The USPS Office of Inspector General has issued a report criticizing the postal service’s use of social media to interact with customers:

The Postal Service did not effectively respond to customer inquiries submitted via social media. Specifically, the Postal Service’s current program does not (1) respond to all actionable inquiries, (2) respond to inquiries in a timely manner, and (3) effectively coordinate with the customer care program.

Management recognizes these issues and attributed the lack of responsiveness to the program still being in an informal pilot phase and related shortcomings in resources and staff. The Postal Service’s continued inability to effectively respond to social media inquiries could create frustrating experiences for customers, increase customer complaints and customer care costs, and
ultimately harm the Postal Service’s image and brand.

What the OIG Found

The Postal Service did not effectively respond to customer inquiries submitted through social media. First, the Postal Service did not respond to all actionable customer inquiries. For example, the Postal Service:

• Did not consistently respond to Facebook inquiries.
• Did not respond to inquiries on Instagram.
• Closed 23 percent of actionable Facebook and Twitter inquiries as not actionable.
• Automatically “flushed” (i.e., deleted) Facebook and Twitter posts from the SMOC response dashboard prior to being reviewed by an agent within 48 hours. Thirty-five percent of posts in the SMOC were flushed in FY 2016 and 68 percent were flushed on December 23, 2016 — one of the busiest mailing days of the holiday season.

Second, when the Postal Service did respond, it did not do so in a timely manner — taking 16 hours on average to respond to customers’ initial posts. Only 43 percent of responses occurred within the Postal Service’s 6 hour target.

In August 2013, we reported concerns about the Postal Service’s use of social media, recommending areas of improvement like enhancing customer engagement, identifying subject matter experts, linking social media sites for easier navigation, sharing analytical reports, and evaluating how social media can be used within a comprehensive customer care program.

While the Postal Service did take some corrective action, we are concerned about the lack of sufficient progress aligning the SMOC response operations with those of the customer care program — a separate organization that handles the majority of telephone or website customer inquiries.

We found that coordination between these groups remains problematic. Staff do not share information due to the continued segmentation of their responsibilities — shortcomings that hamper efforts to move to an integrated customer service platform advocated by many leading organizations.

Management attributed the lack of responsiveness to the program still being in an informal pilot phase and related shortcomings in resources and staff. Nevertheless, the current approach and performance conflict with leading industry practices and consumer expectations. In addition, the Postal Service’s continued inability to effectively respond to social media inquiries could create frustrating experiences for customers, increase customer complaints and customer care costs, and ultimately harm the Postal Service’s brand and revenue.

What the OIG Recommended

We recommended management develop immediate strategies to address resources and staffing shortfalls to respond to all actionable customer inquiries posted on Postal Service hosted social media platforms within the Postal Service’s six-hour target; and enhance the coordination between the SMOC and customer care program. Read full report

Source: Social Media Customer Inquiries | USPS Office of Inspector General