How Can We Convert More Customers to Paperless Billing?
Ask anyone on the street, and they’ll probably tell you that using electronic, or paperless, billing and statements is a good thing. When introduced more than a decade ago, paperless billing was touted as an environmental savior.
More than an estimated 500 billion bills are sent annually and the rate is increasing by 2-3 percent a year, according to research group Billentis, so the problem is only going to get worse. Overall, companies need to provide more options across the company to deliver a better digital experience across all the communications they send to customers—not just bills or statements, as according to the Billentis report, companies send more than five to 15 times the volume of “invoice-like documents and messages” than they do actual bills. These options also need to include the expansion of secure electronic document delivery so that customers can easily receive their sensitive documents encrypted from the company directly from their inbox.
Clearly, there’s a disconnect between senders and recipients. If the solution is not to make it easier for customers to sign up to go paperless (as only 10 percent cited this as a reason), what will cause significant uptake in paperless billing that puts companies on the same page with their customers?
