The USPS Mover’s Guide — a free publication that helps customers relocating to new homes — is moving.
Mover’s Guide will soon no longer be readily available in Post Office lobbies. It will be available "on request only" and will be available from behind the counter only. Customers can still get a Mover’s Guide, but must ask a retail associate. Customers requesting a Mover’s Guide should be encouraged to submit change of address requests at usps.com.
The change begins this month in the Southeast Area. The schedule for other areas is:
May – Western
July – Southwest and Northeast
August – Great Lakes and Capital Metro
September – Eastern, Pacific and NY Metro
Why the switch? It’s to encourage customers to make change of address transactions at usps.com. — the most convenient, safe and secure way to change addresses. An online change of address also reduces processing time and improves address accuracy for USPS.
Three markets that tested placing Mover’s Guide behind the counter showed a 35 percent increase in the number of Internet change of address transactions.
What do you think about this move?
21 comments:
I think you need to realize that NOT everyone has a computor nor has access to one. What is easiest for the USPS is not always most convienent for others.
Thank you Anonymous! I think we are getting too dependent upon computers for all aspects of our business. The best interaction and repeat business comes from personal encounters - not cyber ones.
I agree with both of you...also, it costs the person changing their address money, $1 I beleive, to do it online. They say it is for security reasons....
I see this as just another step in the process of upper management trying to push our customers out of our lobbies so we can reduce lobby staff.
As one who works with processing Change of Address forms I highly applaud and encourage this action. Changing your address online rather than with a paper form is far more efficient and accurate for the customer and the Postal Service. Yes, there is a $1.00 charge which goes entirely to the credit card company because the credit card validates that it's the actual customer. None of the $1.00 goes to the Postal Service. We need to move as much of our Change of Address processing to the internet as possible. This is a win-win situation for customers and the Postal Service.
If the customers dont come to the lobby, we dont get a chance to sell them retail, packaging, stamps, and we miss the personal interaction.
The $1 charge to change you address online is likely less than what it would cost the average person in time and travel to go to a post office, wait in line and get the form. They will still have the forms available but just not in the lobby for those that need one. The times are changing. We don't have LSM's anymore because we found a better way to sort mail.
Although I believe "on-line" is the wave of the future for just about everything, there are problems associated with COA's input this way. There needs to be a way to notify the post office concerned IMMEDIATELY instead of waiting for the "yellow stickers" to be returned. We don't always get those timely and therefore, mail is sometimes delivered to the old address for up to 10 days before the carrier even knows a change has been filed. If it could come to us on MYPO as soon as the customer pays for it, that would be great for service.
With us losing so much of our business to the internet with the online banking services, it seems that we are encouraging customers to not mail.
Have the people making these decisions ever worked a window? Do they see the looks on people's faces when we basically are turning customers away from doing face-to-face business? I know when I shop, I never use the automated check-out. I like the person to person contact. I know others feel the same way.
We're in a rural area, and most folks don't have computers. Many of those with computers are on dial-up and they will be timed out before our web page loads. We lost some possible employees this way that couldn't get on e-career. There have been so many problems with the service since it was out-sourced, I hate to make the service any less convenient for the customers. I already spend too much time trying to appease customers whose forwards I have personally sent to CFS and yet have vanished into outer space. I'd love to bring it back to the USPS from start to finish. We do the best job in-house!
But what about "upselling"?
I work on a military installation and have already seen the shortage of COA availability. I have to beg and plead to get these COA kits. Dealing with military COA is a little bit difficult. The electronic system doesn't yet recognize FPO/APO addresses so a paper COA is essential.
In their infinite wisdom, they have now forced the customers to wait in our line (WTIL scores should really improve) for us to spend time explaining the process (WTIL, again), for the customer to then tell us that they DID try online and it wouldn't work (this area is VERY seasonal - that credit card thing), and then we can hand them a Movers Guide. Or worse yet, the barging into our current transaction to request a Movers Guide. The personal contact and chance to sell products is really lost on their annoyance at this inconvenience.
There ought to be a fee...and I mean more than a dollar for temporary change of addresses. I can see no charges for permanent forwardings.
Why can't we do both? Why take away the convenience of having them in our lobbies for our customers. We can also educate our customers of the online process through signage and word of mouth. I like the idea of sending the electronic version to us through MYPO.
Let's see........we currently have no volume of mail due to the internet.........so LET"S push more people to the internet so that we can eliminate our own jobs. Kinda sounds stupid to me.
Many customers now go online to set up COA and Hold Mail.
What are we doing to attract customers for non-electronic functions? We need to fight hard to keep and increase our parcel revenue.
As a PTF distribution/window clerk myself, I never recommend going to usps.com to customers, except for them to check on their del. confirm or other tracking services. Why on earth would I want to cease the customer to clerk interaction. So I can cut my on hours again?
I would rather have the COA come to me first so I can make sure all the information is correct so I don't have to deal with putting in a correction later and end up with a norec from the mistakes.
That's right, lets just keep pushing OUR customers away right into the hands of the internet. Pretty soon the Post offices will become GHOST offices. Yeap. Yeap. Yeap. We can generate a minimal revenue for the post offices if we charge the customers a fee for each COA.
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