The continuous flow and multiple deliveries of transactional, regulatory and marketing messages to your customers can put a strain on your budget and possibly your customer satisfaction levels. Using monthly statements to deliver important notices about their accounts, changes in their services, new product releases and improvements lets you brings multiple departments into a single communication channel.
The likelihood of a customer reading through the mass pile of direct mail marketing material that reaches his or her mailbox everyday is growing slimmer and slimmer. However, those same customers only receive a handful of transactional mailings each month. Those documents are prime real estate for not only a marketing message, but a directed and personal message to each particular customer.
HARRINGTON PARK, N.J.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–United Water officials announced the launch of a sweepstakes campaign designed to encourage enrollment in its award-winning paperless eBilling program that will offer a grand prize of $2,500 and four daily prizes of $50 during the next 12 weeks. The “Go Green. Win Green.” program is open to residents and businesses in United Water’s service territory who visit the company’s website at www.unitedwater.com/ebillingprize. In order to play, participants must match a “decoder” in their bill to reveal a “win” or “no win” message found on the website.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a technology that automates interactions with telephone callers and can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple menu choices. On average, when IVR is used, there is 80% more dollars collected per dollar spent. When analyzing the middle and lower class and elderly markets, not all customers have access to a computer, but most do have access to a phone. Additional research shows that over 80% of prepaid mobile phone customers use their phone as their primary method of accessing account information and making payments.
In preparing statements for customers, getting the actual bill printed or prepared and delivered to the customer for payment is only the first step in the process. Getting that customer to remit payment in a timely manner is the real challenge. With the creation of Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment, or EBPP, most companies have been able to expedite remittances from those customers who subscribe to those services.
But what about those customers who don’t take advantage of the EBPP platforms? And what about those who don’t even have a computer and still rely on traditional paper bills?
Something as simple as an effective bill design can influence those customers’ payment behavior patterns.
Created Dec. 15, 2004 when Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and JCB aligned their security processes into one industry standard, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) council requires strict compliance in its security standards to protect consumer card information. With four levels of compliance based on the dollar amount of transaction processed, every company that processes, stores or transmits cardholder data is required to be scanned quarterly.
The process of expediting remittances from customers into your bank account has been made significantly easier with the implementation of lockbox services. Not only do lockbox services get customer payments into your account faster, some companies utilize image based platforms allowing for more efficient handling of customer accounts.
From innovation to inspiration, the country’s top business professionals and professors shared with Business Week their current recommendations in both business and personal reads.
Even in today’s economy, business can thrive in America. Entrepreneur Magazine has just released its 10+ top trends in today’s economy. From pets to plants, Americans have found ways to stay afloat and make the most of the current situation.
Long gone are the days when outsourcing was just about saving money. In these economic times, it is also a source of restructuring to allow for better management of a limited workforce and a way to leave tasks not within a company’s area of expertise up to those who are.