Collaborate and Achieve Something Great - Georgia State University

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By Wayne E. Reed, Assistant Vice President for Auxiliary and Support Services, Georgia State University; Chris Connelly, Director of Marketing and Administration Support Services, Georgia State University

When you think about the many opportunities within your staff and around your campus to collaborate with others, as well as with members within NACAS who are so willing to share from their experiences, the opportunity to collaborate to achieve something great is one of the wonderful advantages of working in a college or university environment. Such was the case when at Georgia State University, in Atlanta, we recognized the need to improve our campus post office.

At Georgia State University, our ambition within Auxiliary and Support Services is to serve as we would like to be served, viewing our mission from the vantage point of the customer's perspective. Our guiding philosophy emphasizes the importance of serving others in fulfilling our mission, in providing high quality, excellence, and professionalism, along with the personal touch of a caring and concerned approach in serving our customers and constituents. Within that context, as we recently focused on our campus post office, the need to update the facility to enable us to improve the quality of the customer experience and to enhance the environment for our staff members who work there was obvious.  

Our campus post office had not been updated in more than 25 years. The service area had paned glass windows between the customer and the cashier; the signs were dated, and the overall area gave a poor impression to our wide variety of customers on campus. It was evident that this important service area needed a face-lift. "It was important to us for our Post Office to be a student destination," said Kevin Kelley, GSU Assistant Director for Mail, Vending, and Printing Services. Through a series of discussions within our internal staff group, we knew that we wanted to change the design and improve the overall space to make it more inviting and welcoming for our customers, as well as more comfortable and functional for our staff members who work there.

Recognizing that just a short distance away in Atlanta, our friends and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology had completed renovations of their campus post office, we began to collaborate with them as we contemplated renovations of our campus post office. Kevin took a short trip to the Georgia Tech campus for a visit to their renovated campus post office. Having gained insights through his discussions there, Kevin then reached out to our local representatives within the U.S. Post Office and confirmed that the U.S.P.S. would be willing  to assist in our efforts through providing modular work stations designed for a new point of sale system that Georgia State was interested in implementing.

The process continued as we worked within our division to solidify funding for the much needed renovation project. With the funding secured, we then moved forward, working within our Facilities group, who provided architectural assistance in designing a more customer friendly space, which would eliminate the glass barriers that separated post office staff from the customers whom they would be serving. The concept was to take a relatively small post office space, built within a space that necessitated customers to line up along the corridor as they waited for service, and completely demolish the interior and then start with a new and fresh design that would enable customers to walk into the post office space.  Facilities Renovations staff members worked with a strong sense of pride in performing their work in the transformation that would result.

In addition, the new point-of-sale system that was selected would enable post office staff to utilize best-in-class touchscreens, with fast and reliable order processing. The new point-of-sale system would also provide real-time customer views of transactions and faster operating speeds that would enable shorter check-out times for campus post office customers. The capacity of the new point of sale system would further enable the campus post office to expand its products to include USPS branded "Ready Post" packaging materials that would create a new revenue opportunity within the post office.

To say that the positive outcomes were more than at first we imagined would be an understatement. As our post office staff moved into their newly designed space, something almost magical happened within the campus post office. With a more welcoming post office space in which customers could come inside, rather than being served from the corridor through glass barriers separating them from the staff members serving them, a compelling, more customer-friendly space was born. Campus post office staff members immediately became engaged with their customers in exciting and friendly manners, far beyond anything before, when they were in their previously outdated surroundings. The reactions on campus have been extremely positive and the interactions with our customers have been revolutionized. To be sure... at Georgia State University, we did indeed experience something great because we took the time to collaborate.  GSU now has the second-highest revenue-producing United States Postal Service (USPS) Contract Postal Unit (CPU) in the Atlanta District, and the largest located at a college and/or university. The U.S. Postal Services recently recognized the Georgia State University Post Office as the National Contract Postal Unit  of the Month, for the month of January 2012 and featured its success in both the national and local USPS news links.