I got some letters yesterday that had been posted five years ago but had been lost in the mail system. Naturally my first thought was how do you lose mail for five years, had it fallen down the back of a sorting machine somewhere only to turn up now? It was interesting to read five years old mail, there was one from the bank when I set up a Kiwisaver account, I'd always wondered why the bank had been so slack with the paperwork but now I find out they hadn't been.
So while my first thought was that this was incredibly bad service, I read on with the letter from New Zealand Post that arrived. Seems one of the posties had decided to take a sack of mail home and not deliver it, reading between the lines it looks like he was in some sort of dispute with his employer. The letter from the General Manager, Postal Delivery apologised for the breach of trust, and said the matter was in the hands of the Police. It also said New Zealand Post was saddened by the incident and apologised for the inconvenience.
Now I'm not a fan of apologising for inconvenience generally as it usually sounds patronising, but in this case it did come across as sincere. So here we have a case where a rogue employee does something they shouldn't have done. It has taken five years for New Zealand Post to find out and they've had to figure out what to do. They could have done nothing, I'd have never known the mail was lost, but instead they fronted up and admitted the error, and provided an apology for the issue.
So as a customer who lost some of his mail for five years, I feel New Zealand Post has done a pretty good job here of recovering from a pretty bad situation. Anyone who has worked as a customer manager will know things go wrong and sometimes very wrong. Best thing you can do is front up and be honest, take whatever feedback the customers decide to give you on the chin and move on. A well handled issue will generally not lose you customers, and indeed will show you are serious about good customer service.
