Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504110047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: K.D. DAVIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In Chicago, a mail carrier stole pouches of mail.
In southern Maryland and Northern Virginia, thousands of pieces of unprocessed mail were found in trailers.
Some say the U.S. Postal Service just doesn't seem to care.
In Roanoke, however, it does.
On Friday, the Roanoke Postal Customer Advisory Council met for the first time. The 10 volunteer council members were selected from more than 40 applicants.
The council will work to improve a mail system that already is among the country's best.
Roanoke Postmaster Billy Martin said in December that surveys showed 90 percent of customers in the Roanoke region - those with a ZIP code beginning with 240 - were satisfied with mail service, compared with a national average of 85 percent.
Council members will meet with postal officials to "solicit ideas on how to make service better," Martin said Friday.
"This is not just a sounding board for complaints," he said. "We want to address and resolve them."
"Unless you let somebody know, our assumption is that we're doing everything right," said Rick Smoot, a postal employee who will work with the council.
The council is not just an avenue for customer complaints, Smoot said.
"We're going to interact," he said. "We're going to come to [council members] with ideas we have. It's a two-way thing."
As its mission statement says: "The council will be organized to provide an open forum for a broad base of individual customers, with each member representing a different segment of the population."
One council member takes this mission to heart.
"We are a private, nonprofit organization," said Ammie Moore, a member of the Council of Community Services. "I want to improve communication between the Postal Service and our business. As a voice of the council, I want to make service better for us - as a customer and as a business."
As of December, more than 1,600 advisory councils had become active nationwide. Smoot said that number has "grown significantly" since then.
"We want to become a more viable part of the community," Smoot said. "We touch everybody every day, and anything that has to do with the postal service is important."
Although this was their first meeting, council members seemed to have a strong sense of why and how they can help.
"I think we can do a lot. We're from a broad base, all over the city," said Don Sublett, an electronics specialist for William Fleming High School. "The first step in improving quality is reaching out to the customer."
The Postal Service has a reputation for being a sterile, unfeeling, bureaucratic agency, Sublett said.
"The post office doesn't feel that way at all," he said. "They've proven that by reaching out."
by CNB