Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) is not a new concept – the ability to present customer bills and receive a payment on your company portal has been around for years. That’s why paperless adoption rates that rely solely on portal registrations have slowed to a trickle. 

However, the business case for moving customers to paperless billing remains a strong one. 

At the very least, the difference in cost between mailing a printed bill, and making it available electronically, will provide an attractive return on investment.

But, those cost savings, for many companies, have already been banked in previous budget cycles. 

The question is: “how do you kick-start a new phase of paperless adoption, and realize meaningful savings in future budgets, as well as improve business cash flow ?” 

Add a new EBPP channel – email bills 

The business case for EBPP is not restricted to providing bills on a portal – there are other electronic channels like email – that will attract a different segment of customers, based on a different set of benefits. 

Email bills offer benefits that a portal does not: 

1. Email is a ubiquitous business tool (4 billion users worldwide), meaning most people have an email address and use it every day. It’s unlikely your customer uses your portal everyday.
2. Email bills are delivered right to the customer, rather than expecting the customer to collect.  Considering that customers have many bills to pay each month; it’s an effort to go to each portal to collect.
3. Portals require the customer to remember login details which, if you only log in once a month, tend to get forgotten. This is frustrating and results in unnecessary forgotten password processes, or worse, more calls to your call center 
4. You can add a simple mobile or one click payment option – a convenient way for customers to pay the amount due, directly from the email bill. This will significantly improve business cash flow.

It’s not just about the ‘paper to digital’ cost saving – there’s more!

Providing the option to receive an email bill has other benefits for the organization, like a proven decrease in days’ sales outstanding (DSO), which ultimately improves business cash flow. If customers receive their bills faster, via a channel they use every day, it’s likely they will pay faster too.

In the utility sector, our clients have achieved amazing results in both DSO reduction and faster payments, just by offering customers the option of an email bill with a mobile or one-click payment option. 

IREA

• Paperless adoption has reached 45%
• 37% of customers pay within 3 days of receiving the eBill

SUEZ

• 47% of customers pay within 3 days of receiving the eBill
• 24% of customers pay through Striata’s mobile and one click payment channels

Reducing DSO by facilitating faster payments is great for these utilities’ cash flow. 

Improving EBPP options has a positive effect on portal adoption

Adding another electronic channel to your EBPP offering does not cannibalize your portal user base. On the contrary, we’ve seen that introducing an email bill option has improved portal and app usage. 

That’s certainly the case with the email bills we send for our clients – they are designed to push customers to the portal or app for more information. This cross-channel service is the kind of digital experience today’s consumers expect.

Let’s summarize the benefits of adding an email bill to your EBPP offering:

BENEFITS OF INCLUDING EMAIL BILLS IN YOUR EBPP OFFERING

Give your EBPP a new fresh look . . . by adding an email bill and a convenient one click or mobile payment option. This is not only a great customer experience (CX) but it is also an opportunity to align all of your bill-to-payment communication and provide the customer with a seamless experience, regardless of their chosen channel.