Electronic billing (or E-billing for short) has been in the news a lot in recent years and has been widely introduced in bigger businesses like large utilities, telcos and even council organisations. But many small to medium sized enterprises (and quite a few larger ones) are still not convinced about the overall benefits and take the attitude that their existing approach is fine as it is-taking the view that “if it isn’t broken, then why mess with it?” While this may have been a reasonably tenable position two or three years ago, with faster connection speeds, increased use of the Internet by the general population and more and more ways to get on line now, the reasons to care about e-billing have become a lot more compelling. Let’s therefore look at the main reasons why every organisation (no matter what their size or business activity) should now take this very seriously:
1. First and foremost the use of full e-billing (and not just going to the half-way step of sending out an invoice by email attachment) can save a huge amount of money for an organisation (and for its consumers too). Research suggests that an average cost of sending each bill (and getting it paid) is as much as £15.00. E-billing can reduce this by as much as 65%, or to as little as £5.00 per bill-that can be a lot of money saved if you are sending out hundreds or thousands of bills each year.
2. It is much more convenient, fast, and easy to bill or invoice people on-line. There’s far less preparation time for a bill or statement to be sent or to arrive in the physical mail and any bill recipient can view his or her bill from the comfort of their home (or indeed from any location worldwide).
3. Even more beneficial is that an e-bill is accessible by customers 24/7 (and 365 days of the year) and thereby allows bill recipients to log on any time of the day or night to view the account and pay online.
4. With an e-bill (or what is perhaps better described as a full “digital” bill) there is often a multitude of immediate ways to pay or settle the bill while on-line. This means that with just a few clicks a bill can be paid by credit, debit, cash or other options, with no need for the recipient to have to write out cheques, post off a payment or have to go to an approved outlet (like a post office) to make a payment in person.
5. Research consistently suggests that customers pay e-bills 20-25% quicker than those sent by physical mail (thus helping to improve overall cash-flow).
6. An e-bill is very flexible in terms of storage and retrieval (saving data for longer and much more cost effectively). Sending organisations and recipients can save all bills/invoices on a good system (such as at www.payswyft.com). This means that all sorts of subsequent analysis can then be carried out. For the consumer this may be patterns of consumption or spending on different bills, and for an organisation it may be patterns of payment methods or relative time taken to open and pay a bill, for example.
7. Because e-bills are stored on-line as digital records, the data can easily be uploaded and downloaded as desired. This makes for easy transfer to and from spreadsheets and accounting systems. Perhaps more critically, this makes reconciliation considerably easier (cutting the need for expensive manual processes by a much as 80% and driving a large part of the savings in point 1).
8. Last but not least, E-billing allows the electronic bill recipient to reduce paper usage, which is naturally much friendlier to the environment.
Every one of the above ultimately can potentially create a much more user-friendly process to send a bill and get it paid for both the organisation and its customers. For this reason, e-billing should now be a key strategy for every business.
Sunday 26 December 2010
Wednesday 1 December 2010
How do you get customers to adopt/accept e-billing/digital billing?
A large-scale recent survey by the international ecommerce/payments research firm Forrester reports that over 70% of consumers are prepared to replace their paper bills with an on-line solution. However, customers will not take the initiative to do this and instead expect merchants to guide them on the process and show them how this will benefit them. If they do this well, the prize is that the merchant may even be able to turn off paper invoices or statements completely (and save a significant amount of money in doing so-often as much as 2-3% of revenue can be the result). So how does any merchant set about influencing their customers to adopt digital billing? Let’s look at the 5 main actions that seem to have the greatest impact:
1. Strongly market the message
When a good digital solution (such as www.Payswyft.com for instance) has been added to existing more traditional payment channels (a process which typically takes only a few hours to do) the next step is to tell customers that they can view their bills on-line and that they should go to the relevant web site to see how simple this can be for them. However, telling customers once will not be enough. Customer need to be given the message multiple times and in a variety of ways. This could include sending out a “prompting” notice on physical invoices, sending an email, a special e-newsletter, a flyer etc. It could even include putting a special message on your merchant web site or describing the new digital billing system verbally when customers are on hold when calling in by phone. With a variety of communication channels and frequent messages, customers will start to try out what you have to offer.
2. Make it easy and user-friendly
Any digital billing solution need to be easy to use and avoid confusing a customer. This usually means that the process of finding the site, logging in (or being able to pay instantly), viewing a bill and paying needs to be simple in design. It also requires the steps involved to be user-friendly (involving clear screen pages, minimum fields to fill in and as few clicks between screens as possible). The more customers come to realise that the experience is relatively straight-forward, the more comfortable they become.
