Billing & Payment Options: Driving Customers Paperless

Billing & Payment Options: Driving Customers Paperless
In the past 5 to 10 years, billing and bill payment options have grown tremendously. The emergence of the internet and the extent to which it has infiltrated our everyday lives has been the greatest contributing factor to this change. The world of bill presentment has gone from paper bills delivered via snail mail to email, mobile phone and website/portal delivery. Along with billing, payment options have grown as well. Gone are the days of paying in person or my mail via check or money order. Now, most transactions are done online via check, debit or credit card or electronic funds transfer. In just these last 5 to 10 years, these changes in billing and payment options have changed the way both businesses and individuals handle their bills.
While there has been a tremendous amount of resistance to this change in billing and bill payment, most consumers are now beginning to open their minds to the options. The benefits of online bill payment are now widely understood by consumers. According to a recent study conducted by the Marketing Workshop and Harris Interactive, four out of five households with internet access now use online banking services. And according to Forrester Research, the total number of U.S. online bill payment households will increase from 48 million to 63 million over the next 5 years. It seems that consumer adoption is becoming the real driving force in pushing companies to adopt Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) programs. Historically, many businesses have dragged their feet at the idea, but with customers pushing for increased efficiency and ease of bill payment, those companies had no other option.

The mobile banking services market is quickly becoming the next step in eBilling. It is expected to grow 10 times by 2011. Most of this growth is anticipated to take place in China, India and Western Europe, but there is still some expected growth in the US market. Therefore, many companies are arming themselves with the mobile bill payment tools they need to service their international customers in the short-run and their US customers as they slowly move toward mobile banking.

EBPP - Slow Going

Recently, The Ascent Group conducted research into billing and payment practices. They found that most companies are adopting some form of EBPP functionality. However adoption is the real problem. An average of 5.8% adoption rate for eBilling (of total bills issued) and 6.9% adoption rate for epayment (of total payments received). While transaction volume is still quite low, the number of businesses paying through the internet has doubled since 2004.

Studies show that most customers still prefer to pay their bills with paper check via the US Postal Service. This includes both business customers and individual consumers. And many still prefer to pay face to face. For many businesses, this research would be just the evidence they need to stick with their current paper billing system. But, this is not a very forward-thinking approach. For businesses that are looking to the future, adding an eBilling system is an obvious choice.

Three Questions Every Utility Company Should Ask Themselves

1. How can I use my billing process to promote my customer relationship? By providing a reliable bill delivery and payment solution that is secure and provides functionality that enhances the customer’s bill payment experience, a utility company can improve customer loyalty and their brand in the marketplace. In a survey conducted by Fiserv in 2008, 27 percent of online billing consumers reported an improved relationship with their utility company due to the online billing experience, and 30% said that it decreased their likelihood to change providers.

Studies show that nearly 50% of customer service inquiries are related to billing and payment. The customer’s ability to drill down into their bill with the click of a button and to receive automatic bill analysis reports gives the customer the control at their fingertips to answer their billing questions without having to contact customer service. This provides the customer with a more user-friendly billing option, while providing the billing company with a cost savings opportunity in their customer service operational expense.

2. How can I provide my customers with billing options while maintaining control of my billing systems? Since billing is really not the number one concern for most utility companies, it is important that any billing software be easy for the utility company as well as for the end user. The main priority will be to find a good balance by providing their customers with top-notch payment options without having to surrender control over their payment system, without having to sacrifice the ease of their bill processing by partnering with a provider that they can trust to handle all of the details of their billing and payment system for them.

3. What channels do I need to support to provide the best online payment options for my customers? Customers want options. And it is no different will bill payment. Customers want to have options as to how they can pay their bill so they can choose the option that best fits their needs. Understanding your customers and their processes would be the best way to know what options to provide. But, without that information, the best thing to do is to provide several different options. Some examples include online bill payment, mobile phone bill payment, traditional walk-in and US mail bill payment, etc. Your customers will appreciate the options and are more likely to pay their bills efficiently if they are given the option that works best for their business.

Utility companies will benefit from adding an eBilling system because their customer loyalty will increase due to the increase in options provided to them in paying their bill. While many utility companies are concerned with their ability to provide a robust eBilling solution while still maintaining their internal billing efficiency, the best way to achieve a win-win for everyone is to partner with a trusted provider who can maintain their eBilling system for the utility company. This will allow the utility company to provide options to their customers without sacrificing any operational efficiency.

Optimizing Billing and Payment to Deepen Customer Relationships

Most utility companies are finding that the end consumer wants options as to how they will pay their bill. They want more convenient options that give them more control and the ability to choose how they want to pay their bills. Most consumers have increased their usage of online bill payment and this has created an opportunity for utility companies to capitalize on this changing customer behavior. The utility companies that adopt an eBilling philosophy will be able to increase cash flows due to more efficient bill payment and reduce costs as paper consumption will drop tremendously.

