Innovation
Innovation drives the transformation of our networks, processes and customer experience through digitalisation and data-driven insights. In 2025, our focus on technological and operational improvement remained key to our transformation as we continued to modernise our digital ecosystem, making delivery smarter, faster, and more convenient for customers. We also advanced the use of data and digital technology to improve operational efficiency, enhance customer interaction, and lay the foundation for new business models that extend beyond delivery. One aspect of this was strengthening the reliability and security of our digital services, helping safeguard customer data and providing peace of mind in a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape. By continuously enhancing our digital foundations, we ensure that innovation supports not only a better customer experience but also a trusted and secure one.
Digital solutions
The PostNL app continued to evolve as a central channel for customer interaction. By the end of 2025, more than 8 million consumers had validated accounts, of which 3.2 million had registered delivery preferences. This contributed to measurable improvement in NPS, particularly in the “I Receive” customer journey. We also advanced our checkout solutions, 'Bestellen met PostNL' and 'Invullen met PostNL,' which helps e-tailers increase conversion and reduce returns by embedding delivery choice directly into the online shopping journey.
The app’s new functionalities, such as dynamic delivery windows, proactive notifications and digital identity integration, offered customers greater transparency and control from checkout to doorstep. These enhancements support our goal of delivering a frictionless digital experience that complements physical reliability.
We improved the way we handle and share delivery information, so customers now receive clearer and more consistent updates across all channels, whether in the app, by e-mail and through our business tools. To make deliveries of valuable items even safer, we introduced secure delivery codes for high-value parcels such as electronics. This extra step has reduced the number of fraudulent or incorrect deliveries.
At our customer service operations, we continued to enhance the way customers engage with us by renewing our chatbot capability and introducing conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to support service agents, enabling faster and more consistent responses to common questions such as “where is my parcel?” These enhancements were further strengthened by our migration to a new, integrated conversational platform, creating a more seamless experience across channels. As our data foundation matures, the platform will increasingly provide predictive support, ranging from next-best actions to proactive updates on expected delivery outcomes, thereby helping to prevent issues before they occur. Together, these developments lay the groundwork for frictionless customer journeys, where we can anticipate needs and respond before customers reach out.
We also improved the way we share information with customers by separating the systems that manage logistics from those that handle communication. This gives us more flexibility to decide what information to send, to whom and when, so updates are clearer and more relevant for both senders and receivers.
Smarter insights
AI and advanced analytics are now embedded in our day-to-day operations. Predictive algorithms support route planning, capacity forecasting and parcel flow optimisation, helping us make smarter use of vehicles, routes and people in real time. These systems improve fill rates, reduce empty kilometres and strengthen service consistency, while also contributing to our CO₂-efficiency gains.
Digital workforce-planning systems also helped balance workloads, improving job satisfaction and flexibility for employees. By simplifying and automating processes, we are freeing capacity to focus on customer service and innovation.
At CBS, we continued to advance our digital transformation by integrating AI into daily commercial and customer operations. In sales, we introduced a new intelligence tool that converts our ideal customer profiles into prioritised prospect lists and equips account managers with concise company dossiers, including insights into shipment destinations, typical weights and formats, and incumbent carriers. We are onboarding teams across the entire organisation, including Belgium and our domestic operations. By reducing time spent on analysis and preparation, the tool enables our sales teams to focus more on meaningful customer conversations and on building stronger, longer-term relationships.
“Predictive algorithms support route planning, capacity forecasting and parcel flow optimisation, helping us make smarter use of vehicles, routes and people in real time”
Belgium was among the first PostNL markets to pilot a fully digital, AI-enabled onboarding journey for small business customers. Where registration previously took 15–20 days, the new approach, which combines conversational guidance with automated data processing, is significantly shortening lead times to a maximum of one day, while also lowering customer acquisition costs. During the year, we also embedded a number of best-practice digital capabilities from across PostNL into our Belgian operations.
These included enhanced lead-qualification processes and planning tools that better align commercial growth with available network capacity. Together, these innovations create a smoother onboarding experience, strengthen our domestic growth potential, and help maintain balanced operational performance as both import and domestic flows continue to evolve.
Service provider to connected platform
In 2025, we continued to build on the strong foundation created over 225 years of connecting people, businesses and communities. The trust built across generations remains one of our greatest strengths: it enables us to evolve with confidence from a traditional service provider into a connected platform where the physical and digital reinforce one another. Our brand, rooted in both daily presence and nationwide reach, plays a central role in this transition. It reflects who we are, what we stand for and the pride we take in delivering essential services to society, a pride that also fuels the courage and energy to innovate.
Millions of daily interactions form an ecosystem that supports smarter, faster and more personal services. These capabilities help us stay close to customers while exploring new domains that build on our reach and reliability. One example is our work in sustainable energy, where in 2025 we launched pilots that map household energy needs, support residents in making practical sustainability choices and test how our reach and daily presence can help municipalities accelerate neighbourhood-level transition plans. Additional work focuses on fast-charging infrastructure for heavy transport and potential consumer propositions that make sustainable energy use at home easier and more accessible. So far, public response has been positive, reflecting trust in our reliability and reach.
E-commerce remains a proof point of how our platform model works in practice. The data, technology and operational scale developed for parcel delivery now support experiments in areas such as social commerce, younger generations expectations, purchasing behaviour and digital identity, including an identity-wallet pilot to make online transactions more secure. Within the PostNL Innovation Studio, cross-functional teams incubate and test new concepts at pace, while also stopping ideas that do not meet customer needs or commercial thresholds. This disciplined approach ensures that Innovation Beyond Delivery strengthens both our long-term growth and our contribution to a more sustainable and digital economy.
“We continued to build on the strong foundation created over 225 years of connecting people, businesses and communities”
NummerNul: where stronger neighbourhoods begin
NummerNul is a PostNL initiative designed to help municipalities develop practical, scalable solutions to social challenges in Dutch neighbourhoods. As an innovation studio that we staff and operate together with local authorities, NummerNul reflects our ambition under Breakthrough 2028 to create impact that matters for people and society. It demonstrates how PostNL continues to innovate beyond delivery by working with communities on initiatives such as local energy concepts, mobility pilots and digital inclusion.
Acting as a collaborative space, NummerNul brings together municipalities, residents, companies and knowledge partners to jointly shape solutions that strengthen local wellbeing. And by validating issues directly within neighbourhoods and leveraging PostNL’s digital and physical reach, the studio helps bridge gaps between municipal processes and residents who may find existing systems difficult to navigate. In doing so, NummerNul provides a practical starting point for building more resilient neighbourhoods across the Netherlands.
The first NummerNul Innovation Studio opened in the Waalwijk public library, and we are continuing to expand the concept by establishing a second studio in collaboration with the municipality of Rotterdam. Our aim is to extend successful approaches to additional municipalities from 2026 onwards, ensuring that NummerNul grows as a national platform for community-centred innovation.