| eBilling Solutions |
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| eBilling Innovations |
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eBilling Challenges & Benefits |
Billing managers concern themselves with 3 important goals:
Electronic billing (eBilling or EBPP) is an obvious option for both getting paid faster and reducing billing costs. When evaluating electronic billing options to achieve these goals, the most important question to ask is: what kind of adoption rates can I expect? Successful eBilling programmes encourage high levels of customer adoptionIf a primary goal of electronic billing is to reduce billing costs while getting paid faster, its effectiveness is best measured by the number of customers who opt to STOP receiving paper communications without affecting payment timescales.An eBilling initiative is thus only as successful as the number of paper bills or statements that are eliminated: the amount saved is directly proportional to the number of customers that convert to electronic billing and give up paper. Each paper bill that is discontinued reduces the total cost. It would seem obvious that if a customer is viewing and paying a bill electronically that the paper bill is automatically discontinued, but a large percentage of online bill pay customers still receive paper statements. The challenge for online billers:Nearly all the benefits of an electronic billing platform are dependent on having significant volumes of customers suppressing paper. In reality, actual adoption of web based electronic billing currently averages less than 10% across all industries.
What is a successful adoption rate? Some examples...
While online bill pay adoption rates have stalled at 10%, Striata eBilling clients universally achieve this within the first year, and often in the first month. Only 10% of my customers use my billing portal, what does this mean?Many companies rushed into web-based billing in anticipation of huge cost savings and return on investment. This hasn't happened.The theory was that consumers would flock to biller websites to manage accounts, view statements and pay bills. Billers also assumed that by simply making the opportunity available for online billing would be enough of a pull for customers. Billers hoped that online bill payment would automatically translate into significant suppression of paper bills. The reality is that consumers did indeed “flock” to the web – but not to pay their bills. According to a September 2007 Pew Internet survey, almost all Internet users (93%) have at least once engaged in an ecommerce activity. Yet only 30% have used the Internet to make an online payment. This translates to less than 10% customer adoption of electronic bill presentment and payment across all industries, the typical average being only 3-6% adoption over three years. The survey concludes that while demographics and the availability of broadband does influence which Internet users shop online, the strongest influence is attitude. 78% percent agree that online shopping is convenient and nearly 66% of all online users have used the Internet to make a purchase online. The lesson for billers: if consumers perceive their online bill options to be more convenient, a significant number of customers would be using them to pay their bills. Accounting for consumer preferencesThe idea behind online bill payment is still a practical one. It just needs to meet with customer preferences.Most eBill portals require 8 clicks to access the website, login, find and pay the bill. From the customer’s perspective, this is not an improvement over getting a paper bill by postal mail and therefore adoption rates remain very low for this “pull” method. Requiring customers to proactively register for the service online and then to proactively retrieve their bills is the fundamental point of failure. The majority of consumers have proven they won’t proactively enrol. Plus only a small percentage that do enrol, actually opt to stop receiving paper bills. While websites today try to be more persona-focused, the typical online bill pay portal is built without considering the customers preferences. These portals may be packed with features and relatively easy to use for a sophisticated web application, but they attempt to replace a process where bills are simply delivered to customers and can be paid without much effort. Yet, instead of examining the customer experience or strategy for flaws, most businesses have simply lowered their expectations for online adoption. Educating the customer: why marketing isn’t enoughFor billers tasked with online bill pay targets, the question is no longer how to reduce costs, but rather how to change consumer perception of the electronic billing process: It isn’t enough to simply tell your customers that it is convenient, when in their perception, it is clearly not. Appealing to consumers with calls to save the environment has not impacted on enrolment.Customer adoption strategies, based on “educating the customer” are bound to fail for the same reason. Consumers know what is convenient. They’ve been telling billers in large numbers. More than 90% still choose to receive and pay bills by mail or other electronic payment options. Thus the message to business could not be clearer. Driving adoption of online bill pay with email bill presentment and integrated BillPayStriata’s ‘BillPay’ uses a strategically different methodology to electronic bill presentment and payment from the pull model of online bill pay sites – one that has proven to dramatically increase customer adoption of electronic communication.Replacing paper bills with rich electronic documents that are delivered directly to the customer's inbox, rather than requiring them to 'fetch' the bill from a website, has proven to be key in generating the adoption rates necessary to realize return on investment. On its own, without email presentment and delivery, an online bill pay portal is merely another payment channel which doesn’t drive paper turn off. However, with email billing, the opportunity to succeed with adoption rates and enjoy the associated benefits is within every biller’s grasp. Striata’s ‘BillPay’ can supplement and enhance proprietary payment portals and online kiosks, by expanding the rich, real-time functionality with customer-friendly alternatives. Striata’s solution is not meant to replace any web-internet initiatives, only the high volumes of paper bills, statements and other documents delivered each month by postal mail. Key advantages of email bill presentment and payment
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"Striata continuously assist us in building our brand and getting our message across to our supporters and beneficiaries. Their willingness to help us succeed in growing our database and creating better eMarketing campaigns has been unbelievable."
City of Tallahassee exceeds 3-year suppression target
MultiChoice passes 50% adoption
11% adoption at Go Live
