Quality is about our future growth

Improving our quality was the key theme discussed when Paul O’Keefe, director of quality and customers, hosted a Town Hall event at Greenford Mail Centre in London.

Around 40 colleagues attended the session, which focused on improving our performance and productivity and ensuring we get our quality right day in, day out, throughout the operation. You can find out more about how colleagues felt the session went by playing the video above.

‘Every part of the pipeline has a key part to play,’ said Paul. ‘It’s only when we get our quality right every single day, do we hit our targets. One bad day can mess up an entire unit’s performance.’

Paul’s key message was acknowledging the fact that our customers have a choice when it comes to choosing their mail carrier. ‘They can switch their carrier at the flick of a switch,’ he said. ‘If we don’t deliver – we’ll lose that custom. It’s that simple.

‘Customers like Apple, for example, will use us for 11 months of the year but change as we approach Christmas as they have seen that our quality drops off towards the end of the year. Quality is about our future growth. If we don’t deliver that quality, our customers will go elsewhere.

‘As we all know, parcels are growing, but they’re not offsetting the decline we’re seeing in letters. We have to adapt and change. We can’t be complacent. Tracked and Door-to-Door for example, are key revenue streams. Door to Door items are paid for, they are live mail and so we need to treat them like every other Tracked product.’

Paul spoke about how a combination of factors such as Brexit, GDPR, the changing high street, and general business uncertainty were affecting our profits and share price. He cited the recent example of retail giant, Debenhams, going into administration, and how such developments were benefitting the business in terms of the resulting rise in online shopping.

‘There are definitely opportunities for us with the rise in parcel volumes, but to sustain that business we need to improve our efficiency at all levels,’ said Paul. ‘Half of all parcels traffic we see coming into the UK pass through our network. That’s incredible. But we have to get it right. We can only grow if we drive our productivity and quality – it’s a crucial time for the business.’