DHL 2012 Annual Report Download - page 84

Customers and quality
Innovative technology translates into competitive advantage in the mail business
We operate a rst-class, ecient and environmentally friendly nationwide transport
and delivery network in Germany consisting of  mail centres and  parcel centres that
process more than  million letters and more than  million parcels each working day.
In the reporting year, the high level of automation in our mail business, which is over
 , saw a further slight increase. In our parcel network, we have meanwhile increased
our overall sorting capacity by almost   by upgrading existing facilities.
Our customers rate the quality of our services based on whether posted items reach
their destinations quickly, reliably and undamaged. We again achieved excellent results
in letter transit times within Germany: according to surveys conducted by Quotas, a
quality research institute,   of the letters posted during our daily opening hours or
before nal post box collections were delivered to their recipients the next day. In order
to ensure this level of quality in the long term, our quality management is based on a
system that is certied each year by  Nord, a recognised certication and testing
organisation.
In the parcel business, items usually reach their recipients the next working day. is
is based on parcels that were collected from business customers and that were delivered
the next day. Since , our internal system for measuring parcel transit times has been
certied by  Rheinland.
For international letters, transit times are determined by the International Post
Corporation. Here we rank amongst the top postal companies. According to 
specications,   of all cross-border letters posted within the  must be delivered
within three days of posting. We exceeded this specication again signicantly in the
reporting year.
Our -Postbrief product meets high data protection and security standards as
described in the risk report. In , we developed more user-friendly features for this
product: -PostIdent – our real-time identication service – simplies the online sale
of products that require identication, such as those with age restrictions. -Postbrief
Komfortzahlung allows private customers to pay bills easily and securely from the com-
fort of home.
Since the beginning of , the more than , Deutsche Post points of sale have
been operated exclusively by partners, the majority of which are retail stores. As a result,
the average weekly opening times of the approximately , retail outlets and more
than , sales points increased from  to  hours. e annual survey conducted
by Kundenmonitor Deutschland, the largest consumer study in Germany, also shows a
high acceptance of our partner retail outlets: over   of customers are satised with
our quality and service (previous year:  ). In addition, impartial mystery shoppers
from  Infratest tested the postal outlets in retail stores approximately , times
over the year. e result showed that more than   of customers were served within
 minutes.
A central characteristic of the quality of our products is environmental protection. In
Germany, we employ a  Nord-certied environmental management system in our
mail and parcel businesses. We oer private and business customers climate-neutral
shipping options with our GoGreen products. We are also testing vehicles with hybrid
and electric drive technology, as well as energy-saving lighting in our facilities.
Opportunities and risks, page 
Corporate responsibility, page 
Deutsche Post DHL Annual Report 
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