UnBoxed

Innovation, Smart Lockers, and Radical Hospitality at Fairfield University

In this episode of UnBoxed, host Deb Menter sits down with David Frassinelli from Fairfield University to explore how college campuses are evolving to meet the demands of today’s students through modern package delivery.

From the implementation of 24/7 smart lockers to photo capture and text notifications, Fairfield University is leaning into innovation and service to enhance the student experience. David walks us through their journey—from growing pains to game-changing improvements—all grounded in a philosophy of radical hospitality, Fairfield University’s holistic approach to campus services.

Key Takeaways:

• Smart Locker Transformation: Fairfield University transitioned from traditional mailboxes to secure, branded smart lockers—accessible 24/7 and featured on campus tours
• Extended Hours & Efficiency: Weekend and evening hours helps keep up with volume and reduces wait times, all part of a student-focused delivery strategy
• Out-of-Order Isn’t an Option: Service reliability is key—malfunctioning lockers or long lines go against their radical hospitality mission
• The Amazon Effect: Instant delivery alerts raise student expectations, putting pressure on mail centers to move faster and maintain accuracy
• Collaboration & Future Plans: Fairfield University continues to innovate through industry collaboration, exploring dorm-based lockers and more accessible parent-to-student shipping options

Guest speaker: David Frassinelli, Vice President of Facilities, Campus and Auxiliary Services, Fairfield University
After starting his career in the corporate world, David has spent about 17 years at Fairfield University. His time at the university has been spent in facilities management ensuring the campus is constantly keeping up with modern technologies, facilities and ensuring they are meeting student, faculty, staff and parent expectations. He most recently has moved into a position where he manages everything from transportation to the bookstore to the mail center.

Host: Deb Menter, Pitney Bowes
Deb is on the Client Lifecycle Team at Pitney Bowes, where she helps clients navigate complex rate changes, mailing system migrations, and greater shipping savings and value. You’ll also find her moderating Pitney Bowes webinars, where she addresses common client concerns and provides actionable solutions.

The material, opinions, and information presented in the podcast are for general information purposes only and is not professional advice. Listeners should consult appropriate professionals for specific advice tailored to your situation. The podcast and its content is provided as-is and any use is at the listener’s own risk. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests or hosts are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of any company.

The material, opinions, and information presented in the podcast are for general information purposes only and is not professional advice. Listeners should consult appropriate professionals for specific advice tailored to your situation. The podcast and its content is provided as-is and any use is at the listener’s own risk. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests or hosts are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of any company.

Deb Menter
Hi everyone and welcome to UnBoxed, presented by Pitney Bowes. We are your source for all things shipping and receiving. a little preview of what you'll get in this episode today. I'm your host, Deb Menter, and I'm here today with David Frassinelli, Vice President of Facilities, Campus and Auxiliary Services at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Like so many organizations today, Fairfield found itself starting to receive an overwhelming number of packages every day and had to find some way to deliver them efficiently and accurately to their students. So, let's dive into some of the challenges Fairfield faced and how they've continued to problem-solve along the way.

So, David, welcome and thanks for joining me on this episode. To get started, we're going hopefully, easy question. Can you tell me a bit about your background and your current role at Fairfield University?

David Frassinelli
Well, I've been at Fairfield University for about 17 years now and was very active with a lot of the facilities development and more recently moved into campus and auxiliary services, which includes our campus bookstore. It includes transportation, buses and all food service. And course, the mailroom.

Deb Menter
Of course. So when it comes to campus living today, there's a lot of competition out there.

At Fairfield, you have a mission of radical hospitality. Can you tell me ah more about what that means for the university, for its students, and the parents?

David Frassinelli
Well, you know, I think you mentioned it's a competitive environment out there in the marketplace. And, you know, different schools are offering different packages. And they can compete for our students right up until the first day of classes. And, you know, we look to address that with an excellent academic and athletics program.

But then there's all the other stuff, the services, the food, the housing, the recreational sports, and textbooks and mailroom are very much part of that. What, what is the total experience, particularly you know with our freshmen in that most vulnerable period in the first two to two to six weeks of school they may form a negative impression of an institution because they're homesick and what do they hang their hat on?

