Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Google, Digital Mailboxes and the long tail of billing

I'm actively following the PR hype about Digital Mailboxes with wide-eyed anticipation – just waiting for Google (through Gmail) to announce its intentions in this space. 

Indeed, I’m somewhat perplexed that it hasn’t already done so. Perhaps it’s just following a similar strategy to Volly (that has again postponed its launch – was originally 2011, now sometime in 2013) and not launching until it has a critical mass of billers and customers on its solution already? 

It's definitely not following the Australia Post Digital Mailbox approach of “launching” by asking customers to register their interest for a later day. 

Or Zumbox – which encourages you to register so that you can “immediately see which mail pieces will be available in your digital postal mailbox,” except there aren’t any. 

Doxo has launched and encourages you to create a digital file cabinet and then upload scans of your important documents. Manilla goes one step further and wants to “manage everything in your life” (can you do the school run please?) Have I missed anyone out? 


Is Google already the gorilla in the digital mailbox space?


I think the main reason Google isn’t talking about this is that they do it by default already. They are my defacto Digital Mailbox. I get all my important documents on email already. I can move that email to a folder, forward to a friend or save the document to Google docs. 

Here are a few of the benefit statements from each of the providers mentioned above- let's compare and see how Google measures up - 


  1. “Secure” - Check
  1. “Mobile Ready” - Check
  1. “With one password” - Check
  1. “Manage all of your household bills, statements and documents from a single site” - Check
  1. “Centralized location online where all your important mail and documents are stored” - Check
  1. “Connects to your providers to deliver your bills and statements” – Check - should be simple for my providers to email me the bills and statements, in fact much simpler than integrating with each and every digital mailbox company.
  1. “Notifications” – Well I don’t need that – I’m already in my inbox.
  1. “Payment reminders” – these only work on the Digital Mailbox if there is backend integration with the biller –screen scraped documents (the majority) don’t have this functionality unless you manually set it up.
  1. “Available forever” – now that’s an interesting one – it would be more honest of the current Digital Mailbox providers to say that your documents would be available as long as their business model and VC funds hold up and they are not bought out by a larger entity. At least with Google I have a fair bit of confidence in their longevity.
  1. “It is a secure channel. Email, on the other hand, is not secure” – Well, not really true. Email can be encrypted, email attachments can be encrypted and email can be digitally signed. Ipso facto email can be secure.

But it’s not actually any of the above that will make Google the winner in the long run... 


The long tail of eBilling


Having your top five billers automatically insert their bills and statements into a digital mailbox would help drive paperless adoption, but it is just not possible to get ALL your bills there. And this is the reason that all digital mail consolidators will struggle against an open and easy to use network such as email. 

It’s the long tail of billing that makes email statements and Google the sure winner...


  1. Your swimming teacher is not going to integrate with each portal – he/she is going to send you an email.
  2. Your town council will battle to do the integration – but they may already be able to send you an email.
  3. Your retailer isn’t going to give up the marketing opportunities in paper and email statements.
  4. Your bank isn’t going to put important documents into a digital mailbox that may be overlooked or just filled – but they will send you an email about it.
  5. Your child’s school isn’t going to integrate school reports into a digital mailbox – but they will email you.

If half my financial documents are mainstream and half are “long tail” docs which require a manual intervention, I’d rather just stick with my inbox which is a doing a great job as a consolidator already. 

In fact, I bet that the #1 reason Google is the best entity for this kind of service is that they do it already – they just don’t really know it. 
    'You've got mail'


Feel free to email us for more info – we’re all about the inbox at Striata!

Michael Wright
striata.com

Thursday, February 21, 2013

No More Postal Service? What’s your eDocument delivery strategy?

I recently came across some worrisome facts about the US Postal Service.


  • No more Saturday delivery of letters and magazines as of August 1, 2013 1
  • Loss of $15.9 billion in the last budget year 1,3
  • Default on $11 billion retiree health benefits prepayments last year 1,2,3

Even more startling:

The Postal Service can't borrow more money from Congress to save itself, because it reached its debt limit in 2012.  Without a solution by October 2013, USPS CFO Joseph Corbett warns the service could go bankrupt. 3The facts are obvious. Mail volumes are decreasing (this graph tells the story) and the USPS is in financial tatters.

If the Postal Service disappeared this October, how would your company continue to deliver its bills, statements, policies, notices, and other documents in a timely fashion?
Falling volume

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: eDocuments via website portal?


Nearly every utility, bank, insurer, and lender has a customer website portal.  A place where a customer can register, chose a username and password, and then interact with the company for self-service options.

From this point forward the customer can receive their documents electronically, right? Nothing else they have to do right?  Wrong!  The electronic document never actually gets delivered, instead they have to “fetch” the document from the website by using, possibly, the 7th username and password combination he/she created in the last few months. This begs the question: How does this replicate the ease of receiving paper mail at home?

And then there's the case of the forgotten password, where  the customer has to make a call to the service center (cost). This wipes away the paperless savings a company would have earned.  Plus no payment yet, as the customer is not logged in.

