Customers and quality

Innovative technology translates into competitive advantage in the mail business

We operate a first-class, efficient and environmentally friendly nationwide transport and delivery network in Germany consisting of 82 mail centres and 33 parcel centres that process 65 million letters and some 2.9 million parcels each working day. In the reporting year, we slightly increased the high level of automation in our mail business, which is over 90%.

Our customers rate the quality of our services based on whether posted items reach their destinations quickly, reliably and undamaged. We again achieved excellent results in letter transit times within Germany: according to surveys conducted by Quotas, a quality research institute, well over 95% of the letters posted during our daily opening hours or before final post box collections are delivered to their recipients the next day. In order to ensure this level of quality in the long term, our quality management is based on a system that is certified each year by TÜV Nord, a recognised certification and testing organisation.

In the parcel business, we nearly achieved the previous year’s very good transit time results. Just under 90% of the deliveries we collected from business customers reached their destination the next day. Since 2008, our internal system for measuring parcel transit times has been certified by TÜV Rheinland.

For international letters, transit times are determined by the International Post Co-operation. According to EU specifications, 85% of all cross-border letters posted within the EU must be delivered within three days of posting. We exceeded this specification significantly with a rate of 96%.

Our E-Postbrief product meets high data protection and security standards as described in the risk report. Furthermore, Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz der Landesmedienanstalten (German Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media) certified the product’s age-control mechanism with the highest possible level of quality.

Due to our co-operation with retailers, our approximately 20,000 retail outlets and sales points have increased average weekly opening times from 49 to 50 hours. Surveys of our retail outlet customers are conducted annually by the TNS Infratest Kundenmonitor Deutschland, the largest consumer satisfaction study in Germany, to determine their level of satisfaction with our services. Our service quality has been receiving top marks for years. In the reporting year, we maintained our high marks from the previous year: more than 90% of customers were served within three minutes. Overall, impartial mystery shoppers tested our retail outlets approximately 30,000 times over the year for the study using a method certified by TÜV Rheinland.

A central characteristic of the quality of our products is also environmental protection. In Germany, we employ a TÜV Nord-certified environmental management system in our mail and parcel businesses. As part of our GoGreen initiative, we offer private and business customers climate-neutral shipping options. We are also testing vehicles with hybrid and electric drive technology as well as energy-saving lighting in our facilities.