A series of high-profile delivery problems and a slap on the wrist from the authorities have prompted the country's postal services provider to come up with a list of solutions to improve service quality over the coming three to six months.
While longer-term fixes are being looked at, the immediate measures will address the most pressing issues and aim to win back the public's trust, SingPost's group chief executive Paul Coutts said in a statement yesterday.
This comes after it was fined $100,000 for failing to meet government standards in 2017, as well as public criticism for a perceived drop in reliability.
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said yesterday that SingPost had failed to meet the requirement of 99 per cent delivery of basic local letters within the Central Business District by the next working day in May 2017.
It also failed to achieve 100 per cent delivery of basic letters by the second working day for five months that year, and did not meet this target for registered mail for three months.
The IMDA said that in the light of recent service lapses, "we require (SingPost) to implement measures urgently to meet the public's evolving postal needs", adding that it will take action for any breaches of the public postal licence requirements and standards.
SingPost, the Republic's only public postal licensee, renewed its licence in 2017 for 20 years. It was fined $10,000 in 2013 for falling short of the regulator's Postal Quality of Service standards. A year later, it incurred a $30,000 fine for having up to 500 pieces of mail stolen while left unattended.
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Measures being adopted to improve service over next three to six months
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•Work with government agencies and the Union of Telecoms Employees of Singapore to upgrade the skill set of its postal workers.
•Hire an additional 100 postmen and redeploy 35 mail-drop drivers to become full-time postmen. SingPost currently employs 1,000 postmen and processes an average of three million mail items a day.
•Enhance postmen's remuneration, with incentives for successful deliveries of trackable items to the doorstep. Launched on Feb 1, this is part of a broader salary structure review to ensure that salaries are better aligned with the requirements of the job and the industry as a whole.
•Reduce missed deliveries by extending mail delivery slots to weekday evenings and on Saturdays, with overtime pay for postmen who volunteer for these after-hours slots.
•Increase the number of dedicated counters and staff at post offices for parcel collection. Since the start of the year, volunteers from SingPost's corporate office have been helping out on weekends.
•Reduce non-core mail businesses, such as advertisement mail, to focus on core mail delivery.
It has also come under fire in recent months. A postman was arrested last month when unopened letters and packages meant for Ang Mo Kio residents were found discarded in a rubbish bin.
In December, Facebook user Andy Lau claimed that a deliveryman left a note on his doorstep and ran off after knocking on his door for a few seconds. The post went viral, and prompted other social media users to share their similar experiences.
Mr Coutts apologised to customers for SingPost's service failures, and said that a fundamental review of its mail operations is under way to address them and meet the demands of the evolving postal landscape.
The e-commerce boom has resulted in large volume increases in the traditional mail infrastructure because of its cheaper postage, SingPost said. It added that the increase has "raised the postman's workload, with a significant rise in package deliveries being made to doorsteps, over and above the delivery of mail to letter boxes".
During the peak period over the last few months, each postman carried out between 50 and 60 doorstep deliveries a day on average, it added.
In view of this, SingPost is "reassessing the job of its postmen" to ensure they are equipped to handle rising e-commerce volumes.
Apart from alleviating postmen's workload, other "first steps" to address customers' grouses include hiring an additional 100 postmen and increasing the number of dedicated counters and staff at post offices for parcel collection.
Dr Seshan Ramaswami, associate professor of marketing education at Singapore Management University, said that hiring more delivery staff may prove challenging given competition from food delivery companies, and increasing the distribution of SingPost's POPStations may help to relieve some of the operational burden.
According to SingPost's third-quarter results announced earlier this month, revenue grew 7.6 per cent to $441.4 million on the back of higher peak-season volumes.
•Additional reporting by Shabana Begum
