Automating the Post Office, 20 years ago
My Dad was a service designer… twenty years ago. In the late nineties they helped automate the post office, bringing the first computer systems into local branches. They did this by understanding customer and colleague needs, working iteratively and navigating internal politics. Sound familiar?
One day soon, I’d like to do an interview with my Dad to tell the full story of their involvement and really understand what my profession looked and felt like twenty years ago. I’d like to do this for a number of reasons. On a personal level I’d like an opportunity to explore new found similarities between mine and my Dad’s careers, something I never knew existed or thought to look for until recently. I like to understand what my occupation looked and felt like twenty years ago. I like to highlight to an industry thats becoming littered with people proclaiming to practice service design as the current new trend, that this is not a new fad, it’s something that is ingrained in good service provision. And I’d like to show that anyone can be a designer.
In lieu of an interview but in possession of a ‘great Sunday pub chat’ I’d like to whet the appetite by sharing a few highlights of our pint based exchange.
My Dad worked for the post office for the whole of their life. Beginning their career as a postal worker, they worked their way up to a role I always knew as ‘project manager’. And in the late nineties they helped run a programme to role out the automation of key services across their entire network.
This was a programme that occurred at a time when digital technology as we know it today was still very much emerging. Couple this with a national service provider consisting of Europes largest network, with assets at the heart of every community in the country, and you have yourself a challenge.
What I loved hearing was how the core tenants of how we work now were very much alive back then. Working with counter staff and customers to understand what they needed just made common sense. It may not have been documented on user need cards back then but working with the people who would be interacting with this new system to design it was the obvious thing to do. Starting small to run a pilot across a small number of offices and measuring success was how they launched. And pushing back on internal silos to ensure the back-end was given as much consideration as the front earnt my Dad a tidy little jolly.
We didn’t get into talking about the ins and outs of how the project ran (we’ll save that for the interview) but it was reassuring to know that digital transformation was still about people back then. With some post masters (owners of local post offices) walking away and internal silos with disconnected KPIs coming into play, the story felt very familiar indeed.
While I have so many questions of my own I wondered, what would you like to ask? Let me know and I’ll see how I can weave it into our next Sunday pub chat.
