(x-posted at The Little Teapot)
There are many problems with how the Postal Service is being treated by Congress, and the bottom line is that the best route to fiscal health of the service is for Congress to stop it, fix the regulatory problems, and either choose to truly allow the Postal Service to operate like a business (by removing rate regulation and all sorts of operating requirements and the ridiculous pension-funding requirement), or return to the Constitutionally-mandated government service the framers of the document intended.
Either way, though, the postal service seems stuck in its leitmotif, and has not been very creative about re-inventing itself for the 21st century. It declined to get involved in the internet when it could have defined its mission as facilitating communications for the public benefit. Similarly it has defined first-class mail as a prime mission for itself, when because of email and electronic billing such mailings are in rapid decline.
I'll skip over redefining the "core mission" of the Postal Service for now, even though that should be at the center of every business plan. I'm going to skip to tactics and gloss over this part for now, but I will make a couple of observations about what would be called "differentiators" for the postal service. What does it do now, as a "core competency", that competitors don't do? In other words, what levers does it have to achieve competitive advantage?
One: the post office comes to your house, literally, every day. They have the infrastructure and experience to physically deliver things, and to physically be present on your doorstep.
Two: they have trust and authority. They have the imprimatur of official business of the government and close on 230 years of tradition. They have, in a word, a brand, and it's an official brand.
Three: they have certain legal monopolies. The most essential of these is an exclusive right to first-class mail, and although that distinction may be waning given overnight delivery services, they still have a price advantage on non-urgent items. (The absolute worst thing they can do, by the way, is to deliberately slow service to save money; that will destroy their opportunity to claw back the market.)
Four: they have a vast array of retail locations, some would argue too vast, but in terms of bricks and mortar penetration, they're as broadly based as it's possible to be. Frequently the locations are located in the "civic center" of each locality, offering opportunities.
With those in mind, here are ten ideas for improving the business operations (again skipping over the model for now) of the postal service. I want to be clear here: this is not about whether to take the USPS "private" or return to being a regular government agency (although I do not think they can remain in limbo, as they are now); these are specific things that can be done to both help the bottom line and improve the public service mission set in the Constitution.
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