Who really pays the bills in this relationship?

Two things that have really been hot topics for me recently are "how many companies are truly listening to their customers?" and "how many look at the full lifecycle of customer communications?"

In terms of the first concept, I'm continually amazed by companies that make technology decisions based purely on "what other companies in the marketplace are doing", rather than asking their own customers what THEY want. After all, who pays the bills - your customers or your competitors?

Analyze this:

Total paperless billing adoption in the US averages less than 15%, yet more than 80% of the bill
paying population has access to email. Perhaps all those other companies aren't getting it right either.

At Striata, we spend a considerable amount of time and energy getting to know our clients and
their customers before any engagement. Very often we recommend conducting a customer survey on how they would prefer to receive bills, statements and other communications. Almost inevitably the team responsible for that client's eBilling / eDelivery strategy find the results surprising! .

Case in point: One of our largest telecom clients has offered online billing for quite some time. Customers have to click on a link in an email and log-in to view and pay each bill. However, in order to get over the adoption plateau that virtually every biller hits with this portal-based approach, Striata suggested augmenting their portal with PUSH eBilling. They liked the idea and decided to survey their customers. The Result: 50% more customers would prefer to receive their bill attached to an email, as opposed to an email with a link back to the portal. And, in another online survey, consumers were asked how they would like to receive their electronic bills. THREE times as many consumers said they would prefer to receive a secure email attachment of their bill as opposed to those prepared to log-in to the biller's portal.

What this should tell you is that email is your customer's preferred communication channel, which brings me to my next hot button, "customer lifecycle communication".

Think bigger picture

In my experience, most companies don't give nearly enough attention to how they can sync up all of their transactional, marketing and notification-type communications. The net result is that customers receive emails for some correspondence (like newsletters and marketing) and paper for everything else. Not a great customer experience.

Striata's core strength lies in our ability to not only deliver all communications electronically from a single system, but also to compile a profile on each customer and provide usable data back to each department (billing, marketing, customer service etc).

Gathering information on preferences for how customers want to receive correspondence, which products and services they are most interested in and which banners, buttons and other links they click on puts you in an infinitely stronger position. With this usable data you can sell more to
existing customers, reduce costs (such as paper and postage) and most importantly provide even better customer service (which leads to higher retention.)

What is the value of an email address?

Customers have been willing to provide their email address for years. But very few companies take this for what it's worth. Once you have permission to use their email address, it's critical that you leverage this extremely powerful and very cost effective medium for as many pieces of communication as you can, not just for bills.

If you aren't already using triggered communications or treating all customer interactions as part of a carefully mapped out customer lifecycle management (CLM) program, isn't it time you started?

Want to get more out of your billing relationship with clients? Talk to one of our eBilling specialists today

Barrie Arnold
Vice President of Sales - Striata North America
www.striata.com

Make it an eBilling evolution, not a revolt

My Google Alert keyword search turned up an interesting forum discussion from Malaysia last week. Someone was upset that a mobile operator there had introduced a US$0.88 charge for sending out a paper bill because eBilling is now available to their customers. Nothing unusual, but I noticed that as I read down the postings (or in most cases, rantings), the rhetoric became more heated and passionate. What started off as a fairly reasonable, minor complaint ended up with the company being lambasted for being unethical and greedy; for profiteering and introducing illegal charges! Based on this forum, the poor company appears to be second only to Al Qaeda in the Axis of Evil! And I'm sure their Public Relations department has since been in a spin, trying to contain the fall-out!

But the thing is that none of this was necessary. In the interests of fairness and accuracy, I did add my tuppence worth to this discussion; rather more reasonable and along the lines of:

The issue here is really relating to how the company has gone about this change to their billing practices. It may or may not be illegal for them to introduce a charge without telling the customer - I'll leave that for better informed people than me to decide - but they certainly need to manage the customer relationship better to take the sting out of any additional charges being levied.

What's required is a customer adoption strategy designed to get customers to sign up for (cheaper, greener) eBilling without upsetting them or indeed inciting them to raise class-action law suits, as has happened in the USA recently.


3 things I'd consider critical here:

1. Inform the customer in advance of any change to T&Cs that will result in additional charges
2. Always allow the customer to make a choice, either to opt-in, or to opt-out of eBilling
3. Make your eBill so good that most customers will actually want to receive their bill that way! Include interactivity to allow customers to analyse their usage, add relevant, targeted marketing , include a payment form for ease of payment and add graphs etc. All the things you can't do with paper bills.

