1、BSI Standards PublicationPostal services Quality of delivery: ReforwardingPD CEN/TR 16894:2015National forewordThis Published Document is the UK implementation of CEN/TR 16894:2015. The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to TechnicalCommittee SVS/4, Postal services.A list of organizat
2、ions represented on this committee can be obtained onrequest to its secretary.This publication does not purport to include all the necessary provisions ofa contract. Users are responsible for its correct application. The British Standards Institution 2015.Published by BSI Standards Limited 2015ISBN
3、978 0 580 90476 9ICS 03.240Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity fromlegal obligations.This Published Document was published under the authority of theStandards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 September 2015.Amendments/corrigenda issued since publicationDate Text affectedPUBL
4、ISHED DOCUMENTPD CEN/TR 16894:2015TECHNICAL REPORT RAPPORT TECHNIQUE TECHNISCHER BERICHT CEN/TR 16894 September 2015 ICS 03.240 English Version Postal services - Quality of delivery: Reforwarding Services postaux - Qualit de la distribution: rexpdition Qualitt von Lieferungen: Nachsendeantrag This T
5、echnical Report was approved by CEN on 8 September 2015. It has been drawn up by the Technical Committee CEN/TC 331. CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, France,
6、 Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom. EUROPEAN COMMITTEE FOR STANDARDIZATION COMIT EUROPEN DE NORMALISATION EUROPISCHES KOMIT
7、EE FR NORMUNG CEN-CENELEC Management Centre: Avenue Marnix 17, B-1000 Brussels 2015 CEN All rights of exploitation in any form and by any means reserved worldwide for CEN national Members. Ref. No. CEN/TR 16894:2015 EPD CEN/TR 16894:2015CEN/TR 16894:2015 (E) 2 Contents Page European foreword . 3 Int
8、roduction 4 1 Scope 5 2 Symbols and abbreviations . 5 3 Service characteristics 5 4 Test items . 5 5 Test customers . 6 6 Performance indicator 7 7 Sample design . 8 8 Report 9 9 Scalability . 9 Bibliography . 11 PD CEN/TR 16894:2015CEN/TR 16894:2015 (E) 3 European foreword This document (CEN/TR 168
9、94:2015) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN/TC 331 “Postal services”, the secretariat of which is held by NEN. Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CEN and/or CENELEC shall not be held responsible for identify
10、ing any or all such patent rights. PD CEN/TR 16894:2015CEN/TR 16894:2015 (E) 4 Introduction The European Commission emphasises the need to have common rules for the development of community postal services and the improvement of Quality of Service (QoS). The purpose of re-forwarding of postal items
11、standardization is to supply all POs with a useful set of rules how to measure the QoSin re-forwarding. A survey among operators showed that all contributing countries provide this type of service, although with varying offers on type of mail, duration of contract, and modes of processing. The techn
12、ical recommendations on re-forwarding measurement take the varying service levels into account and should be flexible towards any POs service offer. It is essential to set the re-forwarding monitor up as an independent measurement, performed by an independent network of senders and receivers managed
13、 by an independent supplier. Beyond this, this document describes a best practice approach of measuring re-forwarding with a basic design and sample. The design can be extended and refined to meet more advanced criteria of representative sampling, e.g. in mail characteristics, geographical spread, c
14、ustomer type, and differentiation of performance indicator. It is recommended to focus on the type of contract that covers the majority of contracts, e.g. on the domestic measurement (although re-forwarding contracts are offered as cross-border service as well), and / or on those of private househol
15、ds or permanent relocation. The measurement should be based on a defined methodology which shall be objective and be auditable even if no audit is foreseen. The methodology and the sample design should be defined before the start of the measurement. PD CEN/TR 16894:2015CEN/TR 16894:2015 (E) 5 1 Scop
16、e This Technical Report specifies methods for measuring the quality of a re-forwarding service of domestic addressed mail that is collected, processed and delivered by postal service operators. As a European Standard or technical specification it relates to the measurement of services given to house
17、hold and business customers who receive mail at their homes, their post office boxes, or at their office premises and have contracted their national Postal Operator (PO) to re-forward their mail for a defined stretch of time to an address that deviates from the one presented on the postal items that
