I have just been watching Panorama‘s report on Royal Mail. It’s now over a year since I left the company, but it seems it will take a lot longer for me to leave it completely behind. People still stop me to tell me about their bad experiences. I also get asked questions on postal services (and am very aware that soon any advice I may give will be completely outdated!). And I continue to be interested in what’s going on.

Though I know some of the many problems and how frustrating it can be as a customer at times, I still stick up for Royal Mail. People really don’t appreciate what happens to get mail from A to B. I know that prior to Royal Mail I didn’t. I just assumed you stuck it in the post box and magic fairies and elves (or something just as simple) got it to the postman. Once I started in Royal Mail I was amazed and it took me months to get my head around it all. Day to day we just see post boxes, post men & post women, but so much more goes into it. And the challenges that face Royal Mail are bigger than ever. Around the time of the strikes I wroteanother blog with my opinions on Royal Mail, so I won’t repeat that here. But I will share some facts…

Royal Mail deliver around 16 and a half billion letters a year*. That’s over 50 million letters every day**

You think Santa has his work cut out? He only does it once a year! If you have half an hour to sit down with a cuppa then it’s worth watching ‘Can’t Deliver, Won’t Deliver’ on iPlayer*** Whilst you boil the kettle and wait for it to load just try and imagine getting all those billions of letters to the right place. Getting them from one end of the country to the other. Making sure every single item of mail gets to the right distribution centre, then Mail Centre, then Delivery Office. Oh and doing it all in about 12 hours.

If you get a letter tomorrow then it will have only arrived at the first stop on it’s journey somewhere between 3pm and 8pm today. While you sleep soundly in your bed a combination of machinery and people will be sorting those letters. Drivers and pilots will be taking them up and down the country. And then more machines and people will sort them further. By the time you wake up they will have made it to the delivery office where your postie will have to sort them a little bit more and then head out to pop it through your letter box.

It’s an amazing feat and it’s achieved by many thousands of brilliant people. There is no doubt there are some people causing the problems in Royal Mail, but there are also thousands working very hard to solve them and deliver the best service they can.

*Based on figure of 8.2 billion items in the Royal Mail Group Half Year Trading Statement 10/12/2009
**Based on my dodgy mathematics (52 weeks x 6 delivery days per week) – 8 public holidays = 312 delivery days (and a little help from WolframAlpha)
***Panorama: Can’t Deliver, Won’t Deliver – available on iPlayer until 14th December 2010