All-in-One Return Envelopes:

A city council in the south of England owns 13,000 houses. One of the key issues it faces is how to keep on top of the vast number of requests from tenants for repairs and maintenance to their properties. A number of requests are done via the web, but many tenants, particularly the older generation, don’t have access to a computer.

REQUEST FOR REPAIR
The original paper based system worked like this.
1. Tenant reports an item for repair.
2. Housing Support office prints out the request onto an A4 sheet.
3. This is enclosed, with a reply envelope, into a C4 outer envelope and mailed out.
4. The tenant fills in the sheet and posts it backs.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Couldn’t be simpler … except …
- when Housing Support had to use agency workers to stuff the outgoing mail, they would often forget to enclose the reply envelope.
- tenants would sometimes use the reply envelope for other general council correspondence.
In both cases the council had the expense of sending out a 2nd envelope and dealing with unhappy tenants. This slowed down the whole process.

HERE’S THE PLAN
Coast-to-Coast Print & Design approached Service, asking about various options to improve the situation for the Housing Support department. Service recognised that a key issue was to build the return envelope into the document. This would guarantee that a return envelope went out with every piece of mail, and also produce a far greater likelihood that it would only be used for the repair itself.

The new document had to be capable of running through desktop lasers as well. So, built into the 100gsm sheet was a glued pocket, containing a seal-easy strip.
A perforation allowed the repair request to be torn off, placed in the pre-paid return envelope for posting back to the council. A small test run of 1,000 was produced so that all elements could be checked.

THE RESULTS WERE IMMEDIATE!
1. No more ‘missing’ envelopes. 2. 60% reduction in people using the envelope for other council correspondence. 3. Much faster processing of repairs.