Business customer survey

The Business Customer Survey 2009 is based on market research prepared for Postcomm by ORC International. A revised edition was published on 17 May 2010.

Who took part?

  • Information in this latest edition of Postcomm’s annual survey of business mailers came from 802 companies. The research covered a range of businesses that all spend over £5,000 a year on mail in the licensed area (this means mail which weighs less than 350g and costs more than £1 to send). The research looked at the views of businesses with different numbers of employees and in different industry sectors.

Quick facts

  • As in 2008, around half of respondents think that mail is core to their business. A further 31 per cent think it is critical.
  • Royal Mail continues to be the main service provider to business customers, serving nearly 100 per cent of the firms surveyed.
  • Even customers that have moved some mail to alternative providers continue to use Royal Mail for most of their mail.  Overall those who use Royal Mail send 94 per cent of their mail with Royal Mail.
  • In contrast to 2008, the 2009 BCS has found a significant reduction in multiple sourcing, from 23 per cent to 13 per cent. However, it should be noted that the wording of the question in the survey was changed this year to remind customers to focus on licensed area mail only, and this may indicate that in previous years businesses were also naming providers they used for mail that was sent using the express divisions of mail companies, for example FedEx and DHL Express.  
  • Nearly a third of respondents said they would look to alternative providers if there was a 5 per cent price rise, and a cumulative 54 per cent said they would seek alternatives if there was a 10 per cent price rise. 
  • In a market where mail volume decline is at its highest in five years, customers are less optimistic about mail volume growth in their own businesses, with 29 per cent predicting that volumes will decrease over the next five years. This is a large increase from 2008, when only 17 per cent predicted a decline in their sent mail volumes. The proportion that said they believed their mail volumes would increase remained at around a third.

Awareness of alternative operators

  • After Royal Mail, which has universal awareness, the next two mail providers with the highest levels of unprompted awareness are TNT Post UK with 39 per cent and DHL Global Mail (UK) Ltd with 18 per cent. Awareness of UK Mail Ltd has increased to 15 per cent.

Switching to other media

  • There has been a large increase, from 26 per cent in 2008 to 37 per cent in 2009, in the percentage of businesses which have moved some of their mail to other media, like email or the internet, in the last twelve months. The main reason for this is to make cost savings, but speed, customer preference and environmental reasons were the next most popular reasons. Of those who had not moved to other media, the most common response when asked why not was simply, 'don't know'. 

Quality of service

  • Overall, business customers were positive about the service they receive from their mail providers. Royal Mail scored an average of 7.8 out of 10, and alternative operators were rated at an average of 7.9 out of 10. This is despite the fact that that the BCS was carried out during the industrial action in 2009. These results highlight that customers were still satisfied with the service they received, despite periods of disruption. The most highly rated aspects of operators' services were: availability of a daily collection (rated at 8.8 for Royal Mail and alternative operators); time of collection (8.5 and 8.4); and collection reliability (8.3).

 Views on competition

  • More than half (56 per cent) of customers believe that competition has improved the choices open to them. 38 per cent believe competition has improved Royal Mail’s quality of service, however only 19 per cent believe that competition has resulted in significantly lower prices. 

 Views on Postcomm

  • Postcomm’s performance in maintaining the universal service was rated by respondents as 7.3 out of 10, slightly higher than the rating for protecting the interests of customers, which scored 7.1 out of 10.