Call for an intervention

The big brouhaha here in Ilfracombe is that government health-and-safety regulations are once again making it impossible for the town to have a real bonfire on Bonfire Night. Instead locals will be holding sparklers as they watch a film of a fire on a jumbo screen.

Don't get me wrong: I love my adopted country. I like the current government. I even like Gordon Brown (yes, I'm the one). But if the government can see fit to dictate the minutiae of a small town's Guy Fawkes festivities, why can't it interfere with something as nationally significant as the Communication Workers Union's strikes against Royal Mail?

You needn't be Alistair Darling to know that companies are losing significant sums because of the strikes. Shopping-comparison site Kelkoo.com estimates that they will cost each UK retail business an average of £840 a week. Given that the UK has roughly 319,000 retail businesses, that's a lot of sterling that won't be finding its way into the government's tax coffers--never mind the potential catastrophic effects continuing strikes could have on the direct marketing sector, which relies much more heavily on Royal Mail than bricks-and-mortar retailers do.

Yes, we all know that fireworks and bonfires can injure and kill observers. But if the postal strikes last much longer, they may well injure and even kill some businesses. Will the government intercede in the strikes then?--SC

CWU warns: more strikes to come

A three-day postal strike is underway as talks between the Communications Workers Union and Royal Mail failed to reach agreement last night. And although the union is saying that future strikes can be avoided, some newspapers and TV news channels are reporting that strike action will only get worse in the coming days and weeks.
The Guardian and Telegraph quote the CWU’s general secretary Billy Hayes as saying: "We will be upping the dispute. We will not be scaling it down. There is every prospect that we will increase the action and we could be looking at longer strikes." To the BBC, Hayes said: "I don't think we're going to put up with this messing about."

And messed about is how I expect many retailers are feeling as they scramble to put their contingency plans into action. Tell us, how have the strikes affected your business? What are you doing to ensure your customers still get their orders in time? Have you had to rethink any Christmas print marketing campaigns? Do you have a postal strike horror story to share?--MT

Delivering info about deliveries, take two

Last week I went on a bit about how few companies were posting messages on their home pages reassuring customers about deliveries in the event of a Royal Mail strike. But I’m pleased to report that during the past day or so, eight of the 17 marketing emails I’ve received have included some sort of note about delivery. (Okay, I’d be even more pleased to report that the Communication Workers Union won’t be striking against Royal Mail tomorrow, but hey ho.)

For instance, in its email the day before the scheduled strike, NotontheHighStreet.com included a “Postal Strike Update”. The note was a bit ambiguous: “While any postal strike will inevitably affect some of the delivery times stated on our product pages, many of our deliveries are by courier and will be unaffected. In addition, we will do everything we can to get your order to you as quickly as we can.” While I like the idea of the beautifully groomed NotontheHighStreet founders pedalling a bike in high heels to personally deliver a gift to a customer, that’s probably not what they had in mind by “we will do everything we can”.

The postal note appeared about three-quarters of the way down the NotontheHighStreet email; I didn’t see it until I’d hit the Page Down button 13 times. I also had to scroll down, though just a bit, on the email from Baker Ross to read that “Your order will NOT be affected by a Royal Mail strike”.

Great Little Trading Co, on the other hand, put its notice right at the top of its email. So did Great Universal, which kept its message short and sweet: “Rely on us—we won’t be affected by the Royal Mail strikes.” Others that featured reassurances regarding delivery on the initial screen of their emails were The Book People, The Healthy House, and Vertbaudet.

Next and Joe Browns even used the occasion of the impending strikes to contact their subscribers just to let them know that delivery would be unaffected.

Another eight retailers made no mention of the Royal Mail strikes or delivery options in the marketing emails they sent out on the Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the scheduled strike. Maybe that’s because they are Royal Mail customers and have no contingency plans.

Then again, Petmeds uses Royal Mail, yet it emailed customers an update about delivery. “Due to ongoing Royal Mail Postal strikes we ask if you could allow extra time for orders to be delivered. We are currently working on using an alternative postal provider and will update you when this is in place,” the message began. It proceeded to remind readers of its expedited service options and added, “We really value your custom and appreciate your patience at this time”. Come on, everyone: Aww…

Petmeds knows that consumers would rather be kept informed, even if the information isn’t ideal. It also knows how to position that less-than-ideal news, in this instance by couching it as a “we’re all in this together” situation. After all, very often it’s not what you say but how you say it--and that you say it--that counts.--SC

Delivering info about deliveries

When I searched for "Royal Mail" and "strike" this afternoon, Google News delivered "about" 2,368 news stories as results. (I love how Google News won't pin itself down to a specific number of stories but instead feels the need to qualify the number with "about".) A sampling of the headlines: "Royal Mail national strike would cause havoc with Christmas post" (The Telegraph); "Firms' fears over post strike threat" (Scunthorpe Telegraph); "Prepare for disruption" (Burton Mail); "The last post" (The Independent).