18、 are to be delivered to them. It is not the purpose of this standard to measure the POs performance in a way that provides direct comparison of postal service providers. 2 Symbols and abbreviations PO Postal Operator QoS Quality of Service 3 Service characteristics The re-forwarding service is chara
19、cterized by the fact that a person or company asks the PO to deliver their mail to a different address from the one that is written on the label of the postal item. This service is used when private households, businesses or other type of organizations leave their premises temporarily or permanently
20、 and the alternative address is not (yet) commonly known to their correspondents. Holidays or travels / stays away from home for health, educational or job purposes are typical examples of temporary absence which has a predetermined end. Alternatively, re-forwarding contracts are set up if a person,
21、 family, or business relocates permanently, i.e. move to another place of living. This type of re-forwarding service typically runs for several months. To measure this type of service, real re-forwarding contracts shall be used. The method to monitor the quality of the re-forwarding service is to se
22、nd the test items to a person having a re-forwarding contract under this address. The test letters are being sent to the old/not valid address, and are considered correctly re-forwarded if they arrive at the new / now valid address. Without the real registration of the re-forwarding request the usua
23、l process of re-forwarding cannot be carried out by the PO. PO employees shall be able to refer to their usual database or source of information to identify a test item as a letter that should not be delivered to the address written on it but to someplace else. Both addresses, the one that is writte
24、n on the envelope and the one where the item is re-forwarded to, shall be real addresses, postally correct and verified, and available in the POs information system as a re-forwarding case. Only then a sorting process or postal employees are able to correctly re-direct the item and the postman is ab
25、le to deliver the item to its addressee. 4 Test items The need for real re-forwarding contracts renders the finding of participants in the measurement rather demanding. A sample of test customers with the comparatively rare feature of a re-forwarding contract needs to be picked and their mail monito
26、red for test purposes (test mail) for a certain period. The test period should begin with the contract start date and last until the end of the contract. A defined number of test letters is sent to this test customer and monitored during this period. The start and end date of the contract should be
27、considered carefully in the posting plan because a letter posted on the last day before a contract starts might slip through the sorting, before the contract PD CEN/TR 16894:2015CEN/TR 16894:2015 (E) 6 becomes active and the re-forwarding information is available. If a letter was posted the day befo
28、re the contract terminates, it will not reach the postman until the day after the contract becomes invalid and the re-forwarding information might get unavailable. These critical days shall be proportionately included in the measurement. The QoS(QoS) result Fulfilment of the re-forwarding service sh
29、all be measured by the percentage of mail that is properly redirected and arrives at the new / temporary address (fulfilment of re-forwarding service). The percentage of successful delivery can be calculated if one knows the total number of items that should have been re-forwarded, and thereby find
30、out whether any one is missing. Therefore one has to control the number of items that are sent to the test receiver and have to be taken into account for the monitoring result calculation, which is achieved by the use of test items. Other (real) mail items that arrive during that period of observati
31、on are not measured. NOTE 1 The simple approach of just reporting the real mail that was successfully re-forwarded does not give more than an indicator whether the re-forwarding works at all. Even if it was possible to determine the number of items gone to the wrong address (e.g. finding them at hom
32、e after the end of holidays or collected by persons with access to the old/not valid letterbox), it does not produce the number of items that might have been lost in transit, if one is not aware they were on their way. The test letters shall have an outward appearance that shows no obvious differenc
33、e from typical regular mail in format, weight, colour, print, and franking. The address on the envelope shall be in conformity with typical addressing. The address shall be written correctly and legibly. Therefore it might be useful to fabricate all items and provide them to the sender(s) to prevent
34、 individual errors in addressing. It should be verified that the addressing was correct and enabled the PO to deliver the letter. The test letters address shall match exactly the one given in the re-forwarding contract which is verified by most postal operators. Verifying the new address as well avo
