Posti is known as the company that visits the doorstep of three million Finns every day. But how to move those touchpoints into a digital world?
That's the question Timo Korander, Head of Digital Consumer Services at Posti, is trying to answer. His first step toward solving this will be launched this summer in the form of OmaPosti.
Big things come in small packages
Timo Korander has a dream. It is to move Posti’s three-million daily customer interactions into the digital world. Together with his team of 15 persons, product owners, developers, service designers and UX designers, Korander is imagining what postal services and the everyday life of Finns will look like in the future.
“We buy more and more from online stores and handle our everyday affairs online. Posti has a unique role in the Finnish market, combining logistics, e-commerce, letters and mail, and payments."
"That’s why we’re in a good position to create a new digital interface for people's everyday life,” Korander says. His first step towards the solution, the new OmaPosti, will be launched this summer. It is the new starting point for digitalizing Posti’s new consumer services. In the beginning, OmaPosti has two main goals: to help consumers follow their parcel’s journey from the store to their doorstep, and to make it as easy as possible to pay their invoices. In the future? Something even bigger.
“Our vision for the future is that Posti App will help people’s everyday life in every channel. I want to offer a valuable user interface for all Finns, make it easier to handle the necessities of everyday life, and save consumers time and trouble,” Korander says.
Watch the video: Timo Korander - User centric design
Designing with customer value in mind
While developing new digital services, Korander and his team are also pushing for a bigger mindshift at Posti. They want Posti’s whole organization to focus on creating customer value. This means that when developing the OmaPosti, for instance, usage data and customer behavior are followed meticulously. New features are developed, adopted or discarded based on customer feedback.
"When designing future services, we need to trust design thinking, which is about relying on understanding of our customer. We want to create an open dialogue with our customers, because that’s the only way we can solve their problems now and in the future,” Korander says.
Nobody knows what the future will look like, but Posti has taken a forward-looking approach. Because the world is changing so fast, Korander tries to stay on top of emerging technologies, be it artificial intelligence or machine learning. So far, his team has focused efforts on mobile technologies. The new OmaPosti will replace the old Netposti service, and it will be available on both iOS and Android as well as a web app.
User interfaces of the future
Nowadays there are mobile apps for almost all areas of life. With so many services right at our fingertips, it’s easy to forget that there were no mobile apps ten years ago. That’s why Timo believes that in 5–10 years’ time, something totally new will have emerged. He is certain that mobile apps will soon jump out of mobile phones and into all web environments – including Posti´s mobile apps.
“Will there be mobile apps in 5 years? For particular use cases like location-based services, probably. For other use cases, maybe we’ll instead use apps through our smart watches or be talking to household chatbots instead of our mobile phones,” Korander envisions. He sees us moving towards an intelligent world where user interfaces are everywhere, including in our homes and cars. That’s why Posti develops with an open approach towards technology.
"Our culture is very open-minded for development. We have to be clever and fast in our decisions and scout for new technologies outside of Finland as well. We’re totally free and willing to change our minds and choose some other technology if it’s better.”
When designing new tools for smoother everyday life, Posti has huge possibilities for scale. That is why Posti is an attractive partner for several startups and technology companies.
“We’re building the future. That's why Posti is a really exciting place to work right now.”
