Online Billing Benefits Everyone- Businesses, Customers, and the Environment

The financial side of business has been dominated by paper: envelopes, checks, bills, paper statements, and invoices. With advances in technology, there are other methods to manage finances. Help your business become more environmentally responsible by minimizing your business’s financial paper footprint. How can you do this? Encourage your employees to promote online billing, and educate your customers about the benefits of online billing. Here are a few ideas to help employees and customers get excited about online bill payment and presentment.

Encourage Your Employees to get excited about online billing. This is easier said than done. Employees may be hesitant to sell online bill payment and presentment systems to customers, especially those in administration or accounting. Be sure to tell your employees the system has been added to help them, not replace them.

Once they become familiar with the system, they should enjoy how easy it is to use. They can then spend their time on other activities instead of printing, addressing, and sending traditional statements and bills. Some EBPP systems, like SmartPay, integrate with back office accounting systems which lend some extra free time to the accounting and administrative departments to focus on building customer relationships and supporting the transition.

Customers may have trouble signing up for electronic billing. Others may have questions or concerns about using the system. You have to remember that although most EBPP systems are very simple and intuitive to use, not all users are going to be confident in their technological abilities the first time they use an EBPP to pay their bills.

Educate Your Customers. Most customers are going to be very enthusiastic, receptive, and appreciative of the addition to online billing and invoicing. However, that also means you will have some customers who are more resistant. A lot of this depends on whether or not the customers are familiar with and trusting of the technology. Today, many Generation Y and Generation X users are comfortable with online bill presentment and payment systems. Baby Boomers may take a bit more persuading.

Make sure that your employees know the system well. They can help those who are either not on board with online billing or those who need additional help using the system. Your customers who aren’t as comfortable with technology will thank you for having employees eager, willing, and able to help them with the transition process.

Lastly, choosing whether to have your customers opt-in or opt-out of the electronic billing and payment system can make a significant difference in how quickly your adoption rates grow. There is a free download of “Opt-in vs. Opt-out: increasing customer adoption” to help you decide which approach is best for your business.

Once you employees accept and love the switch, move on to your customers. None of them will miss having all of that paper around from traditional payment methods. The environment will thank you for that. 

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net