Traditionally, we have seen envelope – white or brown or orange. With no details in it. I have been going to post offices and courier for posting parcels for chennaishopping.com
I found that people waste lot of time there waiting in queue at the booking counter. most of the post-office have electronic booking of speed post. only few courier companies booking centre have electronic booking.
The long queue is due to the data entry like name, address, pincode into the system. There are few drawbacks in this.
1. What if the name / address / pincode does not match in the receipt / proof of delivery? since this is entered by human. Many times, i have seen that at the booking centre, they don’t type your full recipient addresses / pincode / name properly.
2. They use their own tracking number shipping label.
i have seen huge letter covers being booked, atleast in courier offices. Error #1 can occur most frequently and there is a inefficiency.
How can it be improved?
I have been thinking about this for some time and i kind found some basic solution i guess. why can’t india post or courier provide their own shipping barcode enabled envelope to their customers? This way it is easier to scan and send at a larger scale which solves #2 problem. this also increases revenue for these companies by selling envelopes.
what about the problem #1?
The sender details and recipient details can be embedded in the form of QRcode.
Automatic Posting Machine:
Imagine like a ATM kiosk wherein you can type in your address and get the envelope or a label sticker with
- Address printed clearly
- Tracking number enabled
You just pay the amount mentioned in the envelope or label at the counter. This can reduce the queue size.
I am sure there are lot of ways to re-imagine the post office operations. If you got, please do add your suggestions….! What do you think?
Beyond Work 