Disrupt, develop, deliver: Big lessons from small business

Over the past four months, Australia Post’s Dirk van Lammeren has chatted at length with more than 70 small business customers. He wants to know what frustrates them – and what Australia Post can do to smooth out the speed bumps which is all part of their entrepreneurial approach to helping small business customers flourish in the eCommerce boom.

“It’s about listening to customers and working on their pain points,” says van Lammeren.

“We start with a real customer problem, find a specific opportunity, fix it in small steps, and work from the outside in with the customer involved.”

For example, online retailers told Australia Post that their customers wanted a “scan event” as soon as their parcel was ready to be sent, letting them know it was on the way.

This happens when a retailer lodges parcels across the counter, but not when they post them in a street posting box. Many small businesses are too busy to visit a post office during business hours.

To address this, Australia Post has recently launched a new MyPost Business app on iOS that offers a do-it-yourself scan event for Australia Post products with a scannable barcode.

Creating an experience

That’s just one example of how Australia Post is listening to customers to design solutions that make everyday jobs easier. Since joining Australia Post five years ago, Dirk has seen the business transform in response to external forces so it remains sustainable into the future.

The organisation wants to live and breathe high-quality experiences for their 3 million small business customers.

“Customers go for frictionless experiences – they buy an experience, not a product,” van Lammeren says. “We want to get to know