Can I Save the US Postal Service?

If you like questions, then you'll love today's Postal Service. During a visit to a branch, I was asked several questions including:

Do you want to buy some stamps?
Do you want buy delivery confirmation?
Do you want insurance?
Do you want to send it overnight? (This cracked me up as I was sending a letter about 30 minutes down the road.)

I've read the stories of how the Post Office is billions of dollars in debt and am sympathetic to the need to bring in more revenue. But I found that the efforts to raise more revenue a bit amateurish. Here's why:

Myself and the others in line ahead of me were asked the same questions. No doubt the clerks are following a script but none of us were mailing the same kind of thing. Does a cookie cutter approach really serve the customer's needs? After hearing the people in front of me be asked if they want to buy stamps, I think I would have realized whether I needed to buy them or not before I reached the counter.

It seems that the Postal Service is following a model based on selling people things that they don't realize that they need. But the way the questions are structured, they'll only get a "yes" or a "no" answer. Why not engage the customer in a dialogue. Let's say I'm sending a package overseas. Wouldn't it be better to say, "Gee, that package is going a long way away and will go through a lot of hands. Would it be useful to find out when your package has arrived?" In this example you're looking to sell people on the benefits of a service by making them realize how it will make their life better. You're selling peace of mind.

The Post Office needs to offer specials like any other business. When I go to the concession stand at a movie theater, I'm asked whether I would like to double the size of my drink or popcorn for just a dollar more. Why can't the Post Office bundle it's products into special deals. Make it easy for people to want to invest more.

No doubt there are current regulations or time honored practices that would prevent my ideas from being used. But for agency that's $10,000,000,000 dollars in debt, maybe it's time to try some new things.