The problem: Documents are not 'delivered' via a website.  Registering on a website is like having to open a PO Box at the post office.  In both cases your documents don't get sent directly to you. Instead they are sent to a secure holding facility where you need a key or password to retrieve.  If only a fraction of Americans have a PO Box, expect only a fraction of your customers to go paperless through your website.

The actual rates are likely worse than you think.  Here are the paperless adoption rates as of Dec 2011 4

* Insurance 8%         * Utility 12%         * Mortgage 16%         * Cable 18%         * Credit Cards 20%

BETTER SOLUTION: eDocument delivery via email


According to Exact Target, 91% of online consumers check their email inboxes daily.  A smartphone owner is more likely to use the device for email than a phone call 5. I bet you've checked your inbox via your phone or PC, either before or after reading this blog.  Fact is; the email inbox is a digital mailbox that can be peeked into anywhere and at anytime.  So, why don't companies send  documents directly to their customers' email inboxes?  Wouldn't that best replicate the service the USPS provides in the paper world?

The good news is; some companies are.  By using encrypted PDF technology and a shared secret to authenticate security, some of the biggest brands around the globe are delivering an exact replica of the bill, statement, policy, or notice directly to the customer's inbox. No registration, no username / password, and no inconvenience.  Without any additional work, a customer can go paperless via a process that actually mirrors what the USPS does on a daily basis.  Even better, the secure PDFs are interactive, allowing customers to make a payment, change personal information, or link to a website directly from the PDF. No more paper, much faster payments, and a superior customer experience.

How often do you use each of the following? Email, Facebook, Text messages, etc.

If you would like to know more about the champions of email eDocument delivery, I encourage you to check out ourwhite papers and case studies. Email inbox - the obvious replacement for the postbox

And for added convenience you can also contact us directly.

References:

1. Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office?
2. Understanding the Post Office’s Benefits Mess
3. USPS Cutting Saturday Mail Delivery
4. eBilling Benchmarking Study by Blueflame Consulting sponsored by NACHA 2011
5. Smartphone owners more likely to read emails than make calls: stats

Chad Somodi
striata.com

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Leverage the power of email to drive and maintain customer loyalty

The market is flooded with loyalty programmes offered by organisations in a variety of industries. There are the usual suspects: airlines, hotels and banks; but now even insurance institutions and your local coffee shop are playing the loyalty game. Each one is faced with the challenge of getting their loyalty programmes to stand out from the clutter, be relevant and to achieve a favourable ROI.


Share these 5 reasons: 




If you want to know more about leveraging the power of email to drive successful customer lifecycle communications, then get in touch with us.

Ross Sibbald
striata.com

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

How to “surprise and delight” when your customers want more than just eBilling...

The eBilling landscape is changing across Asia.

From discussions with my international colleagues, it’s clear that the market here is quite different from the rest of the world. In countries like the US and UK - eBilling portals were and are largely still the norm. To retrieve the bill, customers are encouraged to register and then log in each time a new bill is posted to the portal. After many years, this has led to stagnated adoption rates averaging a meagre 10-15%. There are a number of reasons for this, many of which I covered in my previous blog posts


Asia likes email – but does it get the desired result?


In Asia, while it’s not unusual for utilities and other billers to set up a portal, it’s also more common for eBills to be emailed to customers as a simple PDF or HTML attachment. Now according to accepted wisdom, this should dramatically improve adoption figures? After all, that’s basically what we do here at Striata, and we have clients with over 50% paper turn-off. But it hasn’t been the case here. Adoption still seems to stagnate around 10%, particularly for utilities where conservative processes and a very stable customer base means that defaulting large numbers of new customers to eBilling is not an option.

Customers want payment functionality in their email bills


Payment is catching on and utilities and other billers are taking a new tack here in Asia. Over the past few months, a number of Requests for Proposal have crossed my desk, and a common requirement has been payment functionality or some other value-added service. This change has been driven by a number of factors:
  • In some territories, cash payment at the utility office is still prevalent and causes all sorts of queuing problems each month on the bill-due date.
  • Elsewhere, payments through banks or convenience stores are at such high levels that customers are being charged in some cases over US$1 for the privilege of using the counters to pay their bills. Not a great experience for the customer!
  • For some billers and banks, basic PDF eBills or eStatements have taken them as far as they can go, and to encourage higher adoption, they are adding features that are compelling to their customers – payment forms, graphs and other interactive features.
All these companies have realised that eBilling without any added convenience is of such little appeal to customers that adoption will always be low. It’s the convenience factor, the bells and whistles that make all the difference.

Want to drive adoption? Then "surprise & delight" your eBilling customers


In the car industry it’s called “surprise and delight” when a potential customer sits in a car and the courtesy light fades gently, or there’s selectable “mood” lighting, or the steering wheel is leather. It’s what creates desire and what makes brands like Mini outsell Citroen even though you pay more for less in many cases.

In eBilling, it’s being able to pay your bill without having to go to the post office or Internet Banking, to update your details from within the eBill or set an email or text (SMS) payment reminder. Things that your customers never expected to be able to do from within their eBills!

And it’s the difference between truly successful eBilling with high paper-turn-off rates, and slow adoption, minimal paper turn-off and minimal savings.

Is your eBilling adoption is stalling? Talk to us about how you too can "surprise and delight” your customers.

Keith Russell
striata.com