m delightedto say that the modernisation agreement we’ve reached with the CWU provides the stability andframework to complete our transformation to provide consistent, high quality, efficient service forall our customers.”
Royal Mail’s quality of service is measured independently by Research International, a companywith a long track record in this field. The latest report is based on more than 240,000 sampleletters, parcels and packets sent to 7,000 addresses, and 960,000 test mail items sent over the2009-10 financial year.