3. Stress the convenience and time saving benefits
Although it may seem obvious, the convenience of using a digital billing solution needs particular emphasis. This means communicating particular benefits like it being a free and safe/secure service or one which can be done in the convenience of the home, for example. In addition, potential time and hassle avoided can be stressed by pointing out that digital bills can be dealt with quickly and the records saved in the system for later tracking or reference as needed. In a well-designed digital billing system the benefits of email/SMS alerts or reminders can also be very attractive to many customers as can the availability of many different kinds of payment options.
4. Emphasise “green” benefits.
Almost all consumers now appreciate the benefits of being more environmentally friendly, and digital billing is a great way to be “greener” (saving not only paper bills and envelopes but the added carbon-footprint of having to physically deliver them and dispose of the paper ultimately in landfill). This will only happen when the customer agrees to turn off paper billing completely but they will be happy to do this once they gain confidence in the process and start to experience the benefits described above.
5. Offer incentives.
In the early stages, your “pioneer” and “early adopter” customers may have experimented with digital billing and even adopted it quite happily. However, this may be only 10-15% of your customer population and you therefore now need to get the wider majority to try it. Incentives are the best way to make this happen and this can take a range of forms. These can include incentives such as money off a bill, particularly designed or special merchandise or offering spendable credits/points, for example. However, don’t forget, it can also include disincentives such as proposing a date after which consumers will need to pay extra for a paper bill to be sent in the post.
Summary
Electronic or digital billing can represent a cheaper, greener and more convenient way to handle bills for consumers and create significant cost-reduction and administrative benefits (time and resources) for merchants-a true “win/win” situation. However, getting as many consumers as possible to transition to e-bills needs careful planning and as many of the above actions to be adopted as possible in order to get consumers to become aware of the possibilities, pilot the approach and finally adopt the process.
1. Strongly market the message
When a good digital solution (such as www.Payswyft.com for instance) has been added to existing more traditional payment channels (a process which typically takes only a few hours to do) the next step is to tell customers that they can view their bills on-line and that they should go to the relevant web site to see how simple this can be for them. However, telling customers once will not be enough. Customer need to be given the message multiple times and in a variety of ways. This could include sending out a “prompting” notice on physical invoices, sending an email, a special e-newsletter, a flyer etc. It could even include putting a special message on your merchant web site or describing the new digital billing system verbally when customers are on hold when calling in by phone. With a variety of communication channels and frequent messages, customers will start to try out what you have to offer.
2. Make it easy and user-friendly
Any digital billing solution need to be easy to use and avoid confusing a customer. This usually means that the process of finding the site, logging in (or being able to pay instantly), viewing a bill and paying needs to be simple in design. It also requires the steps involved to be user-friendly (involving clear screen pages, minimum fields to fill in and as few clicks between screens as possible). The more customers come to realise that the experience is relatively straight-forward, the more comfortable they become.
3. Stress the convenience and time saving benefits
Although it may seem obvious, the convenience of using a digital billing solution needs particular emphasis. This means communicating particular benefits like it being a free and safe/secure service or one which can be done in the convenience of the home, for example. In addition, potential time and hassle avoided can be stressed by pointing out that digital bills can be dealt with quickly and the records saved in the system for later tracking or reference as needed. In a well-designed digital billing system the benefits of email/SMS alerts or reminders can also be very attractive to many customers as can the availability of many different kinds of payment options.
4. Emphasise “green” benefits.
Almost all consumers now appreciate the benefits of being more environmentally friendly, and digital billing is a great way to be “greener” (saving not only paper bills and envelopes but the added carbon-footprint of having to physically deliver them and dispose of the paper ultimately in landfill). This will only happen when the customer agrees to turn off paper billing completely but they will be happy to do this once they gain confidence in the process and start to experience the benefits described above.
5. Offer incentives.
In the early stages, your “pioneer” and “early adopter” customers may have experimented with digital billing and even adopted it quite happily. However, this may be only 10-15% of your customer population and you therefore now need to get the wider majority to try it. Incentives are the best way to make this happen and this can take a range of forms. These can include incentives such as money off a bill, particularly designed or special merchandise or offering spendable credits/points, for example. However, don’t forget, it can also include disincentives such as proposing a date after which consumers will need to pay extra for a paper bill to be sent in the post.
Summary
Electronic or digital billing can represent a cheaper, greener and more convenient way to handle bills for consumers and create significant cost-reduction and administrative benefits (time and resources) for merchants-a true “win/win” situation. However, getting as many consumers as possible to transition to e-bills needs careful planning and as many of the above actions to be adopted as possible in order to get consumers to become aware of the possibilities, pilot the approach and finally adopt the process.
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