Well the food isn't good or well you know I didn't get my packages or all these other peripheral things that really are not the fundamental root of what's causing them anxiety and stress yeah well our goal is to just eliminate any of those potential stressors to make that experience somewhat seamless, but also somewhat special.

You know, keep in mind for many of these kids, they're going from an environment where they're one-on-one with their parents to now where they're in a vast pool of, you know, 4,000 students and many feel lost in that. And that's what inspired us to really consider radical hospitality.

And what that really comes down to, it may appear to be somewhat common sense to most people, but notice the student when they come through the door, they're not just a number. You know, they're Debra, a very special student who we are very glad that she's there. So, so notice them and notice any of any special needs that go with that so that they're not just a number.

And then ah the next part of that, so there are three parts to radical hospitality. Okay, is provide personal attention.

We've noticed you, here's your personal attention. You know, the mail and the connection to home is really critical. So do we just let them figure it out?
Come to this automated mailbox? We supplement with personal attention, people actually hanging around, a student comes is looking at the keyboard and let me help you get your package. Let me how this is done. So it's that personal attention.

And then excellence and follow through. Finding out what are the concerns, what are the issues and and really being present in terms of, you know, so what are the challenges, you know, for example, the success is really dependent on the number of days that boxes dwell in the mailboxes, you know, we we we certainly can't have thousands of mailboxes, we have to turn them over. So yeah we recognize that that could be a challenge in finding ways to get students to get their packages.

Deb Menter
Yeah, absolutely. I think the the whole idea around radical hospitality, I think, is so unique, even though, as you said, it sounds common sense to people. But I think I mean, I went to college 20 years ago and that's not how I felt. So it is, I think, a really unique perspective for colleges to take and universities to take. And I think while some kinds of that customer service come up in other industries and other locations, having a university take that approach is quite unique. And the differentiation for students to make that their choice and to feel that that as soon as they walk on campus is pretty exciting.

David Frassinelli
Well, it's essentially saying we care enough about you to do this, to invest in these mailboxes. And you know, most of the services we provide, you have to provide, you have to provide food, you have to provide mail, you have to do all these things.

How much, how much more difficult is it to raise the bar a little bit, bring it up to the next level and do it with that sense of personal attention, personal care.
And it permeates, we try to permeate everything we do, you know, even in, you know, the facilities. We try and walk and look at things with a fresh eye. And what does the parent see when they drop their child off? And how clean is it and how does it look? Or even just on the campus tour before they even arrive.

Deb Menter
Like, what are they experiencing to make them make that final choice? And I think we talked about this earlier. Like, it may not be what they think about as the reasons they're going, but it's certainly not a reason to cross you off the list.

David Frassinelli
Well, it was, you know, in the dark ages when I went to college, it was a whirlwind. You went to all these different and institutions and just trying to remember and keep it straight. And when, you know, your parents say, well, where do you want to go?

Sometimes you just don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it through elimination. Well, such and such a school really didn't have good recreational sports facilities. Well, let's cross them off. And this other school, I didn't feel safe there, or it it seemed like it was in a busy city environment. And that made me uncomfortable.

And, and we really looked across all those types of things that would make it easy to cross Fairfield off the list.

We don't want to be crossed off. And we've seen it. We've seen the success of this, you know, having grown to the sixth most competitive Catholic university in the United States based on our acceptance rate.

Deb Menter
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So you touched on this a little bit already, but let's talk about your mail center, which I think is probably these days a misnomer. It's really a mail and package center, maybe even more of a package center these days.

So how has the rise in online shopping and packages being received changed your day-to-day operations?

David Frassinelli
Well, it's interesting. There's a couple things that have happened.
My mailroom manager, recently retired and she talked about receiving on average five packages a day for students. Our volume last year, and we're a small institution, we're about four to 5,000 undergrads.

Our volume of packages, we believe is 150,000 packages, which is just unbelievable. Yeah. And we also have the changed environment where not only do we have the United States Postal Service and UPS, but we also have Amazon and Amazon prime. And the bulk of the volume is coming from Amazon and Amazon prime. Those two parts of Amazon operate very differently.

And as many, many people seeing this podcast will know, oftentimes you buy three things from Amazon, they arrive in three different packages. And there's that much more handling and volume.

