NZ Post partners with Triquestra to deliver digitally assisted sending

NZ Post is a Kiwi institution in the best possible way. As part of the New Zealand landscape for over 180 years, it delivers parcels and mail to businesses and individual consumers across the country and around the world.

When it wanted to give customers a more efficient option for sending parcels overseas, it turned to Triquestra to provide the retail solution.

Here’s how NZ Post worked with Triquestra and the Infinity platform to speed up parcel transactions and save cost via digitally assisted sending.

Streamlining the point-of-sale experience

International parcel sending is a significant part of the NZ Post retail business, ranging from Kiwis sending gifts to loved ones overseas, to thriving small businesses serving customers around the world.

Until recently, when a customer wanted to send an international parcel, they needed to fill out a handwritten customs declaration form capturing details about themself and the parcel. At the store counter, the staff member validated the customs declaration, then placed a copy of the declaration with the package, along with the delivery label.  

NZ Post was looking to change the way it captured parcel details to make the overall customer experience more efficient at a time when international postal regulations were tightening.

By implementing digitally assisted sending (DAS), NZ Post could allow customers to fill out a digital customs declaration and enter their parcel details using their computer or mobile phone, which then provided them with a barcode.

Customers could then simply present their barcode instore and a label for their item would be printed and the postage paid, removing the need for any manual forms.

Implementing the solution

NZ Post and Triquestra had been working together for several years, with Infinity having been rolled out at all stores in 2023, so implementing the instore component of DAS was the next step in an already productive relationship.

As Peter Moore, NZ Post’s Customer Transformation Manager, says, the project marked a departure for NZ Post that had the potential to modernise the instore experience while delivering tangible business benefits:

Triquestra was charged with integrating DAS into the existing user interface, so that store staff could easily scan and retrieve parcel information and seamlessly complete the transaction.

This meant using APIs to validate the scanned data and retrieve all the information the customer had entered online, including the sender’s details and the destination country and address.

Store staff also needed to be able to retrieve the relevant documents to accompany the parcel, including the label and the customs declaration.

When the solution was ready to be rolled out, Triquestra and NZ Post’s implementation partner ECL came on board to help run a pilot at the Johnsonville outlet, near Wellington. When that proved a success, the pilot was expanded to 10 sites across the country.  

By April 2025, pilot locations were seeing an average uptake of digitally assisted sending of around 30%, with one Auckland outlet exceeding 70%.

In the middle of the year, DAS was implemented across a further 200 retail stores nationwide.  

Enjoying the results

NZ Post benchmarked its objectives for DAS against other countries that had spearheaded similar solutions and were several years ahead, so it had a clear idea of what it expected to achieve.

The solution quality, together with effective promotion and an aspirational retail culture, resulted in year-four targets being exceeded within four months of national launch, with over 60% of digital consignment notes now being completed in the selected stores.

For NZ Post, as well as delivering in the short term, the project has laid the foundation for further innovation. As Peter puts it,