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
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