Deb Menter
Right. What are some of the things that you've done over the last few years to help handle these packages?

David Frassinelli
We had had other approaches to handling packages in mail that really resulted in a duplication of handling and a duplication of scanning and a very cumbersome email a process of getting information to students.

When we switched to the smart locker, we eliminated an entire scanning step. So, it is just the initial Pitney Bowes scan. It goes right into the lockers.
But we also, in addition to emailing students, text students. It's amazing. And not their emails. And that's resulted in a dramatic turnaround.

Deb Menter
Moving to smart lockers, really exciting. Can you talk to me a little bit about your journey with them? How long you've had them on campus?

David Frassinelli
So we first tested the waters with smart lockers, probably about three to four years ago.

And it was a hybrid. So we had the traditional small little mailboxes from the 1950s. And we had a bank of smart lockers. Those lockers were front load.
And generally took about two minutes per locker to load them. So, making the switch to rear load substantially helped reduce the time.

We had a lot of downtime with our lockers due to just abuse and use, students slamming the doors. So, when we decided to upgrade, durability and overall quality of construction became critical.

I jokingly say a lot of what we do both in the dorm rooms and on campus yeah really has to be heavy-duty commercial because of the volume of activity and the abuse yeah to them internally we have to justify everything based on best cost or I should clarify best value, and the best value really came into play.

When you started doing time motion studies of how long from cradle to grave for a package, how long it takes to bring it in, scan it, bring it to a locker, load the locker, get the information out, and the amount of handling and time, the labor costs associated with that and the number of people doing that quickly changes the landscape in terms of you know, which, which approach is the best locker.

And that ended up being very important to us, which is a, you know, pretty standard business practice to look at the whole yeah activity.

Deb Menter
Right. And so you were saying you're previously, you were at about two minutes to load each locker. Have you, so you've seen a reduction in time?

David Frassinelli
And two minutes was just the time to get the locker to open. I mean, the actual handling of a package was substantially longer.

Deb Menter
And you talked a little bit about how previously you'd had only front loading and now you have rear loading. Can you talk about the rear loading and what that actually means and what that means for your staff?

David Frassinelli
It means they can move down the line much more quickly and put stuff in in the lockers. They have both the software and a visual now to tell them what's open.

It just flows so much more nicely. The front loads, you had to load a cart, wheel it out to the lockers, open the locker, put them in.

You have all those packages that are out somewhere, you know, in front of the lockers. Now the whole operation is contained within the mail room and the security of the mail room.

And at night, not that anyone's gotten into our mail room, but if they did, the back of the lockers are closed and locked for security.

Deb Menter
That's a really nice, nice piece that you can have, have the confidence that all of that is secure inside the locker from the back or the front.

David Frassinelli
The other thing that we have with the smart lockers now is the digital record of people taking their packages, including an image. And we've had situations where people are saying they didn't get their package.

Sometimes their roommates got their package and they forgot, or sometimes quite simply they forgot. And being able to provide a parent with an actual image of their daughter looking into the screen goes a long way to dispelling questions about the delivery of the product.

Deb Menter
Absolutely. This culture of authenticity and transparency, it's really important to be able to have that. Because, yeah, especially in the way of tracking these days, you know, again, 15, 20 years ago, you weren't tracking a package in the same way. The accuracy of it was...much poorer and now you can see every step of the way, especially with Amazon. It's telling it's 10 steps away. I can see on the map where it is.

So talk to me a little bit about that too, specifically Amazon, but some of the other platforms, they send their own notification that something has arrived and now you're racing against the clock to make sure that it gets in the locker so that a student doesn't come up to you and say, well, I already got the notification that it arrived, but it hasn't gotten to a locker yet.

So talk to me a little bit about that and the additional stress maybe that comes along with it.

David Frassinelli
In this digital age of instant notification, that is a challenge. You know, when it arrives in the mail room, they say they've delivered it and, they kind of washed their hands of it.

You know,, it does take time to take that and scan it and put it in a mailbox and get that text or email out to the students. That's why it's so critical that we reduce that time as much as possible.

