eBilling and eStatements: what are your paperless options for 2013.

When it comes to electronic delivery of documents to your consumers and business customers, there are three choices: build your own self-serve portal (and mobile website or app), use a third party consolidator, or deliver them via email.

Lets examine the pros and cons of each:

Internet Banking/Biller direct:

Definition: A self-serve website that is run by the Biller or Bank that typically offers presentment, payment and other customer service functions.

PROS: 
- Biller controls their consumer relationship- Effective up and cross selling- Long history of past documents available- Proven to reduce calls into the contact center- Consumers can view and pay their bills

CONS: 
- Extremely costly to setup and run.- Large, ongoing marketing budgets needed to drive adoption.- Requires customer registration.- More than 70% of customers will not register in the first 5 years.- Customers find choosing and remembering usernames and passwords inconvenient.- Very difficult and expensive to mobile optimize. - Less than half of those customers who register will agree to go paperless.- Difficult to personalize marketing.- Customers need to go to 12 to 15 different websites each month to view and pay their household bills. - You need to field countless resource intensive phone calls around lost passwords, navigation and general site usage difficulties. - 'Your bill / statement is ready' emails are vulnerable to Phishing.

Consolidator portal:

Definition: A third party provider that undertakes to consolidate numerous bills, statements and other documents into a single central location, to allow users the convenience of a unified website for electric document access.

PROS:
- Consumers have just one website to go to- Multiple bills, statements and other documents are available for viewing and paying- One navigation to learn- One mobile app to download- Customizable reminders available

CONS:
- Requires customer registration.- More than 95% of customers will not register in the first 5 years.- Less than 20% of those customers who register will agree to go paperless.- Until critical mass of senders is achieved, it remains a poor customer experience.- Until critical mass of consumers is achieved it remains a poor option for billers and banks.- The Biller/Bank loses a primary customer touch point.- Difficult to personalize marketing.- 'Your bill / statement is ready' emails are vulnerable to Phishing.- A new AR relationship is required to accept payment.- As there are four in the US market alone, it's impossible for billers and banks to know which one to chose.

Electronic document delivery via email:

Definition: The delivery of electronic documents as email attachments.

PROS:
- No registration is required.- Blanket consent can be achieved with just one click.- Consent can be given from any smartphone.- No choosing and remembering of usernames and passwords.- Device agnostic (mobile and tablet ready by default)- One click to open.- One click to pay.- Remains encrypted locally.- Highly effective, automated personalized marketing.- Sender maintains the customer relationship.- All documents can be suppressed upfront.- Electronic documents can be viewed offline.- Zero marketing costs to drive adoption.

CONS:
- No history of past documents available online.- Navigation on a website is better than inside an offline document.- Complex purchasing of additional products and services is a challenge.

So what is your plan?

We suggest re-examining your goals and objectives carefully and asking the following questions:

1. Is your current offering going to bring you the paper suppression numbers you need in 2013 and 2014?

2. If you add another channel, will it dramatically add to this?

3. Have you asked the 70%+ of customers still getting paper what they want?

4. What are you doing about the smartphone growth explosion?

More important than what to do, is which to do first! (Of course if you already have Internet Banking or a self serve portal then this makes it much easier.)

After 5 to 7 years of lackluster paper suppression results, isn't it time you did something different?

My challenge to you: What's it going to take to get your company to 60% paper suppression?