I figured that lots of direct sellers would be responding to the fearsome headlines with messages on their websites reassuring customers that even in the case of a national strike, their orders would be delivered on time.

Once again, I figured wrong.

Of the 20 ecommerce sites, both b-to-b and b-to-c, I visited, only four had some sort of disclaimer on their home page.

Office supplies cataloguer/retailer Staples placed its message front and centre, just below its logo: "Your order will not be affected by any Royal Mail strike action. For your peace of mind, remember that your order is NOT delivered by Royal Mail and will continue to be delivered next day as usual."

On the other three websites, the messages appeared below the fold. Even so, they were difficult to miss. Fashion etailer Asos went with a bold albeit somewhat ungrammatical "Royal Mail Strikes Delivery Unaffected". Fellow apparel merchant Cotton Traders, which caters to an older audience, posted a genteel "For complete confidence your order will be delivered by private courier". And general merchandiser Littlewoods tied its message to a reminder that "Standard delivery is free on all orders. Don't forget... our deliveries are not affected by any postal strikes".

So of my informal survey, 20 percent of the websites were addressing what is undoubtedly a concern of many consumers. As for the other 16 websites, several of them (Amazon.co.uk, Marks & Spencer, and Liberty) prominently promoted free shipping offers, but they didn't reassure shoppers that the orders would actually arrive. For the others, it was business as usual.

Some of these companies may still be scrambling for delivery alternatives and therefore can't promise uninterrupted service. But department store John Lewis issued a statement this week stating that it has switched its parcel deliveries to other carriers--so why not post this info on its website?

Maybe John Lewis and some of the others are afraid that by mentioning the strikes on their sites, they're planting a fear in the minds of consumers and that therefore the less said the better. Or maybe they feel it's too early to start pounding the message.

A former editor of mine said that when writing a feature or a presentation, you should "tell the audience what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them". In other words, you can't repeat your message too early or too often. For consumers who are already a bit hesitant about parting with their hard-earned money, it's not too early to reassure them that they'll actually receive the merchandise they've opted to spring for.--SC

Royal Mail v the CWU: misconceptions and misdemeanors

News that the Communication Workers Union (CWU) had voted to strike against Royal Mail raced through the ECMOD conference like Caster Semenya after several cups of Red Bull-spiked cappuccino. That’s no surprise, given that just about everyone attending ECMOD--the UK’s annual conference for cataloguers and other direct sellers--would be affected.

A few talking points:

* Reports that three-quarters of CWU members voted to strike are erroneous. Yes, 61,623 out of 80,830 members voted in favour: 76.2 percent. But 121,000 members were balloted; 40,170 members did not vote. Many observers say that in union votes, members who abstain tend to disagree with the union leadership but fear casting an opposing vote. In other words, of the one-third of members who did not vote, the majority are likely to be against a strike. But even if you don’t want to make that assumption, the fact is that only 51 percent of the CWU members voted to strike--hardly a mandate. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the 20,000 postal workers who, according to Royal Mail, aren’t even CWU members.

* Mainstream media outlets are rushing out with articles offering alternatives to Royal Mail. But while alternative parcel carriers exist--and direct marketers will no doubt be hearing from them in droves--no viable options exist for getting catalogues and other print marketing pieces to customers and prospects. The Wednesday morning ECMOD session “Mail and Parcel Options--The Lowdown”, featuring a panel of carriers and consultants, was in fact misleadingly titled.

Panelist Andrew Goddard, national sales director of TNT Post, which provides downstream access (DSA) services into the Royal Mail mail stream--drop-shipping post so that Royal Mail is responsible only for the proverbial “final mile”--emphasised that cataloguers that avail themselves of DSA services would get their catalogues delivered faster in the event of a strike than those that don’t, because their post will be that much closer to their final destination. But when I asked the session participants point-blank, "What alternatives for catalogue delivery can any of you offer should there be a Royal Mail strike?" they had to admit that there were none. As Graham Cooper, managing director of postal solutions provider Onepost, said, “There’s no magic solution if there’s a mail strike.”