And we've made other changes. For example, being open on Saturdays, extending our hours till six at night. Oftentimes it's when the students, only time the students can get there to get them.

But it also allows us more time to restock and put the next wave of packages in the mailboxes, Saturday in particular.

Deb Menter
Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. And remind me, are your, ah are the lockers open to the students when the mailroom is closed or only when the mailroom is open?

David Frassinelli
They're open 24 seven, 24 seven.

Deb Menter
Amazing. And with all that security, even if the mailroom is locked, you don't have to worry about it. And students can go pick up anytime.

David Frassinelli
In addition to the cameras embedded in the mailboxes, we also have our own cameras viewing that area. And adds to that safety aspect as well that you talked about earlier because, know, the mail center's closed at 10 p.m., but you that's when you have available to go pick up your package. You want to make sure that there's security.

We considered outdoor lockers because the lockers are you know rated to be both indoors and outdoors, we opted for the indoors. It's a much better environment and no snow removal.

Deb Menter
Being in the Northeast. For sure. So talk a little bit more about the lockers that you have implemented now, how many banks do you have? Are they customized?

David Frassinelli
We we started with about 10 banks. We've added several more.

Two more complete banks, based on the need and the utilization. And let's face it, it's only, it's only going to grow. We're growing our undergraduate population in a very controlled and limited way.

So it's the, it's the sheer volume of people buying from Amazon. That's, that's really driving our volume. We have a bank, our primary banks are in white and they, they have our stag logo, the Fairfield mascot and so we have a lot of Fairfield and stags on it and they're also on a very main corridor.

They're constantly passing by and seeing this. It's on all of our campus tours and we get a lot of comments. In terms of, wow, this is state of the art. Yeah, it's really impressive when you see them. And anytime I go somewhere new that I find has any kind of locker, that is exactly how I feel. This is where everyone's going. This is how you deliver. You know, there's a certain intangible.

As people visit your campus, you know, are they cutting edge? Are they student focused? And seeing that sort of attention and those types of lockers You get a lot of comments from the parents.

They certainly didn't have this when I was in college. And that's what people want.

Deb Menter
Yeah, absolutely. You want to see all of those ah upgrades and changes and making sure that campus is...coming together with the modern times. And this really showcases that You've had ah two different types of lockers on your campus. So, you started with one, and then as you realized it needed to be a bit more robust, you switched to a new partner. Being able to find the right partner for your solution was really critical in making this a successful part of this overall radical hospitality mission and everything that you're doing on campus.

David Frassinelli
So this goes back to this radical hospitality concept. And the kind of kind of graffiti that really puts me over the deep end is when something says “out of order”.

It really flies against radical hospitality. It's very much contrary to that. I mean, how do you give someone personal attention if something's “out of order”?
It can be a bottle filler. It could be a sink. But to me “out of order” sends the alarm signal and all the people on my teams know, you better not put an out of order sign.

You'll get David calling it and in a panic. And, and that's, you know, a big thing of what we had found. You know, our first experience with smart lockers is that not only were they not functioning because of lighter gauge metal and materials, but the turnaround time to get them fixed just simply took too long.
So in terms of the value proposition, as much as we could quantify that during the bid review process, speed to turnaround, quality of service, really extremely important.

Probably one of the most important considerations. Because in a similar way, you know how parents get a feel of a campus.

When they walk around see a lot of out of order signs, they do not get a good feel of the campus. So the robustness of service, the proximity, the speed of turnaround, very, very important.

Deb Menter
Yeah, that impression with the parents and the students, like if there are a lot of out of order signs, things aren't kept up and you want to know that, you know, where your money is being invested, the upkeep is part of that.

And the facilities that are being offered and the services being offered are all part of that. So it makes sense.

David Frassinelli
And we touch base on the fact that Amazon notices, notifies people that their package is there. You can buy a little patience from people if there's a huge volume. It's hard to ask people to be patient if there's out of order signs on bank lockers. You know, that all of this has really helped streamline your delivery to students, make things a lot more efficient.

Deb Menter
But has it solved all of your package problems, these lockers?

David Frassinelli
No. And, you know, it's important to remember that, you know, it's a dynamic process that changes as student behavior changes and amount of purchases change and Amazon changes, we've tried to manage and work with our relationship with Amazon.

