eBilling horror stories! Do you have one?

An interesting story appeared in my Google Alerts a little while ago regarding an eBilling problem in Texas. What made it interesting to me was that the company involved – a water utility – had done many good things with regards to their eBilling, but fell at the last hurdle and ended up disconnecting an innocent customer. Not good for public relations! The full story is here.

In brief, when eBilling was introduced the utility sent out paper and eBills to the customer for a few months, before defaulting her to eBilling. In general, this process improves the eBilling adoption rate dramatically - reducing paper and postage costs and is good practice – as long as you know the customer is receiving the eBills! It turns out that this particular customer's email address was 2 years out of date, and she never received any eBill or notice that she was being defaulted to eBilling. To make matters worse, the utility noticed that the eBills weren't being paid and so occasionally sent out paper bills to "catch up", which were received and paid on time. But they then continued with eBilling until they disconnected her…

eBilling is not just about sending electronic bills…

Clearly whilst the eBilling platform was probably successfully sending out eBills, the required read-receipt and delivery reporting wasn't in place. Clearly the processes dealing with exceptions weren't water-tight.

In a similar story but much closer to home; my friend got a call from her bank today telling her that payments toward her new credit-card – issued in September – had never been received and over US$400 in late fees was now due. It turns out that she thought she'd set up a direct debit payment (and hadn't – so that's her fault), but had also signed up for eStatements. These eStatements necessitated following a link back to a website and a log in to view the statement, and she'd just never bothered to do so as it was too much trouble (and hey, it was being paid automatically anyway, wasn't it…?) Did the bank not know she'd never viewed an eStatement? Should alarm bells not have started ringing after the first credit-card bill wasn't paid rather than 4 months later? Seems not!

The poor water customer in Texas had to pay a substantial reconnection fee but thankfully for my friend, her late fees were waived. However in both instances the customer ended up inconvenienced, disgruntled and dissatisfied with the electronic billing process.

Both of these stories show how the delivery of an eBill is only the start of the eBilling process, not the end of it! Convenience is critical to ensure eBills or eStatements are actually viewed. Monitoring of delivery and read-receipts is required, as is having automated processes set up to deal with issues. An eBill bounces? Then automatically send the customer an SMS… No reply to that? Then send a paper bill and get the call-centre to follow-up with the customer. And before eBilling begins, the adoption process has to be fail-safe but optimized to ensure the highest possible paper suppression rates.

Is it all starting to sound a bit more complicated than just attaching a PDF bill to an email? Then speak to the experts who have been doing it for 10 years…

Keith Russell
www.striata.com

Do you have what your customers want…. Mobile eBilling?

I can't think of any other consumer technology news that has been more eagerly anticipated in the US recently, than Verizon announcing that they will be introducing the iPhone in February 2011. While one analyst report estimates that 25 million Verizon iPhones could be activated in 2011, Verizon Wireless is conservatively predicting 11 million new iPhone users this year. On a global scale, the introduction of the CDMA version of the iPhone would open up approximately 550 million potential new customers (134 million in India alone), according to the CDMA Development Group. A massive gauntlet has just been thrown down to developers of Android devices as well.

The ramifications for all of this on eBilling are HUGE!

Whether you're an avid smartphone user (like me), an occasional mobile internet user, or someone who only uses their phone for calls and SMS text messages, the allure of the smartphone is undeniable. Opening the floodgates to the web and more importantly, email (by far the most used consumer technology application) means that your customers who, today receive paper bills, will be far more accessible.

Mobile eBilling and the World Wide Web

But wait… is your website configured and optimized for mobile users? Or will they just see a very small, unreadable version of their eBill? As companies desperately try to convert their customers to paperless communications in a bid to reduce costs, are they paying enough attention to how consumers connect to the web?

Most banks and billers have built their portals without this in mind. Have you ever tried to log-in and view / pay a bill from your phone? The whole experience is not for the technology or security averse, especially when the same exercise usually involves 10 steps and many mouse-clicks to complete on your regular computer screen.

