Transforming the Postal Service
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) successfully integrated several innovations totally transforming towards more independent and more entrepreneurially-inclined operations. The first attempt the USPS undertook is involving external stakeholders (service and product customers) to participate in the new product designing – commemorative marks issuing (Shafritz, Russel, & Borick, 2011). This attempt resulted in revealing new earning opportunity - producing and selling collectors’ stamps. Experiencing advantages from the previous practices USPS integrated a lot of managerial tools:
Post implementation analysis (distilling successes and failures of Elvis’s stamps issuing campaign);
Planning (new commemorative marks designing and issuing);
Market research conducting (exploring and choosing national icons to put on the stamps);
Developing and implementing an advertising campaign to promote the new commemorative stamp.
Comprehension of new opportunities to increase profitability, improve recognizability image and foster new patriotic mindset about USPS encouraged the U.S. government to change the legal status from simple department to public enterprise. According to Shafritz, Russel, and Borick (2011) legal transformation caused challenges like USPS employees strike in 1970. However, negative actions ended with positive results, namely signing collective bargain with USPS employees that allowed them to demand the wages adjustment. This transformation contributed a lot to staff motivation as they tend to do their best to delivery post to the farthermost places in the country. The independence of the USPS is limited by the management appointing by the president and Senate and special Postal Rate Commission decides about postal fees and prices as well as the whole USPS status. The USPS marketing measures are supported by the complex and reliable database that helps not only to carry out accounting, tracking, communicating, and reporting functions but also serves as a tool for self-promotion. Thus, the case study offers showy figures of USPS activity making the U.S. citizens feel proud about one of the most developed and reliable postal service in the world.
The USPS well-being depends on the decisions of the government, namely the Congress, and backing the postal services competitiveness up boosted continuous development and improvements. There were two main goals to be fulfilled – stay competitive in the eyes of the government and remain the most preferred postal service for the customers. For example, the USPS identified its competitors among private enterprises – Federal Express and United Parcel Service - and monitored their services quality, advertising campaigns, and key performance indicators like timeliness of delivery (Shafritz, Russel, & Borick, 2011). To distinguish from the competitors' services the USPS focused on the shortest timeliness of delivery, budget-conscious cost of the first-class services, ability to cover all corners of the country, and unique service such as overnight delivery. The overnight delivery service was developed to outrank one of the most powerful delivery competitor - Federal Express. In order to keep this service in accordance with the modern delivery demands, the USPS established a regular monitoring system to evaluate the quality first-class letters delivery. New postal service market participants keep the USPS on the tenterhooks and encourage the company to perfect the existing …
