News

Postal service increases efficiency with self-service kiosks

April 21, 2004

CHICAGO, IL--During a speech at the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing's DM Days & Expo show, Postmaster General John Potter took the opportunity to boast about the USPS' increased productivity through endeavors with usps.com and its 2,500 new self-service kiosks modeled on ATMs. The Chicago area has 24 of these kiosks.

The story, by DM News, also stated that Potter left no doubt of his bias for direct mail in the conference's keynote speech. "I'm here to tell you that direct mail is here to stay," Potter said.

Mail last year generated $423 billion in business-to-consumer sales. The industry segment, Potter said, is growing 8 percent yearly.

Potter bolstered his case for direct mail with new research on mail-led purchases. The U.S. Postal Service found that 74 percent of mail is read by customers. Only 6 percent considered advertising mail objectionable. Twenty-one percent of those surveyed took mail to stores.

Of course, he also brought up the woes ailing the postal service: unbending unions, crippling obligations to the employees' retirement system and much-needed legislative reform in favor of annual rate reviews instead of every three years, which leads to rate shock.

Another issue that troubled Potter was unnecessary post offices -- 2,500 each serving fewer than 200 people and 4,500 post offices with fewer than 200 deliveries.

"Now who in their right mind would open a [retail] store to serve 200 people?" Potter said.