(As an aside, TNT’s Goddard said that his company is working toward unveiling next year an end-to-end service that would include final-mile delivery to about 50 percent of the country.)

* Cataloguers aren’t even certain what contingencies to plan for. Numerous mailers that rely on Royal Mail to deliver some or all of their packages are busy contacting independent carriers. David Price, managing director of multititle mailer Foot Shop, uses Royal Mail to deliver parcels for its Cosyfeet catalogue. Another of its brands, Walk Tall, uses Parcelforce, so Price can shift its Cosyfeet volume to Parcelforce relatively simply. Other companies may have to work harder to find alternatives, however. Parcel carriers have only so much capacity, and cataloguers, particularly smaller ones, might not be able to negotiate terms as favourable as those they have with Royal Mail.

As for their catalogue mailings, in what for the vast majority of business-to-consumer merchants is the critical selling season, the fact that it’s not yet known where and when the strikes will occur makes planning that much trickier. Most at ECMOD assumed that the CWU would conduct 48-hour rolling strikes at differing locations and facilities as it had during the strikes of 2007, rather than a simultaneous nationwide walkout. So should they go ahead with their holiday campaigns and hope that the catalogues arrived in homes eventually--the old “better late than never” philosophy? Should they reduce circulation? Eliminate entire mailings? Graham Winn, owner of gifts mailer Flowercard, said he was “looking at potentially cutting our risk by reducing our acquisition plan”. Unfortunately he’d been planning a big prospecting and sales push for Christmas, so that sales for the season would exceed turnover for all of last year.

* Attendees were hugely sympathetic with Royal Mail. Cataloguers rarely hesitate to criticise Royal Mail. But at ECMOD nearly all of them vented their spleen toward the CWU and sided with Royal Mail and its modernisation efforts. (We'd already done so, pretty much calling CWU leaders a bunch of babies in a post last month.)

Interestingly, two of the panelists at the session “UK Brands Taking the USA by Storm” compared the US Postal Service unfavourably to Royal Mail, with Long Tall Sally chief executive Andrew Shapin calling USPS “a total nightmare” because of its sluggishness and unreliability. If Royal Mail can take any consolation in the ongoing follies, it’s that mailers are finally beginning to show the organisation some love.--SC

Welcome to the real world, CWU

"Never before have postal workers experienced so many attacks from all sides. Whether it's pay, job security, workload, or dignity and respect at work, our members are facing a beating on all aspects of their working lives."--Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), 21st August.

This, in a nutshell, is the CWU's rationale for its continuing regional strikes against Royal Mail and for holding a vote, beginning 17th September, amongst all postal-worker members on whether to call a national strike. The ballot closes 8th October, which means a strike could take place as early as 15th October.

For its part, Royal Mail has dubbed the strike vote "wholly irresponsible" given that "talks between senior management and the union leadership were taking place,” according to a statement. Royal Mail's position seems to be that the CWU is basically failing to go ahead with changes it had agreed to as part of the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement.

I'm sure both sides are in the right on certain points and in the wrong on others; that's just the way of the world. In what is apparently news to the CWU, it's also the way of the world that employees sometimes get their hours and pay reduced, have more work heaped on them, and are treated less than ideally by their bosses.

I think we can all agree with the CWU that such situations are unpleasant, stressful, and downright undesirable. But sometimes they're necessary to keep a business afloat. Small sacrifices now can stave off much bigger sacrifices later on.

The CWU seems to be focusing on the short term at the expense of the long term. Let's say the union manages to prevent any more Royal Mail workers from being made redundant, even if it means not implementing more-efficient technologies and practices that require fewer workers. That's swell for those union members right now. But when Royal Mail's inability to institute more-competitive pricing and services leads to even steeper declines in postal volume, which in turn results in the need for an even smaller workforce, what then? Eventually something will have to give: the jobs of a greater number of workers or the viability of Royal Mail as a competitive entity.

While the CWU may not want to accept certain elements of "modernisation", the world in which it operates has gone ahead and modernised anyway. Royal Mail no longer holds a monopoly on the areas of its business with the greatest potential, such as parcel delivery; while it is still the sole provider of "final mile" carriage, that portion of its business is declining due to the growth of online banking, electronic payments, and email; the private carriers with which it competes have already taken advantage of new technologies that allow them to cut costs, making them a more attractive option for many clients.

The CWU seems to think that by calling strikes it can call a halt to these realities. Not in the real world, my friend.--SC