Quality of service

Royal Mail has among the highest service standards in Europe. We have demanding  quality of service standards that we must meet in order to deliver the Universal Service obligation of collecting and delivering mail six days a week at a uniform price across the UK. We are the only postal operator in the UK required to publish our performance against delivery targets every quarter, independently checked and verified in a separate audit process to our own and then by our regulator, Ofcom.

Our targets are:

• First Class mail – a minimum of 93 per cent delivered the next working day
• Second Class mail – a minimum of 98.5 per cent delivered within three working days.
   

Our latest results - February 2013

• Royal Mail continued to deliver the vast majority of the UK’s daily mailbag within its demanding quality of service targets in the first three quarters of the financial year 2012/13, independent research shows. Royal Mail has the highest quality of service targets of any major European country [Note:1].
• Royal Mail exceeded its standard retail parcels quality targets in the first three quarters of the year. 96.2 per cent of standard retail parcels were delivered on time versus a target of 90.0 per cent.
• In the same period 98.6 per cent of Second Class mail was delivered within three working days of posting, exceeding the target of 98.5 per cent. At 92.2 per cent, First Class mail was under the target of 93.0 per cent for next day delivery.
• In the third quarter, running from 24 September 2012 to 2 December 2012, Royal Mail also delivered the vast majority of mail within its quality of service targets. Second Class mail was on target with 98.5 per cent delivered within three working days, and 94.8 per cent of standard parcels were delivered on time, against a target of 90 per cent. First Class was behind target at 91.2 per cent.
• Performance was affected by the increase in traffic in the third quarter, which always proves most challenging; this was further compounded by adverse weather which impacted significant parts of the country, and by change within our Mail Centre estate due to our ongoing transformation programme.

Note 1 - The performance report covers Quarter 3 (24th September 2012 - 2 December 2012) for all services except European International Delivery, which covers Quarter 3 (1st October 2012 - 2nd December 2012).

You can view or download the full  Q3 2012-13 report (PDF 143KB).

Meeting service standards

Against a backdrop of the UK’s largest-ever business transformation, Royal Mail has continued to provide a high level of service to its customers. In 2010 we met our licence targets for First Class and Second Class mail quality of service after force majeure adjustments for volcanic ash and extreme weather in December and January.

Parcels businesses

Our parcels businesses, meanwhile, continue to deliver high levels of service which set the standard in their respective markets. Parcelforce Worldwide, just one of our carriers, handles some 63 million parcels a year.  Parcelforce Worldwide has one of the highest quality service records in the express parcels industry.

Customer satisfaction

Our customer satisfaction levels are improving too, but we want them to be better and are taking action to deliver for in a more customer-responsive and proactive way. Customer-focused measures – such as customer service and complaints – form 50 per cent of the corporate scorecard we use to measure our success.

 Our Annual Consumer Complaints and Compensation Scheme Report 2011-2012 (PDF 42KB)