Approached properly, the change to eBilling should work well for telcos (and banks and utilities), customers and the environment – a win-win-win solution.

Stories like this should be a thing of the past, but until companies realise that there's more to eBilling than just a webpage or an email; until they add value to their eBill offering; until they realise that customer psychology needs to be considered when pushing for paper turn-off, we can expect more revolts.

Is your eBilling strategy focused on the "customer experience"?

Keith Russell
Sales Director - Asia Pacific
striata.com

Dear Sir. Why have you stopped communicating with me?

For anyone living in South Africa, just the mention of the words "City of Johannesburg" or "Municipality" is enough to make you want to pull every last remaining hair out your head...

My year long tantrum started when I received a R120,000 (about $16,000) utility bill from my local municipality for water and electricity consumption, of which water constituted 95% of the bill. Now this would not have been that unusual or surprising if I happened to be "running a small bottling plant in my backyard and I was illegally distributing my own private label mineral water" as suggested by a rather unhelpful and rude customer service agent!

However, since I am not the type of character that would perpetrate such a crime, and the fact that I don't spend 4 hours a day in the shower trying to perfect my Pop Idol audition song, then this clearly had to be a billing error that could be resolved with a quick phone call or
email. No problem! Right?

Now before I continue my rant, I never had any preconceived idea that I would have a direct line into the Mayor's office, but I did have an expectation to be able to communicate with someone.... anyone. Boy was I in for a rude awakening!

So where did it all go wrong?

Well unbeknown to me at the time, I actually had a burst underground water pipe. So the first month of "unusual" consumption they simply stopped communicating with me! No statements for 6 months. No alerts to say that an abnormal consumption reading was taken. No payment reminders. No letters of demand.

I'm surprised that they never even attempted to communicate with me by cutting off my lights and water supply – I think I might have got the message then don't you think? No, rather let my account build up to R120,000 and then switch on my statements after 6 months so I can
experience the pleasure of a mild heart attack. Not cool!

So naturally the thing for me to do was to resolve this error as quickly as possible, and herein lay my second problem. Trying to communicate with the municipality!

• Using the Call Centre number advertised on the website – couldn't get through... ever!


• I sent numerous emails to a designated customer service address – no response in 9 months... and counting.


• No other communication channels were available to me like a web form or even a fax number


• My last resort, a visit to the Customer Service centre, not very convenient in the high tech digital age if you ask me.

the various channels that are provided to me as a consumer only to be met with the sounds of silence. I hate being ignored!

The good news however is that, I eventually managed to resolve the matter by making contact with the water supplier directly. Who after investigation detected the leak, and duly admitted fault on behalf of the Municipality. They subsequently wrote off the R120,000 charge for
actual consumption, which could have been avoided and rectified if they had only communicated with me from the beginning.

The following questions have to be asked: Why? Why stop communicating with me in the first place? Why was the process so difficult? Why was it up to me to navigate through a maze of
communication channels, departments and companies to have my query resolved?

The fact remains - I don't have a relationship with the water supplier, I have a relationship with the municipality – I consume their products and services, they invoice me, I pay them, therefore I want to be able to communicate directly with them via all possible channels, and
I also want to be communicated to, when the need arises. Simple as that!

The lesson of this experience is this:

Companies run the risk of suffering irreparable damage to their brand and/or significant financial losses if they do not invest in sound direct customer lifecycle communication strategies . They spend fortunes on their Brand Image or Brand Promise which is perpetuated in various forms of glitzy advertising media and platforms at considerable expense.

Yet, when it comes to Brand Action (how the brand actually delivers on its promise), they fail dismally, because they are unable to facilitate and engage directly with their customers when their customers want or expect to have a direct conversation with them. It is a huge #BrandFail if you ask me.

Therefore, the importance of implementing customer communication strategies (including response mechanisms) cannot be overemphasised enough. There are so few companies out there that are doing it, if at all. And with so many good multi-channel eMessaging technology platforms
available to help manage the communication lifecycle, there are simply no excuses for companies, or municipalities for that matter, to not be communicating with you during your tenure as a customer.

Note: Look out for more in-depth analysis on Customer Lifecycle Management in our upcoming posts

Haydn James
Head of eMarketing
www.striata.com