TODAY (9 October) is World Post Office Day, which provides a good time to reflect on the relevance of a postal service in a fast-changing world.
This year’s theme is ‘Innovate to recover‘.
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Despite the SA Post Office facing countless challenges, the entity says it has also achieved a number of milestones during the year, especially in the first six months after Nomkhita Mona joined the entity as Group CEO.
In March, the SA Post Office and Wish.com entered into a formal agreement where the Post Office was appointed the distributor of all items ordered by South Africans through the Wish.com platform.
Wish.com parcel volumes have grown consistently since then and is now considering appointing the SA Post Office as distribution hub for the southern African region.
OR Tambo Airport is the point of entry for all air freight into the region, and South Africa’s sea ports are the points of entry for most surface freight from overseas.
Mona launched a strategy of going back to basics and a mantra of being obsessed with the customer.
Since then, the number of international items on hand at the international sorting centre was reduced from 2.1 million to zero.
The postal service said this was achieved by introducing an extra shift, installing additional computers to clear items, and by managers who volunteered to work over weekends to process mail.
The drive to deliver all items on hand continues, and the SA Post Office is encouraging its customers to collect items from their local post office when they receive a collection notice in the mail or an SMS.
The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown boosted eCommerce as people stayed away from stores.
It also brought economic hardship for millions of South Africans, and when the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant was introduced, Post Office branches in South Africa were able to pay out the grant to millions of beneficiaries per month.
In a partnership with the Postbank, the SA Post Office has extended the collection channel for SRD grants to Pick n Pay and Boxer supermarkets.
Part of the innovation that the SA Post Office is embarking upon, is to introduce a cashless solution to all its branches, for ease of transaction.
This will reduce the attractiveness of Post Offices to criminals as there has been a substantial increase in armed robberies and burglaries over the past two years.
The SA Post Office also accepts cards as payment method for all transactions at its branches to reduce cash levels and make matters convenient to its customers.
The SA Post Office together with the Universal Postal Union also introduced an improved tracking system.
International items are now tracked using the same tracking number, from posting right to delivery in South Africa.
