Benefits of a Self-Serve Portal and Paperless Billing for Utilities
Paperless billing is not a new concept to you, but as a utility provider, you still have late adopters resistant to making the switch. Although paperless billing has numerous benefits for your customers, realizing a goal of 100% compliance is a challenge if you are not aware of and can’t share them. With a customer portal like SilverBlaze, there are even more benefits to paperless billing for utilities because a self-serve portal makes it easy for your customers to switch.
What is Paperless Billing for Utilities?
Sometimes called e-billing, paperless billing is sending an electronic utility bill rather than mailing a paper bill. When paperless billing started, utilities sent an email with a bill copy or a link to the online bill. Now, you can notify your customers in various ways, and a self-serve customer portal connected to your CIS is a convenient, easy way for customers to adopt paperless billing for utilities.
Benefits of Paperless Billing for Utility Customers
Everyone is on the go these days, and the internet connects us in ways that we have never been connected before. Because we are on the go, we have learned how to shop online, communicate with each other, and even work remotely. Paperless billing helps customers store, access, and pay their bills at a time and place convenient for them. And using a self-serve portal to pay bills online reduces the time spent paying that bill, the clutter that comes with paper bills, and a customer’s carbon footprint.
When customers use a self-serve portal like SilverBlaze to pay bills, they gain control of their utility billing. Customers who use a self-serve portal gain the following benefits:
Pay anytime, anywhere on any device.
Save time and money.
Reduce carbon footprint.
Sign on and securely pay bills.
Be in charge of consumption with Green Button Download My Data (DMD).
Customers will find it easy and convenient to adopt paperless billing with an online self-serve portal. When customers use SilverBlaze, they have access to their account at a time, place, and device that are convenient for them. They won’t need to call your office for billing history or bills that went astray in the mail. They’ll have all of their billing information in one place, helping them make decisions about payments and utility consumption. When they want to make decisions about utility usage, the Green Button Download My Data feature in SilverBlaze gives your customers the ability to download and analyze their utility consumption data. With SilverBlaze, your customers will be in charge of their accounts, giving them freedom that’s not available with old-fashioned paper billing.
What Benefits Can a Utility Receive from Paperless Billing?
With paperless billing, your customers are not the only ones who benefit. When you offer a self-serve portal like SilverBlaze, you’ll find that it provides substantial advantages to you and your customer service staff.
Benefits of Paperless Billing for Utilities
Reduce your revenue cycle.
Streamline operations.
Reduce operational costs.
Improve customer communication.
Improve customer satisfaction.
Be Green Button Compliant.
Reduce your revenue cycle
With slow-to-complete, snail-mail paper billing, you must send out a bill, wait for the customer to pay, and then for the bill to return to you in the mail. Paperless billing is more convenient for customers, reducing the friction that keeps them from paying bills on time. With paperless billing in place for your utility, you reap the benefits of generating revenue faster and reducing late pays and no pays.
Streamline operations
Using a self-serve portal gives you one virtual, dedicated employee who is available 24/7/365. When customers take control of their accounts, they free up your office staff to perform other high-priority tasks. Having a self-serve portal in place for bill paying reduces call volume because when customers have a question, they can look up the answer online. With SilverBlaze workflows, task automation is easy and frees up your staff from manually creating paper bills. Your billing will be ready to go with fewer steps and less time.
Reduce operational costs
Reducing the number of paper bills a utility sends out each month has the added benefit of reducing operational costs. You’ll spend less on paper because you won’t have to buy as many envelopes or as much paper, and you’ll save on postage as well. Your team will also get back the time that it takes to create paper bills and get them out to the public.
Improve customer communication
Increasing connectivity between customers and your utility improves communication. Having paperless billing and an online utility portal in place keeps everyone connected. A customer portal makes it easy to share information with your community whenever you have service issues. Before we were all digitally connected, notifying your customers took time and often left everyone on your staff and in your community frustrated. With a self-serve portal and push notifications, what was time-consuming and frustrating now takes seconds. When customers are used to logging into a portal to pay their bills, they get the added benefit of being connected to you. And you can stay connected to them.
Improve customer satisfaction and engagement
Today customers are looking for ways to serve themselves. If COVID has taught us one thing, it’s how to use the internet to make life more convenient. Your customers are looking for ways to use their devices to pay a bill when and where they want. Having a self-serve portal and paperless billing lets them be in charge of their accounts, and having that control gives them more satisfaction. They don’t have to call or email you to find an answer to a billing question, pay a bill, or see when a bill is due. All that information comes to them, and they can then engage with your utility. Instead of being a one-way form of communication, you are now in a dialog with your customers each time they use your self-serve portal for paperless billing, increasing their engagement and, ultimately, their satisfaction.
Be Green Button Compliant
Having a self-serve portal like SilverBlaze in place gives you the added benefit of using a Green Button Download My Data compliant portal. With more and more utilities required to have this functionality and consumers being more environmentally aware, utilities and consumers can conserve energy. By having a self-serve portal and paperless billing in place, consumers will be able to make an informed decision and meet their utility conservation goals.
Paperless billing and self-serve portals are a win-win for both customers and utilities. When you know how beneficial paperless billing is to your customers and your utility, it is easy to help your customers adopt this advantageous method of paying bills. Not only do your customers gain control of their accounts, but they can also make smart decisions about energy consumption. As a utility, you have the added benefit of improving customer relations and streamlining your operations.
Looking for a way to increase paperless billing adoption? Contact us today to learn how the SilverBlaze self-service utility portal can help you realize this goal.