WASHINGTON, D.C., March 21, 2006 - The U.S. Postal Service Accounting Help Desk in St. Louis, MO, has earned highly coveted recognition as a Certified Center of Excellence by Purdue University. The Center for Customer-Driven Quality™ at Purdue University benchmarks the performance of over 20,000 customer service call centers in 43 different industries in North America. The Postal Service’s Accounting Help Desk is operating in the top 10 percent of call centers in the consumer products industry. They join Bank of America, HP Computers, and eBay, as recipients of this certification. This is a particularly impressive achievement for a call center established just over three years ago.

“Your call center has effectively optimized the use of people, processes, and technology to consistently deliver a level of customer service that surpasses most others in your industry,” said Dr. Jon Anton, Director of Benchmarking at The Center for Customer-Driven Quality™ at Purdue University. “Our certification process requires that your call center be both efficient and effective.”

In addition to scoring high in the areas of effectiveness and efficiency, the Accounting Help Desk also scored high in agent job satisfaction, which is one of the most challenging goals faced by customer call centers. The Postal Service Accounting Help Desk, with 100 agents, responds to an average of 4,000 calls a day concerning payroll, daily financial reporting, money orders, and accounts payable issues.

“To have achieved this certification in three short years is amazing,” said Pat Queen, Manager of Accounting Center Support. “Last week, I attended a Call Center Conference along with about 150 call center professionals and received many questions about how we achieved certification on the first try and in such a short time. I told them it has been a team effort–from the Chief Financial Officer and Controller to the agents taking the calls. In partnership with Information Technology, we implemented new technologies–some external and some on the cutting edge of help desk processes. We work with people who aren’t afraid to try something new and have a group of agents who are proud of the job they do and dedicated to “thrilling” our customers.”

Since 1775, the U.S. Postal Service has connected friends, families, neighbors, and businesses by mail. The Postal Service is an independent federal agency that visits 144 million homes and businesses every day and is the only service provider delivering to every address in the nation. With annual revenues of more than $69.9 billion, the U.S. Postal Service is the world’s leading provider of mail and delivery services, offering some of the most affordable postage rates in the world. The Postal Service delivers more than 46 percent of the world’s mail volume-some 212 billion letters, advertisements, periodicals, and packages a year and serves seven million customers each day at its 37,000 retail locations nationwide.

About BenchmarkPortal
BenchmarkPortal (BMP) is the custodian of the database of contact center performance metrics in conjunction with The Center for Customer-Driven Quality™ at Purdue University. This is the largest database of best practice metrics in the world. BMP provides peer group reports, industry reports, and services for contact centers in the areas of operational metrics, customer satisfaction measurement and agent satisfaction measurement. In 2005, BMP received a U.S. Patent (#6,877,034) for its unique methodology of online contact center performance benchmarking through metric gap analysis. BenchmarkPortal’s Web site can be found at: www.BenchmarkPortal.com.

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