How Posts Can Become A Digital Aggregator of Services

The pandemic showed us all the fragility of our current service system, bringing anything with a physical component to it, to a standstill. Empty banks, empty post offices, empty government offices and more. You could have had the best product or service out there, but if it wasn’t available online, you weren’t selling it. Most businesses and organizations were caught off-guard, and adapted as best as they could. But even with partial re-openings of physical service establishments and hopeful prospects of a recovery underway, the traditional way of doing business in buildings, with physical currency and every day interactions will never be the same.

Demand for Digital Services Has Surged

Over the recent years (and increasingly last six months) there’s been a surge in demand for digital services which has given rise to enhanced online banking options, innovative solutions from fintechs, digital government services, the advancement of smart cities around the world and more. Why? Because customers and businesses are demanding better banking services, improved access to online capabilities, a desire for faster and convenient government services, and are keen to be part of the smart city transformations taking place.

Financial Inclusion to Better Serve the World’s Unbanked

Another trend relevant to Posts is financial inclusion. Many Posts are already key partners in global efforts to expand financial inclusion, providing all citizens and small businesses with access to banking services. We all know that success in this regard will help reduce poverty and improve the prospects for the nearly two billion people who are still classified as unbanked.  But there’s an opportunity for Posts to do so much more and offering digital financial services is one way forward.

These recent trends are good examples to reflect on because postal operators around the world are uniquely positioned to take a leading role in each of these areas, benefiting customers, society, governments, and in the process, the Posts’ bottom line. What should Post’s do? In this blog post series, we’ll outline the digital transformation that is required to a) offer traditional postal services anywhere, anytime – even during a pandemic, b) provide government and financial service offerings in a physical and digital environment, and c) make global financial inclusion a reality.

Three Viable Business Models for Increasing Revenue Today

Let’s first take a step back and look at the current environment and how Posts can best increase revenues.

1. Increasing Points of Engagement
   The first way Posts can increase revenues is by adding more points of engagement. The more physical and online points you make available to customers, the more convenient it becomes, and customer experience improves. This is a strategy every Post should embrace. And there are many cost-effective options available to do so.
2. Embracing Customer Journey for Parcels
   The second business model is really the idea of embracing the growing parcel delivery segment, which encompasses the entire customer journey, from purchase to delivery to returns and everything in between.
3. Diversify Services
   The third option is to diversify the services your Post offers, beginning with Government services. Then with that foundation in place, move into the more lucrative financial services area. Diversifying services can be a powerful way to generate long-term, sustainable revenue streams for a postal operator.

We advise our post office customers on all three models and our award-winning Riposte platform is the unified customer engagement platform that makes this all possible.  In our next blog post, we’ll dive deeper into this third business model, Diversifying Services, and describe how this leads to postal operators shifting from being physical aggregators of services to digital aggregators of services.