Message to frontline delivery colleagues.
• Thank you for all of your efforts in adapting to the new challenges we are facing daily due to the current Coronavirus outbreak. Because of the levels of absence, we are now experiencing we need to think of ways to protect our services and our people.
• We are modifying how we deliver “Door to Door” from now. We have listened to feedback from you and our customers and considered this in the changes we are making. It is important we keep the Door to Door option for our customers, as well as ensure we can deliver high priority Government or authority mailings.
• The new approach is:
- o Prep all Door to Door on Monday to give an many chances to deliver the D2D with addressed mail in the week.
o Only take Door to Door items with you to an address where you are delivering addressed letters or larger letters to save time outdoors. We call this “warm calling”.
o If no addressed items today, leave the Door to Door in the frame and repeat the “warm calling” process the next day.
o Where you have 2 delivery points per slot, if there is an addressed item for either address deliver both Door to Door items. If not you can roll the Door to Door over to the next day.
o If by Friday (or Saturday) you have not delivered the Door to Door with an addressed item and don’t have time to deliver then as an exception during Coronavirus outbreak we can roll any residue into the second week. If not complete by Saturday of week 1, report it as “late” and deliver early the next week with addressed items and any new Door to Door for that week.
- • Any Priority postings (eg more urgent) will be identified and communicated to you by your manager.
• Managers can access more information in this link
• We will keep the process under review and advise any further changes.
Modified guidance for Managers for Delivery of Door to Door during Coronavirus outbreak:
• Unaddressed Advertising Mail (Door to Door) is still an effective channel for advertisers but also a unique way to get universal messages (for example from Health Authorities and Local councils, or National Government Agencies) to every household, especially those who are hard to reach through other media. It is therefore important that we keep the Door to Door channel open and effective.
• In order to make best use of our outdoor capacity, and to minimise the number of visits to customers doorsteps we should aim to deliver Door to Door to each address on a day when they have addressed items being delivered we will be moving to “warm calling”.
• To get the most from this approach we should prep all the D2D on a Monday (or if we experience delays in the supply chain the day after it arrives) to give ourselves the most chances to have an addressed item for each address over the week.
• Each day you can clear down your frame, leaving any delivery points who only have Door to Door. To support this with warm calling we will consider a frame clear of all addressed mail to be a “clear frame”.
• Where you have 2 delivery points to a prep frame slot then you should deliver both addresses on the same day, even if one does not have an addressed item. If there is no addressed item for either address then you can hold over both D2D items. This helps to prevent confusion later in the week over which address has received the D2D item already.
• Any items where there has not been an addressed item by Friday (or Saturday) where you don’t have time to deliver them under current circumstances can exceptionally be held for delivery early the next week, these should be recorded as delivered “late” on Door to Door reports and must be delivered before the end of the second week.
• If there are any Government or other D2D mailings with different arrangements (eg more urgency) then these will be communicated separately. For example there may be official or universal messages which need to be delivered over a 2,3 or 6 day window and these must be delivered to specification and cannot be rolled into a second week. Clear instruction will need to be provided to frontline colleagues on how long we have to deliver these items. If you have a shorter timescale item it makes sense to deliver any other D2D with that item in that week to save additional visits to Delivery Points.
• It is possible that you may receive leaflets which are for an event which has been cancelled due to not being compliant with social distancing. Please check your items before they are distributed to the preparation frames. If you discover leaflets for cancelled events the unit manager should contact: the Door to Door team preferably on 0345 266 0858, or via doortodoor@royalmail.com.
• You can start warm calling from tomorrow. All new D2D should all be prepped from Monday.
• For reporting ‘Late delivery’, a new temporary question has now been added to the Door to Door SharePoint reporting site, for unit managers to report volumes of Door to Door that have been carried into a second delivery week.
• Because the situation is moving quickly we will keep this approach under review in the coming days and weeks.
Kind Regards,
Kev
Kevin Thompson MBA
Delivery Director
Royal Mail
