Companies spend a great deal of time and money looking for solutions and processes to help them increase the number of paperless customers, for cost saving purposes or to enhance their customers’ overall experience. But, the question is: How will companies drive paperless adoption in the years ahead? With traditional ‘PULL’ website presentment solutions demonstrating flat growth and expected downward growth over the next couple of years – what are the options?

Trends tend to dictate many of the decisions made by companies, but it is always interesting to see whether they align with consumers’ needs.   Let’s take a look at results of a recent survey…

Companies are still using email for traditional web presentment

According to the Infotrends 2014 Customer Communications Business Survey, most strategies for delivering critical communications continue to rely upon notifications sent via email that refer customers back to a web portal for retrieval.

And, despite web presentment being on the decline, corporations still have it as their main strategy at 51.6%.  Interesting, wouldn’t you say?

Now let’s see how consumers responded when asked how they would like their providers to use email when communicating with them. Only 31.4% want email notifications that direct them back to the provider’s website, while 45.4% prefer the communication to be pushed directly to them via email – whether in the body or as an attachment.

Consumers overwhelmingly want documents emailed directly to their inboxes

There is a great disconnect between corporate strategies and what consumers want

The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.  Well, surely we now recognize that companies need to re-align their strategies to what their customers are asking for?

3 Steps you need to take to give your customers what they want:

1. Re-evaluate your view of email.  Instead of looking at it as a channel for notifications, why not see email as the preferred channel to deliver important communications and documents?
2. Deliver documents directly to your customers’ email inboxes.
3. Identify a solution that reduces enrollment barriers and is easy and convenient for your customers to adopt by:
   • Eliminating the registration process and necessity for yet another password to remember
   • Making the electronic consent process as simple as one – click
   • Delivering communications directly to their email inbox each month that can be read on any device

Give your customers what they want… learn more on how to align your paperless strategies with your customers’ requirements…