The single largest change catalyst ever in the high-volume personalised customer communication management (CCM) space is about to happen in Australia. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has now announced that they will not object to Australia Post’s proposed postal price increases effective 4 January 2016. Will this tsunami wash over you, or destroy your customer communication budgets and processes?

1. Tsunami Alert
The Largest Postage
Increases Ever Will Cost
Australians $Millions!

2. Single Largest Change Catalyst
The single largest change catalyst ever in the high-volume
personalised customer communication management
(CCM) space is about to happen in Australia.
Will this tsunami wash over you, or
destroy your customer communication
budgets and processes?

3. Single Largest Change Catalyst
Once these increases happen, more than $1,000,000
extra could be spent for every 100,000 customers on
customer communications, per year, every year.
Evidence shows that customer communications could
already be costing $millions per 100,000 customers,
and in our experience at least 10% to 30% of this
spend is usually waste.

4. It’s All Go!!
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has now
announced that they will not object to Australia Post’s proposed postal price
increases effective 4 January 2016.
Since the notification in August by Australia Post proposing the postage price
increase in October 2015, and then the massive hit in January 2016, business
has reacted differently with comments similar to...
1. Are you sure those numbers are right and that prices will go up that much?
2. I guess it is what it is and we’ll just have to increase our prices to compensate.
3. How could they do that with such short notice, we haven’t budgeted for that?!
4. This will kill the printing and mailing industry, how can Australia Post want that?
5. I guess they’ll lose a lot of our business, we’ll just go ‘e’ delivery!
While views vary, it is the fifth comment - “we’ll just go ‘e’” - which
needs serious attention.

5. Going ‘e’ isn’t easy...or cheap!
Over the years, many businesses have tried different methods of using electronic
(or simply ‘e’) delivery for their (typically transaction document-based) customer
communications:
o Include document content in the body of an email
o PDF version of the printed document attached to an email
• The email being simple text or maybe an HTML-based summary
o A short (often text) email with a link to the website:
• directly to their document
• to login to their secure area
• simply to the website (visitor then needs to locate the secure area)
o An SMS to indicate the document is available online
But of course print & mail still needs to be used for a majority of communications
...it’s simply the medium that a majority of consumers wish to retain.

6. What do consumers have to say?
“I love the ease, flexibility, and choice that email and online offers me, however I
still want the choice to get things in the mail when that is best for me.”
“Why do I have to have one or the other? If they want my business, surely I can
get communicated to how and when I want to be communicated with. If I want
an email or SMS with online access, great, but that doesn’t automatically
mean I don’t want it mailed too!”
These are similar to the sentiments that many consumers
have, and this is backed up by the lack of significant uptake of
e-delivery for essential mail.

7. What is the Cost Impact to You?
Many businesses will know about the Australia Post postage
increases, but some won’t “get it” until they receive their
postage invoice for January or February next year.
In our recent article, What is the Cost Impact to You? we
included downloadable pricing comparison tables for PreSort
Letters and Print Post.
But to spell it out a bit more, following is a postage price
increase table to help you understand the true impact these
changes will have on your business from January 2016.

8. What is the Cost Impact to You?
Postage Price Increase Table
# Customers Communication Frequency
# Annual
mail items
*Estimated postage
increase as proposed
March 2015 to January 2016
50,000
quarterly 200,000 plus $48,000 / year
monthly 600,000 plus $144,000 / year
weekly 2,600,000 plus $624,000 / year
100,000
quarterly 400,000 plus $96,000 / year
monthly 1,200,000 plus $288,000 / year
weekly 5,200,000 plus $1,248,000 / year
500,000
quarterly 2,000,000 plus $480,000 / year
monthly 6,000,000 plus $1,440,000 / year
weekly 26,000,000 plus $6,240,000 / year
1,000,000
quarterly 4,000,000 plus $960,000 / year
monthly 12,000,000 plus $2,880,000 / year
weekly 52,000,000 plus $12,480,000 / year
*Based on Australia Post’s proposed PreSort Letters Small Letter rate on the Regular timetable

9. Don’t make a rash decision!
It’s important to make a decision about how this important area of
your customer experience strategy will pan out moving forward, but
take care if making a decision based on cost alone.
Too many times we see businesses make strategic (and expensive)
decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information. The areas
where they don’t know what they don’t know, can cost big time and
dollars, and lead to significant ongoing waste, especially if they realise
later and have to back out a solution and replace it.
Before you spend 100’s of $1000’s or even millions of dollars, make
sure that you are aware of the 13 Critical Functions you must know,
to help you decide about managing these processes in-house or
outsourcing.

10. Don’t make a rash decision!
You don’t need to be the next example of an organisation with
a large volume of customer communication, that would like to
have ‘their time over again’.
If you need assistance during this process, we’re here to help,
BEFORE you go too far!
info@documentinstitute.com
www.documentinstitute.com