While a host of businesses decried the loss of mail service after Canada Post locked out its employees June 14, not everyone was complaining about the effects of the labour dispute, which ended on Monday.
In the two weeks since the lockout began, financial services provider ING Direct saw 350,000 customers switch to online billing -- which will save the company millions of dollars this year when factoring in postage, stationary and personnel costs.
It's a trend being echoed across industries that offer online billing options, with TD Canada Trust also reporting an increase in requests for telephone and online banking services since the end of May.
While TD communications manager Lynzey MacRae told CTV.ca it's too soon to definitively prove the mail service disruption led to the increase, ING Direct CEO Peter Aceto says he has no question the lockout pushed customers to make the change.
"We made it easier for our customers to opt-in to receive documents or any other interactions online, we made our customers more aware of this option, and we found a really significant uptake," he said. "It's arguably more secure for them. Things are more instantaneous. And it allows us to save money and share that with our customer."
ING has few brick-and-mortar locations, keeping costs down by servicing clients by phone or online. While its customers may be more likely than the general public to give technological solutions a try, the 20 per cent jump in online billing is nothing to scoff at, said Aceto.
Especially when considering that once customers switch to digital, they rarely go back.
"Very seldom do people actually go back to paper," he told CTV.ca on Tuesday. "The postal strike… helped our business and helped our customers. We were quite elated in-house."
In negotiations with its union before the lockout, Canada Post cited declining revenue due to a decrease in mail volume as a reason for pushing back against workers' demands.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says it's not trying to ignore the trend toward paperless transactions, and had proposed several alternative money-making strategies to its employer before negotiations broke off.
They included expanding service options, providing Internet services and acting as portals to government programs. Listed in a report called "The Future of Canada Post – October 2010," they also include re-establishing a postal bank.
Canada's original postal bank closed in 1969 after more than 100 years in operation. CUPW says bank income has helped countries like Brazil, Ireland and New Zealand supplement sagging revenue from the mail.
"Economic recession and electronic substitution pose serious challenges to the ability of (Canada Post) to remain financially self sustainable in coming years," states the report. "It is time that the post office moves forward to provide new and needed services to the public."
