Payment & Collection Newsletter

Smartphone Market Now Bigger Than Personal Computers
Smartphones sales have now surpassed sales of personal computers, but are companies keeping up with their customers? 101 million smartphones were shipped worldwide in Q4 2010 compared to only 92 million personal computers. Sales of smartphones grew 87% over the prior year, while sales of personal computers only grew 3%. The consumer shift to increasingly using their mobile phone to live their lives: manage their calendar, look up directions and pay their bills has huge implications for customer satisfaction. When companies think about what their customer experience is like on their website, they must think about the experience when accessed from an Android, iPhone and personal computer.
Source: Financial Times, February 8, 2011

Quality Through Automation & Self-Service
Florida Power & Light has focused on automating customer interactions and providing self-service capabilities to raise their quality. Their investments in automation and self-service have been recognized by Fortune Magazine naming them the most admired utility and receiving the Service One^TM Award for top-rated customer service for 6 years in a row. Florida Power & Light recognized that different segments of customers have different preferences and has provided multiple self-service options to satisfy their customers. Customers can receive their bill through the Florida Power & Light website, through email or through their bank's online banking site. Email billing has delivered significant cost savings with 25% of customers stopping their paper bill in favor of an email bill. They have carried their pursuit of quality through self-service to the payment process as well. Customers can pay their bill through authorized pay stations, IVR, their website, bank websites, auto-debit and they are in the process of launching an iPhone application. This has lead Florida Power & Light to achieving an electronic payment rate almost twice the industry average.
Source: CS Week Conference Presentation, May 24, 2011

Automated Outbound IVR Delivers Cost Savings
United Water cut their cost of collections by 80% with an outbound interactive voice response (IVR) system. United Water was faced with the issue of how to collect from customers who were late in making their payment, but didn't owe enough to justify sending someone to their home to disconnect their water service. When they compared a mail reminder notice costing $1.28 to an automated outbound IVR system costing $0.22 per call the choice became obvious. United Water sent 450,000 automated calls and received almost 80,000 payments through the IVR system. They targeted $85 million in debt and collected over 17% of the debt in just one week.
Source: CS Week Conference Presentation, May 25, 2011

Gen Y Differences Will Transform Payments
Members of Generation Y (born between 1979 and 1999) grew up in a fast moving mobile world that gives them very different payment preferences than other generations. Companies must adjust to ensure that they can collect payments from Generation Y. Growing up in a world where news has always been real-time and their phone has always been in their pocket, members of Generation Y are predisposed to making payments differently than generations that have adopted real-time and mobile technologies later in life. Primary research conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research identified the key experiences that will be necessary for serving tomorrow's customers. They have found that companies should work towards creating payment experiences that are: always-on, real-time, transparent, customer-controlled, integrated, safe and goal-fulfilling. Mobile bill pay is a great example. Mobile bill pay allows customers to be alerted they owe a payment, view their amount due and quickly pay their bill no matter where they're located without having to worry about security.
Source: Javelin Strategy & Research, May 24, 2011

Raise Customer Satisfaction by Electronifying Payments
Customers expect payments initiated electronically to be received quickly and can become dissatisfied due to delays. Yet last year more than 150 million bill payments that were initiated through online banking were mailed through the postal service because the recipient and the online bill pay vendor had not worked together to establish an electronic connection. The story of one rental company shows how these paper payments can upset customers. One rental company recently took steps to evict a tenant for non-payment. The customer had initiated their bill payment through online banking, but the rental company had no record of being paid. After a conversation with all of the parties involved the rental company found the paper check payment in a pile of mail. In this case, the rental company could have increased customer satisfaction by signing up to receive online banking payments electronically. Many providers offer this service, for optimal customer service; look for a provider that can deliver payments from all online banking providers in a single file.
Source: USA Today, June 17, 2011