There was a period where they were just leaving packages all over campus. I think we've addressed that. And after our deliveries, where their tendency is to just drop and run, we want to make sure those packages are secure, right? We've had some good workable solutions for that as well.

Deb Menter
Oh, that's great. You know, at Pitney Bowes, we talk a lot about how package volumes are increasing. Everyone's talking about how package volumes are increasing every year. How do you see your campus developing and the facilities developing to meet those needs as these the package volumes increase?

David Frassinelli
Well, you know, one of the challenges we have is how do we raise the bar every year? How do we keep it new and exciting fresh? And You know, we're open-minded and we're exploring all sorts of different solutions.

You know, potentially we look at ways to facilitate the whole package, not only handling process, but the shipping process as well. and And maybe exploring ways to make it easier for parents to ship their packages to students. That's something we would love to see as part of our services, as part of, you know, bridging that gap of, you know, the son or daughter moving out of the house and the empty nesters.

Deb Menter
Yeah. That's pretty cool. Giving, giving parents that opportunity have some more accessibility to their kids.

David Frassinelli
Yeah. And maybe, maybe ease of shipping and shipping labels or something, maybe we can add into that as well. We've changed our textbook delivery method as well. Oh, interesting. So we've gone to what's called equitable access. The long and the short of it is that's a doubled our student volume buying their textbooks from us. We went from a 28% students buying their books to over 65%.

And the good news is that should mean less Amazon packages. But even with that, where we have doubled the amount of student participation, we have not seen a decrease in the Amazon packages. So I think, I think we have two compounding variables, you know, one cutting the volume, but the other one just growing it at such a fast rate.

Deb Menter
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And do you see other opportunities for lockers on your campus?

David Frassinelli
Do we have lockers in dorms? That may be an option. You know, it may be that, you know, with our textbook delivery, which now the textbooks come pre-packaged in a bundle that we call Red Stack Direct, we could have some lockers and dorms for dorm delivery of those packages.

You know, having a partner who you can bounce things off of and is open to expanding options really allows people to be creative and thinking, new solutions and better solutions.

Deb Menter
And it's always, if one, if one organization, a university needs it, most likely others do as well. And if you can work with that partner to create something new and innovative, like it's probably beneficial to people across the country. But yeah, it's pretty amazing to be able to have those conversations and develop new things.

David Frassinelli
Well, one of the things I've surprised me because I used to come from the corporate world, the private world. And you know, you weren't all that friendly with the competition.

There's a lot of collegiality, no pun intended, amongst colleges and universities. And so if another university calls me and says, well, how did you solve your package problem?

People are very quick to share information and experiences and so forth. So that's wonderful. It’s kind of refreshing to see that kind of collaboration.
You know, maybe we're a little bit less collegial to our direct competitors, but no, in general, people want to help and they're there to help. And, you know, we brought belong to a lot of consortiums, a lot of information exchange and sharing there and presentations at those types of events.

Deb Menter
Oh, that's great. So that's really nice to see. Have you experienced at those events? Is that how you found out about lockers?

David Frassinelli
We've seen them at other universities. You know, we've known for years that we wanted to go to a smart locker solution, which is why we did it four years ago.

We just got off to a little bit of a false start, and now have jumped in and fully embraced it to the extent that we've eliminated all the other lockers, the little brass lockers with the combination on it.

Deb Menter
So well even your mail is delivered via lockers. Everything. Wow. That's cool.

David Frassinelli
Well, we found that the little mailboxes sat empty most of the year. You've got grandma's cookies that didn't fit in the box anyways.

Maybe ah a Christmas card and a Valentine's Day card and that's it. So it's not, it's not efficient. Yeah.

Deb Menter
No, that makes, that makes perfect sense. And now you don't have to wait two hours online for your, for your package. Like I used to.

David Frassinelli
Well, and then the lines, the lines are, the lines take a close second out of order. I don't like seeing lines. And, so our extended hours, extended staffing, was really aimed at reducing those lines.

Deb Menter
So David, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a really amazing session. So much to learn about what's going on on college campuses today and especially at Fairfield.

If you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe to this podcast. We will see you on the next episode of UnBoxed.