Scripted or Encrypted
by Ronald Williams, Jr.
Postal Employee
Businesses spend millions of billions of dollars on products and services. If the delivery system is defective their organization doesn’t have a chance at success. Let’s put some cards on the table and figure out how they could have an impact on our business. With a little luck, which is nothing more than skill meeting opportunity we will win at whatever game we are engaged in. The jack, queen and king are the business chain of royalty, the ten is the perfect score card in unison with the rest of the family. All players love the multifaceted ace in the hole, and we hate to deal with the short life span of the joker attempting to redirect our focus and attention. I got some thoughts from the street level but first let’s pray to senior royalty in a huddle.
We need to shuffle the deck often to maximize the cards we are dealt to adapt to changes in the business. Employee participation beyond saying “just be lucky you have a job,” of course we are! But it should not be used as a call to inaction and a reason for exclusion to settle for the status quo. Park your car park your brain style leadership is a primitive format that discounts people, and hinders our ability to reach self actualization as an organization. Mentally and physically engage all of us on the playing field to cut the deck to ensure no one person or team manipulate the results for their own benefit. Leadership expert John Maxwell is right about the questions most people ask when they choose a leader. Do you care for me? Can you help me? And can I trust you?
While the people upstairs count the numbers from a remote location the worker-bees will be busy counting internal and external customers in the trenches of the service. You won’t find any hater venom in this opinion, just an opportunity to vent via social media because nobody else has time to listen and hear what the little guy or gal has to say.
Mayday on the frontline
At the customer service counter we got to figure out how to minimize wait times comfortably. There are never enough clerks cashiering and the line is often backed up to the front door. Wait times can be a long as thirty minutes and by the time the customer reaches the window for service we are not in the mood to hear a cluster of up-sell questions until we scream NO! The lobby assistant checklist (LAC) helps move the line if there are forms to be filled out, unfortunately it is an available cashier doing the screening while customers are waiting to be serviced. Sometimes the LAC can be a hold-up if the customer needs an explanation of available services. Hazmat questions about liquid, flammable, perishable, or potentially hazardous materials are very important to everyone’s personal health and safety throughout the mail process. Is it possible to play an entertaining video in segments about our services like the banks do? Or maybe customers could be screened at the door like the department of motor vehicles does before we are sent to a line. The Automated Postal Center (APC) is outstanding to customers who know exactly what service that they want, don’t use cash, and value 24-hour physical access. I notice many customers are unsure what they want and feel more comfortable with the human interaction.
Submit a lead is all about employees helping to bring business to USPS. A letter carrier told me that carriers always look for new business leads. He said one coworker used to return to the station with loads of Priority Mail packages in her Long Life Vehicle (LLV) from a local business and they were impressed for a while until her business fell off. They asked her about it and she said her understanding was a competitor offered the business owner some local NFL season tickets for their business and that left us out of luck. I ask my fellow employees, is it that easy to get the competitive advantage?
Dollars reduced through sense
A 2008 Pallet Enterprise article titled “Pallet Lessons from the USPS” stated the “Postal Service has been the largest purchaser of plastic pallets in the country, possibly even the world.” It goes on to mention that “leakage” from the system and budget concerns have led the USPS to reevaluate its purchasing practices. As a staggering statistic we lost 2,000,000 pallets per year to the tune of more than $100,000,000 over the previous five years. The pallets have been showing up as props at a theme park, and some are probably lost to many other situations. It appears wooden pallets are slowly replacing plastic platforms. Is that because wood is cheaper? Or are they inexpensive? Wood is prone to damage and splinters, exposes nails, and increases workplace and respiratory hazards from wood shavings. Plastic is safer, easier to recycle, cleaner, lighter, and easier to stack for storage.
There is a similar problem with the plastic mail tubs (775). The poster in some retail centers states “Return to Lender.” A 2008 article by the Democrat and Chronicle correctly points out our desire for customers to stop hoarding them. One postal worker spotted the tubs being utilized as move-in-boxes at a State University College. The article goes on to mention that the tubs are also being utilized as recycle bins and seen on garbage day. Maybe it’s time to embed radio frequency identification chips or tags on specific equipment while we are scanning everything else these days. Many people have probably seen the caricature of a craft employee in postal blue apparel with our logo ball cap, smirking over his left shoulder, bent over pants down displaying a barcode on his backside with the caption “scan this” I think scanning is probably striking his sciatic nerve.
Scan and deliver
If you ever use our own products and services to mail packages or important documents to someone these days one important way to be transparent about the mailing is to use delivery confirmation/tracking, a system that mandates responsibility from us and accountability to the customer. Scanning is a critical cost of doing business for millions of online sellers, shoppers, mailers, and consumers worldwide. Sellers and shippers are measured and graded for shipping time and shipping cost. These two areas can mean the difference between using one shipping provider or another.
Sellers choose the service that keeps them competitive and their livelihood alive and well. We are the lynchpin to customer success. Scanning is super important in this age of electronic diversion. Online payment services use delivery confirmation and tracking numbers as a main source of investigation before refunding payments to customers who report something undelivered. William H. Davidow, the high-tech industry executive said “Service standards keep rising. As competitors render better and better service, customers become more demanding.”
The picture is scripted because we hold the cards to our success. By putting ourselves in the role of the customer there won’t be a mayday on the frontline, we will protect all equipment used to bring in revenue when we think about dollars reduced through sense, and then scanning and delivering will keep us as an industry in full accountability mode. Everyone has a responsibility to identify areas for improvement, and the leaders must be willing to listen to us and not act like a travel agent who sends people to places they’ve never been. If you’re the leader can you be the tour guide familiar with the route, and lead us in the direction that will keep our people motivated, and educated so we can maintain peak operational efficiency? If we have a strategy the daily routine will be scripted. If we show up just to go through the motions then the standard will be encrypted making our work so secret we won’t even know what we are doing. See you out there!
Ronald Williams, Jr.