The Evolving University Mailroom: Challenges & Solutions for Back to School
It’s September, and that means that from coast to coast, students are streaming back into universities by the thousands. Along with them, will be an even larger amount of mail pieces. However, the type of mail pieces pervasive on college and university campuses these days are not akin to what mailrooms were dealing with 15, 10, or even 5 years prior. While the use of traditional mail has waned, the prominence of packages – due to online shopping and textbook rental services – has skyrocketed.
This, and other trends relating to the way that students are using mail are putting pressures on collegiate mail operations; waiting times are growing, undelivered mail pieces are becoming more frequent, and oftentimes, students are not checking their individual, lockable mailboxes a single time throughout the year.
This is leading to a number of questions that campus mail managers are asking themselves such as; how can current workflows be updated to better suit today’s generation of digitally-savvy students? How can we better apply technology to the process? And how can we meet the high demands of students and their families, while respecting the resources of the institution? These challenges are also presenting an opportunity, to transition from a mail room to a true mail service center.
Below, we’ll break down several evolving issues that are putting pressure on university mailrooms, and propose solutions that savvy mail managers are implementing.
Challenges
Increased Volume of Packages – One of the major trends adversely affecting the operating abilities of collegiate mailrooms is the rapidly increasing volumes of packages on college campuses. The number of packages being sent to college students has actually increased by 15% annually in recent years, outpacing the support systems that universities have in place to get these packages into the hands of their recipients. This has led to massive increases in terms of waiting times that students experience when they go to pick up packages, a problem which compounds itself as more and more packages go undelivered; taking up valuable mailroom real estate as well.
Decreased Volume of Traditional Mail –While the amount of packages being sent to college students has grown exponentially in recent years, the amount of traditional mail being sent has trended in the opposite direction. This poses a large scale problem for university mailrooms, which are constructed from the ground up, literally, to deal with the opposite trends. Much of the real estate of a university mailroom is dedicated to individual, locked mail boxes assigned to each student, but recent studies have shown that many of these individual mailboxes go unused for a year or longer.
Missed Deliveries, Long Waiting Times – While smaller mail pieces can be placed into the above-described mailboxes, at a traditional collegiate mailroom operation, packages are delivered by hand. Students are notified that they have a package, and come to pick it up from a mailroom worker. This was a fine strategy in the past, but because of the exponential growth of packages, lines are growing longer, and students are becoming increasingly frustrated with the experience. As of recently, peak wait times at major universities have surpassed the 30 minute mark.
Solutions
Package Tracking Apps – The main reason why university mailrooms employ the above-described delivery methods (hand delivery from the mailroom) is so that the chain of custody is managed through all points. However, there are now technologies that can provide that information. With a package tracking app, stakeholders can track the collection of data from pickup to delivery without manually logging data. This function helps decrease the probability of losing packages and enables quicker communication at all stages of shipment and delivery. Data can also be posted on a secure website, as one way of notifying recipients when they have a package. When this type of tracking technology is combined with an Intelligent Locker delivery system, the need for mailroom personnel to physically hand a student’s package to them is done away with, automating hours of labor in the process.
Intelligent Lockers – Intelligent Mail Lockers are innovative in a number of ways. First off, they are not individually assigned. For instance, students are notified via email or text message that they have a package. In that notification, the student is given the location of the locker and a one-time-use code they can use to open it. This reduces a number of pain points for a mail operation. It eliminates missed deliveries, long waiting times, and students rushing to the mailroom before it closes. It saves huge amounts of real estate; as the lockers are not individually assigned as traditional mailboxes are. Transitioning from small, individually assigned lockers to larger, shared ones can alleviate a number of issues for university mailrooms.
Utilizing Mail Data & Metrics – Gaining insights into workflows, peak pickup times, and more are essential for mailroom managers attempting to streamline and modernize their operations. Fortunately, there are apps that can provide that information now. For example, there are digital dashboards that mailroom managers can use to establish KPIs, build custom reporting templates, and access historical data so that they can measure their current performance, and any changes they make to their processes or workflows, like the integration of Intelligent Lockers.
The challenges facing college and university mailroom managers are unlike anything we have seen in the past, and the pain points are becoming more difficult to deal with every year. However, there are now more technology-based solutions in place to help manage these processes than ever before. Going forward, the successful mailrooms will be the ones that integrate these technologies in a savvy and timely fashion.
