Other stakeholders such as customers, subcontractors and suppliers have a significant impact and influence on Mail’s corporate responsibility performance within the supply chain.
Customers
Customer focus
Mail strives to understand its customers, their values, needs and preferences, and aims to respond to them with tailored products and services.
Mail believes that total customer focus is a sustainable competitive differentiator and therefore aims to exceed customer expectations by providing distinctive levels of customer care at all contact points. Mail bases its improvement programmes on quantitative and qualitative customer feedback, which ensures that required improvement actions focus on what is most important to customers, rather than only on internal measures.
Customer needs, satisfaction and loyalty levels are therefore important markers that are identified through regular contact and structured surveys. To measure the differentiation elements, Mail also conducts benchmarking surveys, which enable it to differentiate among the most important drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Mail encourages its employees to ‘go the extra mile’ in their service to customers, with an understanding that engaged and motivated employees will deliver an exceptional customer experience, which in turn drives profit.
ISO 9001 certification
Mail’s objective is to offer its customers excellent service. As such, it adheres to a number of strict quality standards. Mail’s customer management approach is aligned with the ISO 9001 standard. This standard sets requirements for continuous quality improvements at entity level, challenges all entities on the service and quality they provide, and allows for a customised approach in implementing improvements.
In 2010, the percentage of total FTEs working at ISO 9001-certified sites increased to 89% from 87% in 2009. No additional entities were certified in 2010; however, several certificates were renewed in 2010.
Customer satisfaction
Mail aims to exceed customer expectations. Analysis shows that ‘satisfied’ and ‘more than satisfied’ customers are more loyal. Therefore, Mail aims to increase the percentage of ‘more than satisfied’ customers within the group of ‘at least satisfied’ customers. Understanding the mindset of ‘less than satisfied’ customers and obtaining their feedback will enable Mail to develop improvement strategies with the goal of increasing levels of customer retention.
Customer satisfaction (based on the annual customer satisfaction survey of small and medium-sized enterprises in Mail in the Netherlands) declined from 90% in 2009 to 89% in 2010.
In total, 3,450 customers were scored on five customer values in 2010. The final score is calculated by taking the weight customers ascribe to these customer values and multiplying the weights by the score for each value. The surveys have been optimised by measuring performance on all customer contact points and are compared to competitor performance. This enables Mail to take immediate action with measurable results.
On-time delivery in 2010 was 95% (95% in 2009). This percentage is preliminary and is yet to be validated by Dutch postal supervisor OPTA. It must be mentioned that due to a change in Dutch legislation, this figure consists only of single-item mail. The combined preliminary figure for single mail and bulk mail was 96% in 2010 (96% in 2009).
Subcontractors and suppliers
Mail acknowledges the significant ecological and social impact it has on its supply chain and suppliers’ local communities. As such, Mail is committed to raising its social and ecological standards as well as those of subcontractors and suppliers.
Mail makes a distinction between subcontractors and suppliers. Where this annual report refers to subcontractors, this relates to providers of transport and logistical services. Suppliers are providers of services and materials, and other items excluding transport and logistical services.
Subcontractors
Mail works with its subcontractors in a proactive and innovative manner to deliver products and services, and encourages them to conduct their services in an environmentally-friendly and socially-responsible way.
Mail expects all its subcontractors to be socially responsible and act in accordance with all prevailing local and international legislation, and the provisions of the TNT Business Principles. Mail is committed to managing its operations in a way that complies with all relevant sustainability legislation and standards.
In 2010, Mail conducted a survey into subcontracted operations to help to improve the reliability of reported CR information. In addition, Mail invested in discovering new ways to work with its suppliers and subcontractors to improve the reliability of reported CR information. However, due to the complexity of the situation, and the diverse nature of the subcontractors, Mail will invest additional time to develop procedures for its subcontracted operations to reduce its subcontractors’ social and environmental footprint.
The majority of the operational activities of Parcels are contracted out with the aim of reducing costs and increasing flexibility. In 2010, Mail continued its ‘Subco united’ programme to reduce costs as well as to support subcontractors in improving their sustainability performance.
Mail believes that developing collaborative efforts within its industry is an effective way of leveraging the work of each individual company or organisation to raise supply chain standards, set consistent standards and support subcontractors to implement these standards more sustainably.
Suppliers
Mail is involved with a large number of suppliers. By actively engaging with these suppliers, Mail promotes awareness of its corporate values. Furthermore, Mail identifies and manages the impacts of the supply chain by assessing the sustainability risks of suppliers and sharing best practices with them on mitigating these risks.
During 2010, Mail continued to develop health and safety, environmental and business principles by working in partnership with organisations to help strengthen the corporate responsibility approach within the supply chain. Mail recognises that corporate responsibility efforts, while contributing to sustainable development in general, support competitiveness and help to improve the financial performance of the business.