Ombudsman’s Message

WHEN I BEGAN MY TENURE AS CANADA POST’S THIRD ­OMBUDSMAN IN 2008, I QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THAT MY TEAM WAS DEDICATED TO SAFEGUARDING THE INTERESTS OF CUSTOMERS WITH THE UTMOST ATTENTION TO FAIRNESS AND INDEPENDENCE.

With three basic principles as our goalposts — standardization, consistency and simplification — we rallied around streamlining and improving many of our management processes and interfaces with the customer. As a first step, we redesigned the “look and feel” of our final reports to customers to bring more clarity to our findings and recommendations. In September, we introduced an online complaint process to increase customer accessibility to our office.

We experienced a 16 per cent increase year-over-year in the number of requests for assistance processed by the team. The introduction of the online complaint process, coupled with the PSAC labour disruption, which limited the general public’s access to Customer Service in November and December, accounted for 10 per cent of this increase in the last quarter.

Forty-three per cent of these requests for assistance (3,494) resulted in full-fledged investigations, while 57 per cent (4,547) were satisfactorily closed at intake. The outcome of these investigations produced 2,163 recommendations to Canada Post. I would be remiss at this point not to thank ­Canada Post for its diligent and continued co-operation in our investigation process and in the timely implementation of these recommendations. Despite the significant increase in cases investigated in 2008, I am pleased to report that 87 per cent of case outcomes were communicated to the customer within 40 days, of which 61 per cent were closed within 20 days — a performance achievement comparable to 2007. A detailed view of the outcomes of these investigations and their regional distribution is provided in our annual report, available at http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/aboutus/ombudsman/default.jsf.

With a shared goal of improving the customer’s experience, our 2009 business plan focuses on three strategic objectives: enhancing our visibility within Canada Post front-line management; improving communications with customers; and promoting excellence in our case management processes. To bring the voice of the customer to the forefront of our plan, we designed a customer feedback program administered by an independent third party. The program was launched in January 2009, and I look forward to incorporating these results and insights on the customer’s overall experience in next year’s report.

As Canada Post strives to build the Modern Post, the Office of the Ombudsman is proud to contribute to the organization’s customer-centric goals by independently reviewing customer concerns in a fair and unbiased manner, to help improve postal service for all Canadians.

Nicole Goodfellow