Companies can use the opportunity that online bill payment presents to communicate with their customers. Every time a customer visits their website, they can promote their online bill payment program. Every time an eBill is sent to a customer, a promotion or new service can be easily communicated with little to no expense to the utility company. eBilling can help the company to strengthen their brand recognition while providing them with a readily available avenue to advertise products and services.

Using a Telemanagement System to get the Most From Your Telephone System

Now that you have verified that the system is working properly, you will want to verify your internal telephone usage. You probably think this is silly – you already know your usage. Well, you might be surprised. Many businesses find that they have an abundance of unused seats throughout their organization. Most businesses are able to save quite a bit by removing these unused seats from their current spend. This cost savings can be fairly significant even in the short term as this cost savings encompasses the service for the seat itself, the phone hardware, and potentially server space. You don’t want to pass up this significant cost savings opportunity.

Since you now have a handle on the quality of your VoIP service as well as your seat usage, you will now want to be sure to manage how your phone system is being used. A countless number of schools, corporations, government offices, financial institutions, insurance companies, etc. have found and addressed employee misuse of phone systems. By integrating a call management system into your day-to-day phone management, you are able to identify call patterns that are out of the ordinary. You might find extensions placing excessive long distance calls or you might find extensions that are dialing 900 numbers on the company’s dime. By eliminating this activity, businesses have really been able to reap the financial rewards.

By properly managing your VoIP phone system, you will see immediate cost savings, both operationally and on your monthly phone bill. It is important to be thorough. Be sure to monitor quality of service, seat usage, and actual extension activity to have a complete picture of your telephony activity. By properly managing all of these components with a call management system, you will save your company both time and money in the short run and in the long run.

Managing Your VoIP Telephone System

There are many factors involved with managing a VoIP telephone system. You must verify that the system is working properly. You must verify seat usage and need. And finally, you must monitor ongoing activity to verify that the system is used properly to identify potential areas for improvement.

Since VoIP systems have emerged onto the market, there have been concerns regarding the quality of their service. Dropped calls and shaky connections seemed to be a mainstay in the early days of VoIP technology. While the technology has improved since then, there is still the potential for connection issues and it is best for a service provider to have a handle on these issues before they receive a complaint from their customers. Equally, it is important for the customer to be alerted when a problem arises so that there is no interruption in service and therefore no interruption in output.

Luckily, there is software on the market known as VoIP Quality Management Software that is designed specifically to fit this need. It monitors the call activity on your VoIP system and reports back any issues or errors in service. This software can prevent a minor connectivity issue from becoming a much more serious situation. This software is often times deployed in conjunction with a telemanagement system.

Push vs. Pull Billing Strategy

Businesses need to understand that customers are looking to them to make their online experience easier. It is up to the business providing the eBilling to provide the most user-friendly and beneficial eBilling software available. Rather than simply offering a place to pay your bills, many companies are turning to eBilling software that pushes your billing information out to you on a monthly basis rather than pulling you into their website. Equally, many businesses are turning to eBilling solutions that provide analysis tools that will push graphic representations of specific areas of your bill that you believe need further analysis. This takes even more of the responsibility off of the customer by providing them with the bill analysis that, historically, would have been done in-house.

It is pretty much a no-brainer these days that eBilling needs to be integrated in any business’s billing platform. But, the key to driving adoption and really seeing the benefits of eBilling is to provide your customers with an eBilling solution that makes their lives easier. By providing emailed bills and analytics software to each of your customers, you make their eBilling experience better and encourage wide-spread adoption.

eBilling Benefits Cannot be Ignored in This Rocky Economic Climate

With the emergence of the internet, the means of communication has changed drastically. People no longer want to fuss with snail mail and sifting through paper. Instead, most people get their day-to-day information on the internet. So, isn’t it just logical that they would handle their accounting and banking there too?

eBilling has some very tangible benefits that cannot be ignored in this rocky economic climate.

* Cuts print and postage costs by up to 85 percent

* Improves cash flow

* Boosts brand

* Enhances the customer experience

* Preserves the environment

Historically, eBilling consisted of making bills available to customers on the billing company’s website and allowing the customer to make a payment via the website. This requires quite a bit of effort on the part of the customer to go to the billing company’s website and navigate through their system. Equally, they have to find a way to remember to go to the website before the bill is due. This puts all of the ownership on the customer to make this eBilling system work, rather than making their billing experience easier.

