Our customers

Key trends in e-commerce, Click & Collect and Next-Day delivery services are changing our mail bags. With that change comes different expectations from our customers.

Last week, we published our 2019-20 Corporate Responsibility (CR) report, which sets out the priorities our customers tell us are important to them and our performance. It also outlines the new initiatives and services we have launched throughout the year to ensure we remain easy to do business with for both consumer and business customers.

Did you know?

• We carried around 1.3 billion parcels and 13 billion letters within the UK in 2019-20. GLS handled around 634 million parcels.
• We survey around 1,000 business contract customers per quarter and 3,000 consumers every month as part of our customer satisfaction research.
• We completed the rollout of 1,400 parcel postboxes – the biggest change to the postbox in its 160-year history.
• We launched a new product for business customers where the age of a recipient will be checked before a package is handed over – supporting our customers to comply with new legislation relating to the delivery of bladed items.

Our performance 2019-20

• We successfully stopped a further 330,000 items of scam mail from reaching our customers – that’s almost five million since November 2016.
• 89 per cent of business customers rate us as ‘easy to do business with’.
• We received 2.6 per cent fewer customer complaints compared with 2018-19.

Delivering throughout the Covid-19 pandemic

The pandemic has been an unprecedented challenge for our customers across the world. The delivery of parcels and letters has been a key way of keeping people connected and helping many people who have been unable to leave their homes.

We worked hard to deliver the most comprehensive service possible to all our customers. Now more than ever, the Universal Postal Service has provided a lifeline to businesses and communities across the UK.

Many retailers shifted their operations online once their shops closed. Our continued operation has allowed numerous small businesses to stay open throughout the pandemic. Services such as Click & Drop and parcel postboxes provided businesses with a simple and easy to use process for sending products to customers, no matter where they were. We have received many messages and pictures from our customers in praise of the lengths our people have gone to during the pandemic.

Colleagues are also delivering prescriptions, hospital appointments and other Government communications as a key priority. We also supported the Government’s public information campaign on Covid-19.

• 13,000 priority postboxes supported the NHS with Covid-19 test at home kits for mailing and collection.
• We were chosen by the UK Government as a key partner in the delivery and return of Covid-19 testing kits, and delivery of public information campaign letters.
• We introduced new mail handling procedures to protect our colleagues and our customers, including contact free deliveries in Royal Mail, Parcelforce Worldwide and GLS to enable effective social distancing.

Find out more about our CR report here.