This European Standard specifies methods for measuring the end-to-end transit-time of domestic and cross-border bulk mail, collected, processed and delivered by postal service operators. It considers methods using representative end-to-end samples for all types of bulk-mail services with defined transit-time service-levels as offered to the postal customer. It specifies a set of minimum requirements for the design of a quality-of-service measurement system for bulk mail, involving the selection and distribution of test mail sent by business senders and received by selected panellists.
This European Standard is applicable to the measurement of end-to-end priority and non-priority bulk-mail services. For the purpose of this standard, bulk mail services can include all types of addressed bulk mail including, but not limited to letter mail, direct mail, magazines and newspapers and encombrant-format mailings.
This European Standard relates to the measurement of bulk-mail services offered to businesses that have pick-ups at their offices or give their mail to postal service operators. If a third party agent acts for the postal operator, then the time the mail is handed over to the agent will form part of the measurement. Where a third party agent acts for the sending customer, the measurement will be from the point when mail is handed over to the postal operator.
This European Standard is of modular structure. It is designed to assess the service performance of postal operators for bulk mail services on the level of a single bulk mailing as defined by the postal customer or any aggregations thereof, including the performance of an individual customer / operator or the performance of a group of customers / operators or the performance at national level.