Increasing eBilling End User Adoption

Today’s economic climate demands that all businesses reduce their costs at every opportunity to stay in business. In that vein, most companies are reviewing their billing process to see where improvements can be made. Therefore, we see the death of the paper bill looming on the horizon. And operators that provide this paper billing service are likely to begin seeing a significant drop in their market share unless they jump on board too.

What is difficult to understand is why eBilling has not taken off better in the past. eBilling has historically had issues with adoption and we don’t really know why. Some companies struggle to get 20% percent adoption in 5 years while others achieve 30% adoption in 5 months. So, what’s the difference in the adoption strategy of these two companies?

Most businesses find it crucial to communicate as regularly as possible with their customers. And traditionally, the paper bill has been an avenue for that communication. They can announce special offers, changes in service, new services available, etc. simply by placing the information in the bill. The company knows that the customer will most certainly be reading this piece of mail. So, many companies were initially concerned about how to continue to communicate effectively with their customer base with this new eBilling system. If the billing company is leery about the eBilling service, then customers will most certainly be leery too. In fact, the billing company is far less likely to push their customers into switching to the new eBilling system if the billing company itself is not 100% behind the effort.

How Call Accounting Systems Work

Call accounting systems collect data from a key system, PBX, iPBX, or VoIP gateway. They pull the call detail records (CDRs) from one of the telephone systems listed above and send those call records to the telemanagement software to create reports and analysis of these records. The records can be pulled on all or selective extensions depending on the needs of the end customer. Costs and possibly revenue can be attached to the call activity that is reported, making accounting for telemanagement usage much more efficient.

Call accounting solutions are able to take the call records provided by the customer’s phone system and manage those records for the customer. Customers no longer have to sift through paper records to identify activity and cost allocation. That is done automatically with a call accounting solution making telecommunications cost management and fraud management much easier and more efficient for the end customer.

Centrally Hosted Call Accounting

Most companies are looking to manage their telecommunications above and beyond any one PBX or communications server. By managing telecommunications at an enterprise level, companies are able to see a much faster return on investment due to the sheer volume of interactions and are able to adhere to one uniform process over all locations. Equally, most PBXs today are able to manage multiple points of presence across an enterprise and are not necessarily as restrictive as they once were. Many companies find the use of a centrally hosted enterprise call accounting solution the most effective for the management of their resources, whereas the traditional stand-alone, geographically limited systems far less effective.

This is where application service providers come into play. With the ability to provide both stand alone and centrally hosted call accounting solutions, most Application Service Providers (ASPs) are able to fit the specific needs of their customers. Application service providers are also often times equipped with other software solutions like call recording and ACD reporting that can be quite effective when used in conjunction with a call accounting solution.

Integrated Call Accounting and Management Solutions

The most recent news in call accounting is the addition of telemanagement services. Call accounting data or call detail records are often times just presented as raw data and are not nearly as effective as when they are analyzed and evaluated by a telemanagement service. Most call accounting solutions on the market today come equipped with a telemanagement service to make it easier to evaluate the data you pulled with the call accounting software.

By converging voice and data, many call accounting systems are able to provide a wide variety of services and options from billing to provisioning and accounting for broadband services. Much like traditional call accounting systems, these systems can be centralized or distributed. The ability to monitor internet and voice activities in one location makes for efficient management of telecommunications in an organization. Most companies are looking for one solution to cover all of their needs and call accounting systems often times provide that “one stop shop” for customers.

Benefits of eBilling to your customer

1. Improves Customer Service: By having access to your customers via email, you are able to provide them with other bits of information about your company and their offerings. This provides your customers with the most up-to-date information on your services and specials. Equally, customers are able to review their bill quickly and easily with the analysis already done for them. At a glance, they can review departmental allocations and identify areas for concern. Many of the questions that are so prevalent in reviewing a bill can be alleviated with the detailed drill down functions of eBilling. You can easily drill into the details of your bill without having to sift through hundreds of pages of call logs.

2. Improves organization of past bills: Rather than having to go the cellar to review file cabinet after file cabinet of past bills, bills can be organized electronically for easy retrieval in the future when needed.

3. Decreases Carbon Footprint: eBilling software allows the billing company and the customer alike to become more responsible for the health of the environment. By eliminating the paper on which the bill is printed and the checks with which the bill is paid as well as eliminating the transportation necessary to move the paper bills and checks from place to place, both the billing company and the customer company are able to help in the fight against global warming.
Provide your customers with the advantages of eBilling today!

How eBilling can save the billing company money

The internet has given us the freedom to conduct business almost exclusively in “the cloud.” We are now communicating almost exclusively via online interactions and yet much of our billing is still done via fax machines and snail mail. With the advances in security and analysis technology, any company that is not utilizing the efficiency and ease of eBilling is missing an opportunity to improve efficiency and accuracy in their billing practices.

