Following our earlier interview with Royal Mail’s Jon Nicholson, we asked some more indepth questions as to how the service has had to adapt through the Coronavirus pandemic, what’s happening with packets being shipped internationally and what other Royal Mail small business assistance is available, both for existing customers and for businesses starting to ship items sold online for the first time.
You can see the first three parts of the interview published earlier here.
How have Royal Mail Adapted their operation and the impact on delivery times
We asked Royal Mail why their delivery offices are running with reduced hours and why letters aren’t being delivered 6 days a week. Jon also walks through changes such as not capturing a physical signature, what happens with age verification, There’s also some positives – for instance first time delivery rates have gone up – mainly because so many are either working from home or on furlough.
Jon also highlights that part of the Royal Mail small business assistance is to extend the time from producing a label before you drop it off which enables small businesses to visit early in the day when delivery offices are open.
What Royal Mail small business assistance is available for International & Collections
We asked Royal Mail what the situation with international shipping is especially when they are in lock down. Jon also points out that with air travel reduced capacity has also been a challenge. However the good news is that Royal Mail are still shipping internationally and the flow for parcels to leave the country still exists.
We also asked about Royal Mail small business assistance for collections from businesses, especially for those who may have had to pause due to temporary closure of their operations. Jon points out that the reverse can also be true which is businesses who have seen massively increased volumes and how Royal Mail can help you with this.
What other Royal Mail small business assistance is available?
Jon encourages small businesses to download the Royal Mail app for everything from tracking items, producing labels on the go and checking opening times locally. Click and Drop is another tool constantly being developed which is ideal for even the smallest of businesses.
3 Responses
Thank you ever so much to Chris Dawson, Jon Nicholson and Tamebay for doing these interviews. It has helped me to better understand some of the decisions that Royal Mail has made, as they were poorly communicated by Royal Mail. I did not agree with their decisions as some of them negatively impacted my business and my customers. Therefore during the Crisis, I moved almost all of my sales postage to UPS. They are far superior to Royal Mail and offer a reliable collection service. I might go back to Royal Mail or Parcelforce- if this virus ever gets under control, so I have not ruled it out. Information like this from Tamebay helps me make these decisions, so thanks again. Keep up the good work Tamebay!
We are on the verge of losing an important sales channel in Australia as our orders are taking an average of 7 weeks to be delivered. I would like to know the volume of parcels that are sat in a warehouse at Heathrow?
If Royal Mail can’t get the freight out of the country in a reasonable time they should be straight with us.
Did someone say tracking??? Cough cough splutter. I alwayscthough that mean’t it was recorded when delivered… But must be different with RM.
Sadly the only real info we ever get from Rm is via our postie. Although having said that the constantly changing new business managers we get are very keen in getting us to spend more and regulary contact us.