You can read about the offer here:
http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/yourchanges.php
(scroll down towards the bottom of the page)
and sign up for the service here:
https://ebill2.virginmedia.com/ebilling/Registration.jsp
This is another example of a large investment on a web portal that can process payments. However, according to Striata, most businesses, and even users, tend to avoid logging in to portals to pay one bill. It's just too complex to have to remember login information for every bill you have to pay, particularly for small and medium sized business.
E-mail continues to be the communication medium of choice, yet most billers only offer Internet website presentment. Enticing the customer to go online and register is expensive and generally yields poor results. In addition customers continually forget their usernames and passwords, resulting in expensive phone calls to customer service centres.
In many programmes it takes between 7 and 24 clicks for a customer to find and pay his bill far too many to make the experience worth repeating. And security fears such as Phishing and identity theft are still hindering online payment. Finally, marketers are having difficulty effectively communicating the benefits to the consumer.
AN INTRODUCTION TO SECURE EBPP
There are several ways for billers to ensure that a large percentage of customers migrate to e-Billing. There should be no upfront customer registration, and no need for a customer to visit a website. Customers should not require more than a dial-up connection, and should not have to remember a username and password. The e-Bill should look the same as the paper bill that customers are used to, and they should be able to view and pay it online in under 30 seconds, or save it and pay it later.
This can all be achieved through secure e-mail billing. The e-mail billing process starts when the biller gets a customer's e-mail address commonly at account activation, or when the customer contacts the call centre. Every contact is an opportunity to get this information. A shared secret is chosen that is known only to the biller and the customer. This can be a Social Security number, Zip Code (or postal code), account number or anything else that the customer nominates (and is easy to remember).
The biller then sends the customer his next bill via secure e-mail, and the customer uses the shared secret to decrypt and open his e-Bill. The e-Bill looks exactly the same as the paper bill, and the customer can print it out if required.
The customer enters his banking details and the amount he wishes to pay in the Payment Section at the top or the bottom of the e-Bill (the amount is defaulted to the total amount due), and clicks on PAY. The transaction has been completed with just two clicks.
The payment is then automatically submitted, without the need for the customer to visit a website, and he is sent a popup and an e-mail confirming the payment. The payment flows directly into the billers bank account, exactly like any other ACH payment.
Once one or two e-bills have been successfully received and paid by the customer, the biller automatically stops sending paper bills.
Striata has found that customer feedback has been extremely positive; many said that the email bill saved them time, because they no longer needed to visit a payment centre to settle their accounts. And because they were able to choose the shared secret password themselves, they felt the system was secure.
The answer appears to be to return to basics. Stop trying to change customer behaviour and start inserting your bill into your customers daily routine. As long as you are expecting your customers to do something to turn off paper, its simply not going to happen to any significant degree. Make participation easy and adoption rates will increase to the benefit of both utilities and their customers.
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About Striata
Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.
Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.
Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.
This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.
Visit Striata's Global Site.
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