1. Saves money on invoicing expense: Historically, businesses have received bills and statements via fax and snail mail. To verify that the invoice was received, the billing company would have to place a follow up call or email to verify delivery. This process is far from efficient and leaves much room for improvement. With eBilling, the bill can be automatically delivered to one or many email boxes. The bill can now come with ready-made departmental allocation and statistical analysis. This not only increases the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of the bill, but also allows the provider to provide more thorough information about the bill – taking that responsibility off of the end customer. While most companies break even in their first year of implementing an eBilling system, it provides significant return on investment in subsequent years.

2. Receive Payments Quicker: From the time a bill is printed, it has to go through so many processes to get to the recipient. It has to be printed, folded, stuffed in an envelope, stamped, taken to the post office, put on a truck to go to the destination city, unloaded from that truck and put on another truck for delivery. This process can all be alleviated with an eBilling system. The bill is automatically sent via email and received immediately. The lag-time experienced in the traditional delivery system is a thing of the past. Statistically speaking, people pay their bills more quickly when they come via email. It is so easy to just click on the link and hit pay, that most people will just handle it immediately. Whereas, with the traditional billing method, the bill might sit on someone’s desk for weeks before that bill is actually paid – and the check sent back through the same logistical maze that the bill went through in getting to the customer.

Unified Communications to the Enterprise

UC could potentially be a game changer. This technology could change the way employees communicate with each other and the way enterprises interact with their customers. However, a lot of work needs to be done before we are to that point. UC vendors need to better communicate the potential value to the enterprise. Since the possibilities are endless, it is important that UC vendors provide as many possible scenarios to their enterprise customers because not all of the potential applications for UC will work for each enterprise customer. The uses will be unique to the business itself and every enterprise customer different. Cisco Call Management and Cisco Unified Communications Manager are among the leading UC offerings in the industry.

The Benefits of Unified Communications

The primary benefit of Unified Communicaitons (UC) is identifying presence which can speed up many kinds of business processes. So, for example, instead of leaving phone messages and playing phone tag with a business associate, employees can look at the presence status of the person that they are trying to reach and if that person is available, they can instant message for an immediate conversation. If that associate is not available, they can contact someone else for help. If this Unified Communications platform included a call accounting system, the associate might be able to immediately tell who is and who is not available. This certainly increases efficiency as employees are spending far less time trying to get a hold of one another and, even more importantly, questions can be answered quickly so that decisions and actions can be taken immediately, rather than delaying until a return phone call is received. This allows business to resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

From the contact center perspective, UC empowers agents to locate experts to resolve customer issues that are beyond their scope. This allows contact centers to increase their first call resolution rates and reduce operating expenses by efficiently answering customer inquiries with one quick transfer. While this immediate access benefits the call center and customer service departments, the engineering and application development departments might not be so keen on being at the call center’s beck and call. And this is a legitimate argument. How would developers and engineers have time to do their jobs if they are constantly being interrupted to handle call center inquiries? And given that the time of the engineer or developer is worth so much more than that of the call center agent, it is difficult to reconcile the interruption. For this reason, there has been some lag in the pick up of UC in many business applications, but the potential is there and once the operational kinks are worked out of the chain, UC is likely to become a mainstay in many businesses.

The World Welcomes Unified Communications

The internet has become such an integral part of our every days, both at work at home. However, there are applications that still need some work. The internet’s ever-growing and ever-changing technologies seem to be making our lives easier every day, but there is still some room for improvement.

Unified Communications (UC) is a term that describes the combination of applications and technologies to provide on “unified” portfolio to customers. UC has been heralded as the next wave of change to internet applications, such as call recording and call accounting. For one supplier to provide on package of applications that are integrated with one platform and that work together to provide the most robust application set yet. The concept is that of a “one stop shop.” The applications available in UC provide real-time and non-real-time communications services. The services available with UC packaging include, but are not limited to: Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, presence, call control, speech control, instant messaging (IM)/chat, conferencing (voice and video), voicemail, email, SMS and fax.

System Benefits to Owning a Call Management System

Network Optimization
Many companies have been able to reduce their telecommunications expenditures significantly by simply being able to identify underutilized areas of their voice and data networks. Call management systems can be used to monitor network activity and bandwidth and identify trunk usage issues to highlight areas for cost reduction. If a trunk is not being used, why pay for it? Call accounting can help companies more efficiently allocate telecommunications resources and better plan their network changes.

Security
Call management applications enable companies to shield themselves from the wide variety of internal and external security threats out there. By monitoring for intrusions and undo telecom activities, companies are able to monitor for network attacks, thereby making the company and its systems far more secure and far less vulnerable to threats.
Essentially, call management systems provide companies with the tools to provide a safe, highly efficient, cost-effective telecommunications system for the day-to-day operations of their business.