The perfect remedy
Our customer – a General Practitioner (GP) practice in the northeast of England – was convinced that they could improve on their historical approach to postal and bulk mailing, and approached Northern Mail for help.
Their initial brief to us was to investigate all available options, with a focus on saving the practice money through optimising their spend, and maintaining their high standard of patient care. This last point included key focus areas such as the timeliness of communications, and ensuring that patient confidentiality was protected in accordance with applicable legislation and regulations.
The GP practice believed that there was scope for significant savings without any reduction in performance, and we agreed. Our first step was to understand their current postage and bulk mailing methods so as to identify strengths and weaknesses, and identify areas where cost savings could be made.
This approach is aligned to our commitment to taking time to understand the business of each of our customers, and then using the insights gained through this process to develop a bespoke solution, rather than using an off-the-shelf option. This acknowledges that each customer is different and reflects our emphasis on building long-term relationships.
Northern Mail – Adding Value
Based on our investigation, we devised a system based on daily collections from the practice, which contributed to accelerated delivery timeframes. By processing the majority of the post as local mail, we were able to secure a saving of £0.08 per letter, whilst still operating withing Royal Mail first class mail parameters.
We adapted our bulk mail service to deliver a campaign to the practice’s patient database based on advertising the importance of flu vaccinations at the start of winter.
We worked with a letter template supplied by the customer (and adapted by our inhouse design team), as well as the database shared with us over our secure link. Each letter needed to include an appointment time and date, and we were able to add these using a mail merging tool.
As part of our collaborative approach to mailing solutions, we worked with the GP practice to ensure approval before using our secure print facility to generate the hard-copy letters.
Overall, we were able to secure significant cost savings for our customer (in terms of both production and postage). Just as importantly, our approach greatly reduced the amount of time the customer was previously spending on mailing and postage administration.
Key success factors
As a long-standing Northern Mail customer, the GP practice knew that they could count on us to go the extra mile in delivering a bespoke solution.
Key factors underlying this success included:
- Our long-term relationship with the customer, and deep understanding of their business pain points and needs
- Our friendly, professional approach to all customers
- Our refusal to simply repackage existing solutions – instead, we develop a new, tailormade solution for each client
- Our understanding of Royal Mail postage costs and timeframes, and how savings can be achieved
- Collaborative approach, involving the customer at every stage
- Daily collections for streamlined postage
- Secure data transfers to protect patient confidentiality
- Tangible cost saving on each piece mailed out through treating mailed items as local mail
- Focus on patient service outcomes
- Significant reduction in customer administration burden, allowing for reallocation of staff resources and time
- Mail-merging expertise that can be used to create personalised pieces of patient communications
- Customised bulk mailing for specific campaigns
“All businesses are naturally interested in saving money; however, in healthcare scenarios, this has to be weighed against the need to deliver exceptional patient outcomes, and protect patient confidentiality. This means that any postal collection or bulk mailing solution has to have patient care and privacy built-in from the beginning. Using secure data links and a bespoke approach, we were able to focus on these core consideration whilst still delivering measurable improvements in service and speed of delivery, as well as cost savings per mailed item”
For postal collection and bulk mailing solutions designed to meet the needs of your business and to benefit from meaningful, ongoing time and cost savings, contact :
Christine Appleby 01912493686 or by email at Christine.appleby@servicegraphics.co.uk