The office is closed from Friday 21 December until Monday 14th January
2019.  This box will not be monitored during that period. We will attend
to your request when we return in the New Year. 

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HI Cody
I acknowledge receipt of your OIA request for 'complaints summary data'.
Please note that working days under the OIA are not counted from Christmas to 15 January so the final date you should expect to receive a response is 14 February.
Could I please confirm with you that your request for 'complaints' data (given that you have asked for division into ' NZ Post Domestic mail, NZ Post international mail, CourierPost, Pace, YouShop' categories) refers to mail item claims?

regards
OIA Officer
New Zealand Post Limited

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Dear Cody
I'm really sorry, but I'm still confused about what you are seeking - are you seeking 'complaints under the OIA', or seeking under the OIA 'data on all complaints'?
Please be aware that if you are requesting the latter, we are likely to be unable to provide accurate data to you. We have two contact centres for which data would need to be collated, and many complaints are dealt with at a local or specialist level without going through the contact centres.
If you can be more clear in your scope we will try to assist
thanks

OIA Officer
New Zealand Post Limited
This email with any attachments is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. If it is not intended for you please reply immediately, destroy it and do not copy, disclose or use it in any way.

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I will make enquiries and see what we can provide. The final date for response for this request is 20 working days from today - 15 February 2019 - but we'll try to get you a decision before then.

OIA Officer

This email with any attachments is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. If it is not intended for you please reply immediately, destroy it and do not copy, disclose or use it in any way.

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Dear Cody,

Thank you for clarifying your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the ‘Act). You have asked for:

"a complaints summary for the past 5 years under the Official Information Act. Please group by type of complaint and the number of complaints for that year. Ideally, if readily available, this information could be broken out further by division (i.e. NZ Post Domestic mail, NZ Post international mail, CourierPost, Pace, YouShop)."

Please find our response set out below.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain and collate this information due to:
-the way data is recorded,
-the change in systems over the years
-the way in which queries and complaints are dealt with
-the different channels used by customers to raise queries with us

Our National Contact Centre (NCC) receives thousands of enquiries every week relating to missing or delayed postal items, redirections, PO Boxes, and the many other services we provide. The definition of ‘complaint’ applied by our National Contact Centre is ‘anything that is escalated for resolution’. Everything else is dealt with and resolved. Whether any particular query qualifies as a complaint is difficult to assess when the first call is taken. Providing all call data would be very misleading as complaints is only one thing that NCC manage, and many calls could be as simple as a customer asking for a PostShop’s opening hours, or their nearest location to post a letter.
Further, over the past 3 years, our NCC have changed their management tools, telephony platform and operating model. So, the way in which calls are recorded and tagged has significantly changed a number of times.
Since October 2018, the NCC has split their calls into different event types. These are enquire, buy, or resolve. However, even the resolve category aren’t all complaints (again, they would be a small percentage of the resolve calls).
The NCC comment that “real complaints aren’t that many in the overall volume of things”. This statement is further supported when we look at the performance of our network, and our recent results confirming CourierPost as the number one courier business in New Zealand. These results are based on external testing of the top courier companies in New Zealand, and our success rate of ‘on time’ deliveries in at least 94% of instances. For context, our nearest competitor achieved a success rate of 87%, followed by 69%. While we acknowledge there is always room for improvement, we consider this to be a good result given the millions of parcels that we deliver every year.

Our CourierPost investigation and claims team also deal with numerous queries every week for missing or delayed courier items, either referred to them by the NCC or other parts of our business. An investigation is only opened when it needs more than one action and cannot be solved on the first phone call, so still not necessarily a ‘complaint’. Information on numbers of investigations is only available for the last 3 years, as set out below. Information for previous years is declined under section under section 18(e) of the Act as it does not exist.

CourierPost Investigations
2016183,532
2017210,956
2018163,802

The number of complaints that have been escalated from NCC or other channels to our Executive Complaints Officer for the 2018 year is 332. Data for previous years is not available without substantial collation and likely not be overly accurate, so disclosure of this information is declined under section 18(f) of the Act. However, the amount for 2018 is a typical amount, and is unlikely to have varied significantly over the past 5 years.

Our YouShop team deals with issues relating to YouShop escalated by the NCC or other channels, but do not keep a record of numbers of issues referred to them. Any data that could be obtained would require substantial collation and would be incomplete.

Other customer complaints may be dealt with by managers in the relevant local area, and do not appear in any national data.

Therefore, we must decline the majority of your request on the bases that the information does not exist or could only be made available after substantial collation (please refer to section 18(e) and 18(f) of the Act respectively). We have however endeavoured to provide you with information which may assist in answering your question, and hope this meets your requirements.
Please note that you have the right to complain to the Ombudsman under the Official Information Act to seek an investigation and review of our response.

OIA Officer

This email with any attachments is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. If it is not intended for you please reply immediately, destroy it and do not copy, disclose or use it in any way.

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