Taking the First Steps to Getting Customers to Use a New Online Billing Solution

Once a payment strategy has been developed by a merchant and the costs as a proportion of sales calculated carefully the move to a more electronic or digital system for presenting invoices and collecting payments can be planned and executed. 

But merely introducing a new web-based bill presentment and payment service (in any fashion) does not mean that customers will necessarily use it and we therefore need to plan to create reasonable levels of early adoption and conversion to the new online solution over time (so that it eventually becomes the dominant way to view and pay invoices and allow a merchant to realize the full benefits of this). In this booklet we will therefore describe some ways in which this can be done.

Initially Informing All Customers
Once an online billing and payment system is available, the very first step that a merchant needs to take is to inform the customer base that this new “channel” is available to use. Many merchants avoid doing this and expect their customers to almost “stumble across” the option or in some cases, inform customers only once at the outset and then fail to remind customers about the option again in any way. This may be fine for many of the “pioneers” and “early adopters” in the customer base but others will need greater “pushing” and more than one time, of course.

Segmenting the Customer Base

Although the same initial general message about the new online billing and payment system can be sent to all customers (and pretty much in the same language) some later messages may need to be tailored to particular parts of the customer base. For this reason, another important step in getting customers to use the new service at the earliest stages is to analyze and then segment customers so that specific messages to them may then be crafted.

This segmentation may occur in several ways but some examples are indicated in the table below with comments on what could then be crafted as a result, shown on the right hand side:

Segmentation	Specific communication messages
By age (if the data is available)	Although it is always something of a generalization, younger people are usually quicker to adopt internet technology and may like access to a billing and payment system via not only a computer but using tablets and mobile phones. And older customers may appreciate that a service support person will help them to walk through how to view their bill and make an online payment once, twice or even three times, if needed.
By the average length of time it takes the customer to pay	A customer who pays a bill quickly may be attracted to new system features such as bill scheduling or recurrent payment set up (set and forget). Alternatively, a customer who pays slowly or even late may appreciate that they can set up calendar alerts to make payments or even set up their own email alerts as wanted.
By the way they choose to pay their bill (by check, cash, credit card, debit card or ACH, if available)	Some customers like to pay by check, some by cash, some via ACH or direct deposit and some by card. Depending on the electronic solution, a merchant may be able to offer new payment methods (credit cards or ACH for example). The new payment methods are likely to help accelerate cash flow or even bring new customers to the table, in some cases.