Business customer survey

The Business Customer Survey is based on market research prepared for Postcomm by Quadrant consultants and BMG. The latest edition was published on 2 October 2008.

Who took part?

  • Information in this latest edition of Postcomm’s annual survey of business mailers came from 1,802 companies. Categorised according to annual spending on mail, the group was made up of 104 “top mailers” (including 37 ‘Super Top’ users spending over £2m per year on mail.), 110  “large mailers”, 511 “medium mailers”, 546 “small mailers” and 531 “very small mailers”.

Quick facts

  • Nearly 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 95 per cent of their mail with Royal Mail.
    23 per cent of the total sample reported using multiple mail providers. This ranged from 39 per cent of respondents in the top category to 19 per cent in the very small category. There is an overall 50 per cent increase from last year, with the biggest increase in multiple sourcing coming from small and very small mailers. 
  • A quarter of respondents said they would look to alternative providers if there was a 5 per cent price rise, a cumulative 52 per cent said they would seek alternatives if there was a 10 per cent price rise. 
    43 per cent of organisations think that their mail volumes will stay the same over the next five years. 36 per cent think that their mail volumes will increase. Of the 17 per cent that think their volumes will decrease the main reason given for this was ‘use of new technology.’

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 38 per cent awareness and DHL Global Mail with 24 per cent awareness. All of the alternative operators with over 5 per cent awareness have seen a growth in awareness since 2007.

Switching to other media

  • Over a quarter of respondents had moved some of their mail to other media in the past twelve months. Email is the form of media most used as a substitute for mail. Individual single piece items were moved by 42 per cent of those moving some mail. Nearly half of those who have migrated some mail in the last 12 months expect their level of migration to stay the same in the next 12 months.
    Quality of service
  • Delivery to the correct address was rated as the most important aspect of mail service, with collection reliability, trustworthiness and delivery reliability in joint second place.
    There was a slight drop in overall quality of service ratings for Royal Mail and the alternative licensed providers compared with 2007. When looking at specific quality of service factors for Royal Mail and alternative operators all aspects scored 7 out of 10 or higher.

 Views on competition

  • More than half (55 per cent) of customers believe that competition has improved the choices open to them, this is slightly up from 54 per cent last year. 40 per cent believe competition has improved Royal Mail’s quality of service, however only 15 per cent believe that competition has resulted in significantly lower prices. When rating agreement with the statement ‘I am in favour of the mail market opening up to competition’ the rating was 6.9 out of 10.

Views on policy issues

  • Customers opinions on the most important days for mail collection were split equally between Monday and Friday. Saturday was the least important day for collection.
    In 2008 44 per cent of respondents said it was imporant to have mail delivered on 6 days of the week, this is a 50 per cent increase from 2007 when only 28 per cent said this was important.
  • Most respondents feel that Postcomm should mandate an access code and 68 per cent think that Postcomm should control access prices.

Format changes

  • Following the introduction of Royal Mail’s Pricing in Proportion in August 2006, two thirds of respondents are now using the folded letter format. Use of the A4 mailing format has settled at 24 per cent.

Views on Postcomm

  • Postcomm’s performance in protection of customers was rated slightly more highly than its performance in maintaining the universal service, all ratings were at or above 6.5 out of 10.