| eBilling Overview |
|---|
| Specialized eBilling Solutions |
|---|
eBilling Challenges |
|
The Billing process has always been a strategic marketing and customer retention platform. However, without the means to measure effectiveness by customer profile or demographic usage, billers have historically focused more on getting paid and getting paid faster. Getting paid is still a primary goal for billers. When evaluating electronic billing options, the first question is always: will it lower my billing costs and by how much? However, the more important question to ask about electronic billing is actually: what kind of adoption rates can I expect? If the primary goal of electronic billing is to reduce billing costs, its effectiveness is best measured by the number of customers who opt to STOP receiving paper communications. An eBilling initiative is therefore only as successful as the number of paper bills or statements that you eliminate: the amount you save is directly proportional to the number of customers that convert to electronic billing and give up paper. Each paper bill that is suppressed 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 suppressed, but in fact, a large percentage of online bill pay customers still receive paper statements. The challenge for online billers is that while nearly all of the benefits that can be derived from an electronic billing platform are dependant on having significant enough volumes of customers suppressing paper, actual adoption of web based electronic billing currently averages less than 10% across all industries. Striata’s answer to billers with other electronic payment initiatives, that are achieving only 1% or 2% paper turn off annually – is yes, it is reasonable to expect a much higher adoption.
Examples of what we consider to be successful customer adoption rates:
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. What it means when 90% of your client’s customers don’t perceive the convenience of your online billing portalThe possibilities of electronic bill presentment and payment meeting online strategic objectives, as well as the predictions of cost saving and return on investment that fueled the rush into web based billing, haven’t been realized.The theory was that consumers would flock to biller websites to manage their accounts, view their statements and pay their bills and also, that by simply making the opportunity available would be enough of a pull for customers - all in the hope that online bill pay 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 one time or another done something related to ecommerce: to research products and services, make purchases, book travel, trade stocks, or participate in auctions. On any given day, more than a quarter of internet users (26%) are doing something related to e-commerce. Yet only 30%, across all industries, income categories, and age groups, 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. A few are above average, with adoption rates of 15% or so; but many industries typically achieve 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. 75% of all internet users have strong concerns about sending personal or credit card information over the internet, yet, despite this, 78% percent agree that online shopping is convenient and nearly 2/3 – 66% of all online users have used the internet to make a purchase online. The lesson for billers is that if consumers perceived 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 premise behind online bill pay is still a viable one. It just needs to account for customer preferences. Currently, those preferences don’t include visiting biller web sites to retrieve their bills or the daunting online payment process that awaits them once they visit.In many of these portals, it can take 8 clicks for a customer to get to the website, login, find and pay their bills. Low adoption rates of this "pull" method indicate a strong resistance to this method. From the customer’s perspective, this is not an improvement over getting a paper bill by postal mail. Requiring customers to proactively register for the service online is one of the fundamental points of failure. Requiring customers to proactively retrieve their bills after they’ve enrolled is the other. The majority of consumers have proven they won’t proactively enroll, and there are only a small percentage that do stop receiving paper bills. While websites today try to be more persona focused, the typical online bill pay portal is built out of context. It may be packed with features and relatively easy to use for a sophisticated web application, but it attempts to replace a process where bills are simply delivered to customers and can be paid without an application. 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 enrollment.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. With more than 90% still choosing to receive and pay their bill by mail or other electronic payment options, the message to business could not be clearer. Driving adoption of online bill pay with email bill presentment and integrated BillPayStriata’s solution 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 and all the other benefits. On its own, without email presentment and delivery, an online bill pay portal is merely another payment channel which, despite the online environment, 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 solution can supplement and enhance proprietary payment portals and online kiosks, by augmenting the rich, real-time functionality of the web portal with a customer-friendly alternative to a sometimes laborious online experience and contribute towards lessening the devastating impact that paper production and distribution have on the environment. Striata’s solution is not meant to replace any web, internet initiatives, only the high volumes of paper bills, statements, and other documents that are still delivered each month by postal mail. Key advantages of email bill presentment and payment
|
MultiChoice passes 50% adoption
14% adoption at Go Live
