Optimizing customer reach through better billing

Pop quiz. What do service providers consider to be their most important channel for reaching their customers? Think about it for a minute. To the few of you who said monthly bill, well done. And for the rest of you who are scratching your head now, here’s why. Monthly bills give service providers 12 opportunities a year to make a good impression on their customers and communicate value as well as information about new products and services. Maybe even recommendations for different plans that can help customers either increase their level of service, or find a plan that makes more sense for them based on their usage.

 

Despite the value of bills as a communication and marketing channel, service providers have been trying for years to move customers away from expensive and environmentally unfriendly paper bills, and shift them to electronic bills. For the most part, this move has been met with resistance from customers. While some service providers have successfully moved half their customer base to paperless bills, the overwhelming majority have only moved 10%-30% of their customers to e-bills. And the reasons for that are stunningly simple. First, electronic bills make it more complicated for customers, who must then remember user names and passwords to pay their bill. Second, customers don’t trust that the information they see online is accurate, as many have seen first-hand how different channels contain different information.

 

The result is painful for service providers and customers alike. Service providers are spending a lot of money producing and mailing paper bills, while consumers, who want consistent interactions and convenience of self service, are not satisfied with e-bills.

 

With that in mind, we’ve developed Amdocs’ new Omni-Channel Billing Experience, which includes interactive email bill capabilities. Essentially, it’s an HTML file conveniently sent to your customers’ inbox every month. It allows service providers to stay in front of customers the same 12 times per year but with added interactivity. It allows those customers to inspect their bill, upgrade services, and look at their payment history with their provider and critically, pay their bill.

 

When combined with our omni-channel approach, it gives the customers a consistent and simplified billing experience across all channels, eradicating trust issues with the assurance that the same bill is reflected regardless of the channel. Addressing the concerns of both the service providers and the customers, the Amdocs’ Omni-Channel Billing Experience optimizes billing processes marking the conclusion to this digital plight.