35、ids delays in the re-forwarded delivery. NOTE 2 It might be possible to set up a test design that makes use of real mail between the test person with a re-forwarding contract and one or some of his regular correspondents. As the letters under observation are selected for the test period they are als
36、o referred to as “test items”. 5 Test customers For setting up the test customer network, the monitoring agency needs to recruit customers that have the intention to use a re-forwarding contract, in time to measure its start date. NOTE Some PO might dispose of a database that allows for monitoring t
37、he QoS of re-forwarded real mail by data-analysis, e.g. counting all items that should be re-forwarded and calculating the share of those that were successfully delivered vs. those who were not. If this can be reliably identified by the data, a special test monitor may not be required. Although moni
38、toring companies may use various sources to get hold of participants who plan a move or absence with the use of re-forwarding (e.g. as a by-result of the domestic J+1 monitor), the most effective source usually is the POs own database of re-forwarding contracts. This may contain customers who are ju
39、st signing the contract, or regular re-forwarding customers (e.g. because they have a summer house). While participants with the intention to get a re-forwarding contract may be found well in advance, the re-forwarding contract is typically signed only a few days before the start date with respect t
40、o the minimum delay required by the operator to implement the information. This leaves little time to approach the customer and recruit him for the test. Therefore a smooth procedure between the PO and the monitoring agency of providing the contact information is required that complies with the resp
41、ective data privacy regulation. PD CEN/TR 16894:2015CEN/TR 16894:2015 (E) 7 The test customers who join the measurement shall not be known to the staff of the POs. If a PO unit provides contact data of persons who have a re-forwarding contract for recruitment purposes this unit shall not make the se
42、lection and shall not know which persons have been selected. This requirement shall ensure that a PO cannot influence either the behaviour or reporting of the panellists, or the QoS provided specifically to them, thus introducing bias. If their identity is kept secret, there can be no opportunity fo
43、r influencing behaviour. These test customers function as receivers of the test items. The same or other persons (independent from a re-forwarding contract) are selected as senders who post the test items on prescribed days and confirm the (date of) sending. The test receivers register the delivery,
44、 e.g. by date, or non-delivery. If the geographical spread of the induction is relevant (a discriminant mail characteristic) a network of senders should be established similar to an end-to-end measurement. If geography has no importance, e.g. because all mail is sorted and checked for re-forwarding
45、contracts in one country hub or because this mail is identified only at their destination address by the postman, the test mail may be inducted at only one point of origin by just one sender. It shall be ascertained that the integrity of the measurement is not compromised, e.g. the name of the sende
46、r (in case a sender address appears on the envelope) may be changed several times to keep the test less discoverable. Recording the dates of sending and receiving is recommended although they are not really required when fulfilment of the re-forwarding service is measured. However, they are easily a
47、dded by the participant and help verifying the information. Another support to identify the test item is by enumeration: the sending is done in numeric sequence (e.g. 1 to 20), the sender is able to determine whether all items have arrived or one of the sequence is missing. In case of a missing item
48、 the receiver should actively confirm that it did not arrive and was not just overlooked, or received and discarded by another member of the household. Any method of data capturing can be applied, from paper-and-pencil lists to phone, online or mobile device formats. The sending shall be monitored i
49、n a timely manner: in case an item gets forgotten it has to be cancelled from the reception list and removed from the performance indicator calculation. The receiver may confirm each item on a list, or individually by phone. They also may collect and return all test items to the monitoring agency for verification, in case of a relatively short temporary absence at the end, or during longer test periods in intervals by prepaid return envelope. The participants shall be able to report the sending and receiving accurately and to be relied on to confess if they have no
