Lessons Learned While at the Post Office

This week I happened to be in the post office on two separate occasions. Both times I used the post office because their price for shipping the packages I needed to mail was most economical. 

When I entered, the post office was clean, well-lit, well-organized, and the location was convenient to my office. However, in spite of the money I saved in shipping costs, the countless minutes I lost waiting in line to be served made the overall experience a total let down. Just another example of the infamous saying “cheap always costs more.”

During my wait in line, what I observed in the actions and behaviors of the postal workers was consistently poor.

• No one ever smiled at a customer
• No one greeted customers with a warm and friendly “good morning or afternoon”
• At the end of each transaction, no customer was ever “thanked” for doing business with them
• As a matter of fact, we were treated like transactions, instead of human beings
• Customers appeared to be an interruption of their work
• And most disheartening is that there was no “sense of urgency” or value of the customer’s time

 It is no wonder fewer and fewer customers each year use the U.S. Postal Service. What the post office has to offer its customers in convenience, cost-savings, and diversity of products and services, is often lost in the lackluster customer experience. I am not saying that every time I visit the post office it should be a celebration, but it should be a memorable and engaging experience that keeps me coming back because of the delightful people that work there.

So what are the lessons learned? Well for one, if you don’t treat your customers as if they were your most valuable assets – they will stop patronizing your facility and services. A second lesson learned is that the post office is a great place to benchmark if you specialize in getting rid of customers.

Bottom-line, the most important lesson learned is that if you want to ensure customers patronize your products and services for a lifetime then make sure your employees: (1) are warm and friendly; (2) value their customers; (3) have a sense of urgency in serving customers and; (4) are competent and passionate about their work.

Based on my own personal calculations, I suspect that the lifetime value of a post office customer has to be around $10,000 (at a minimum). Seriously, what type of service do you suspect we would receive if every time a customer walked into the post office they were perceived and treated as a valuable, lifetime customer?