I'm not suggesting for a second that the personal computer is becoming redundant, but isn't the whole point of being able to check emails and connect to the net from the palm of your hand, intended to make your life more efficient? So that you have more time for the things you want to do (Unfortunately paying bills doesn't often fall into this category.)

Striata's new mobile one-click payment solution

How cool would it be if you could view a PDF of your bill right on your phone, and tap your screen to make an instant payment, then file the bill in an email folder, all in less than 60 seconds? Talk about convenience! (not to mention billers getting paid quicker).

This is exactly what Striata launched at FinovateEurope this week. Striata's new mobile one-click payment solution is an industry first, enabling bill recipients to see how much is owed and conveniently make an instant one-click payment directly from any internet enabled mobile device. More good news: it doesn't require billers to spend anything on optimizing their portals for mobile users.

Striata continues to blaze a trail of innovation in paperless communication solutions. For more than a decade, we have had a very clear focus on providing both individual (B2C) and commercial (B2B) consumers with more convenience and ease of access to handling tasks that to date are predominately paper based.

Coincidentally, in a recent research report by InfoTrends entitled The Future of Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment in North America, 2010, companies surveyed said the most effective strategy for driving eBilling adoption was "marketing the convenience".

Isn't it time to put your money where your mouth is? Talk to a Striata specialist today about what enhancing customer convenience will do for your business.

Barrie Arnold
www.striata.com

The Digital (non) Dialogue

Today I received an email from a bank with the subject line: Private Bank: Your direct access to Top Management.

The email started off with: "At XX Private Bank, we're well aware that your time is your greatest luxury . . ." and ended off with the Regional Manager's personal details.

First problem: I'm no longer a customer of this particular Private Bank, and haven't been for upward of a year (but that's for another rant . . . I mean blog post, entitled "Please manage your data").

Second problem: it was addressed to DEAR PRIVATE BANK CLIENT. Enough said.

Companies still treat email communication as a monologue

What horrified me the most was that the email came from a no-reply mailbox.

Frowning, I looked through the rest of my regular supplier communication, and guess what? There are still loads of companies that treat email communication as a monologue. Unbelievable!

This business of sending emails from a noreply@company.com address and actually advertising in the content that "this mailbox is not monitored", is just plain bad practice. Why do they think it's okay to push out email communication without a reply path? Is my time less important than theirs?

Companies reap the cost and efficiency benefits of sending emails to customers: transactional notifications, personalized documents, triggered communication – all cost much less to deliver electronically than a phone call or posted letter.

Why make it less than 100% convenient for the recipient to send back a reply?

Don't you want your customers to engage with you?

Your marketing department spends millions trying to get your customers to engage in a dialogue with your company. There's a whole team of people paid to find out what customers think. Yet communication that is guaranteed to be sent to customers, such as statements, invoices, transactional notifications, are often treated as monologues.

Not to mention the deliverability problems that come along with having "do not reply" in the email address or body copy. Have you tested your delivery rates on no-reply emails? You'll be shocked at how many don't get delivered or get pushed straight to junk mail folders.

Worship the dialogue

Appoint a team to take charge of managing responses to your outgoing electronic communication. A lot of what you get back might be rubbish, but can you really take the risk of missing the pearl of wisdom in a suggestion from a customer? Or worse, ignoring the desperately disgruntled customer who takes his comments into the public domain after receiving no reply from you?

Inbound message management doesn't require a massive call centre. All you need is a team of well trained agents using decent electronic messaging software that manages inbound communications in the same way as you manage inbound calls. There are applications smart enough to filter spam and bounce backs, and to route emails based on your customer service business rules. This is not rocket science.

You have to encourage the dialogue, nurture the conversation and value the feedback. And making it difficult for customers to engage with your company is just plain bad practice and a missed opportunity.

[This is an automated blog post. Please do not reply.]

Alison Treadaway
www.striata.com