Many companies have huge paperless goals when it comes to delivering customer statements and bills. However, when discussing the details there’s always the need to navigate to what will be accepted by the legal department based on the interpretation of regulations for electronic documentation.

When you sent a paper bill – did you have to prove your customer opened their envelope that contained their bill? And how did you ensure someone else living at the same physical address wouldn’t also open the envelope?

Why are we applying rules to email that we never considered applying to paper?

The reality is that the digital world is regulated and when you look at various regulations like the eSign Act, CPNI, CAN-SPAM to name a few, it’s easy to become fearful of stepping out of bounds to such an extent that at times, you don’t act at all.

6 Ways to comply with regulations without over-complicating your eDocument strategy:

1. Gain consent in the customer’s preferred communication channel – if you want them to fetch their document online, ensure they register online. If you want to send them an attached document by email, use the email consent process.

— This is important for eSign Act compliance

2. Include authentication information so that the customer can verify that the email is from the company it claims to be from. This means including information you know about the customer, such as full name, first line of physical address or a partial phone number.

— This will train customers to look out for their information and easily identify both legitimate as well as phishing emails.

3. Ensure that the document is password protected and encrypted

— This is important for security in a digital world

4. Make the password for the document complex enough so that it can’t easily be cracked, but easy enough so the customer doesn’t have to look up any information (with no need to register and create one).

— Again, important for the security of the document

5. Give the customer two options to unsubscribe – one to go back to paper and the other to register on the company portal, so they can fetch the document. Remember, the goal is to keep them paperless.

— Unsubscribe functionality is a requirement for CAN SPAM compliance

6. Documents sent via email are offline documents – i.e. you don’t have to be online to access them.

— CPNI requires password protection for online account access only

We can help ensure your move to electronic documents is compliant and not scary at all!

For more information or advice…