4 Ways to Help Transform Your Billing Experience
What goes into delivering a great billing experience ? Depends on whom you ask.
Someone in a technical role might say functionality like payment processing and invoice generation. A marketer might say engaging copy, graphics and layout.
A great billing experience includes all these things, and more. It’s both a science and an art, combining technical competency with creativity to turn a transactional process into a great customer experience. It should be frictionless. But how can you make sure your entire bill-to-pay journey is designed with good CX in mind, especially since 69% of customer service and support journeys span multiple channels?
With the right processes in place, brands can deliver personalized interactions in key moments of the billing experience across multiple channels. This is key for capturing customers’ attention amid all the bill-related communications they already receive and for getting them to act—which for your business means quicker time to payment, fewer cashflow disruptions and ultimately stronger brand loyalty.
Connect Your Data Sources
When companies collect data from their customers, they often do it on a channel-by-channel basis. This creates data silos—and a disconnect between the information that the customer is giving them and the experience that the customer receives.
If you’re a communications service provider, you likely send customers notifications when they’re behind on payments for their internet service. But if you have a customer who’s on a repayment plan for an offering you bill separately—say, their phone service from a different part of your business - sending them these notifications can seem invasive because you don’t understand the customer’s context. This is how billing communications can frustrate customers in sensitive situations when your data is siloed, and the right hand (internet) doesn’t know what the left hand (phone) is doing.
You may think that you need a complex system to reconcile all your customer data and messaging campaigns, or overhaul your data infrastructure, but the answer is much simpler.
You can use a solution to connect all your siloed billing and customer behavioral data where it currently sits. This helps you understand the full context of the customer’s situation without the gaps caused by the missing or siloed data. With this unified view of the customer, you can even target them at the individual level (not just by segment) and on their channel of choice.
Speed Up Time to Payment with Self-Service
How many of your company’s inbound calls are billing-related? Chances are, it’s a sizable chunk, and unclear communication is contributing to it. We surveyed leaders at 64 organizations across industries, and 69% of respondents reported the bill confusion was the main driver for their inbound billing call volume. If you’re not making it easy for your customers to understand their bill or pay it, then your agents are spending too much time trying to explain changes, or facilitate payments you should have already received. By leveraging that make it easy to send automated and targeted communications, you can simplify self-service for customers and employees. For example, if a customer has a question about an increase on their monthly bill, instead of waiting to talk to an agent, they can . Customers can get the answer faster and get back to their regular day. You can also add quick-scan QR codes to your printed documents, taking customers directly to a web page with personalized billing information alongside payment options. This way, customers can pay right when they get the bill, or tell a customer service agent exactly what document they’re referencing. And if a customer logs in to pay online, you can also with clear callouts on what changed from their previous bill. To make sure your billing communications are consistent, you need a to send (or suppress) bill-related messaging across channels. If a customer has already paid a bill online, they don’t need a reminder email. If a customer has already called customer service, you can send a reminder email asking them for their feedback on the experience and a confirmation of their bill.
