Getting more customer information improves service, reports Patrick Hatch.
Australia Post says it will virtually eliminate missed deliveries by next Christmas and claims to have already made headway reducing the number of parcel notification cards being left in mailboxes.
The postal service said   December 2015 was its busiest month ever, delivering 30 million parcels, as festive shoppers flocked online to buy their gifts.
Bob Black, executive general manager of Australia Post's parcel and ecommerce services, said delivery cards were left for about 15 per cent of those parcels - down from 21 per cent last Christmas. 
"There was a lot of technical issues in 2014 ... [and] one of the things we were getting a lot of heat about was customers' choices," Mr Black said.
He said Australia Post spent the year encouraging merchants to pass on online shoppers' phone and email details so its delivery service could notify customers when their parcel was scheduled for delivery.
About half of merchants were now handing over those details, Mr Black said, meaning more customers were redirecting parcels mid-delivery to a different address, like a workplace, a nearby post office or a parcel locker, or giving permission for it to be left somewhere around their home or with a neighbour.
Mr Black said about 50,000 customers redirected their parcel in   December, a 70 per cent jump from 2014, helping Australia Post to reduce the number of missed deliveries to 15 per cent. He said he hoped to reduce that by a further 10 per cent by next Christmas.
"We've got this drive on merchants to get as much receiver information as we can so we can give the consumer as much deliver choice as we can, and drop that 'carded' rate from the mid-teens to the mid-single digits," he said.
Australia Post and its StarTrack courier service delivered nearly 2 million parcels on   December 21, its busiest day, and as well as bumper volumes, saw heavier and bulkier items being sent to online shoppers.
Mr Black said average parcel sizes had dropped in recent years, as people experimented with online shopping by buying small, cheap items.
He said the experience of British and European postal services showed parcel size then increased as more people became confident shopping online.
"People get that much confidence in it that they'll buy lots of things - they'll buy a vacuum cleaner and bigger things that they'd normally go to the stores to buy," Mr Black said.
"So this was the first time we've seen that shift back to some heavier parcels, and I think that's indicative of the maturity of the Australian market."
He said Australia Post was planning for ways to manage its resources to meet the shift in demand for larger parcels through its postal delivery and StarTrack services.
"We need to be prepared that that could jump dramatically this year and that changes the dynamic of what we do."
Three-quarters of parcels delivered in   December were online purchases, he said.
Australia Post's revenue from parcels rose 3.6 per cent to $3.21 billion last financial year, but that was not enough to balance losses from its mail business, reporting a $222 million after-tax loss - its first in more than 30 years. The service last year announced it would spend up to $190 million axing 1900 jobs from its struggling letter service.