Paperless billing allows utilities to offer a convenient way for customers to receive their bills and make payments on time.
For providers, choosing to embrace paperless billing through a self-service web portal, such as the innovative SilverBlaze Customer Portal for Utilities, is an excellent opportunity to save money, increase profit margins and invest back into your employees and equipment. This will increase customer engagement and satisfaction across the board.
Here are five ways going paperless can save your utility – whether in the electric, water, natural gas, telecom or multi-service utility industry – money.
1. Paperless billing strengthens your revenue cycle
Before eBilling, revenue cycles in the utility industry were generally very slow. It could take a long time for bills to arrive to your customers through physical mail, and even longer for them to send their payment back to your billing department.
Paperless billing can dramatically speed up this process by enabling your customers to access their bill through a self-service web portal as soon as they are posted. From here, they can make a payment instantly, at any time, anywhere that they have an internet connection.
In the end, customers will be able to better engage with your utility, and you’ll see a faster turnaround on billing – resulting in improved revenue cycles.
2. Paperless Billing Reduces Strain on Your Employees
With paperless billing and self-service web portals, customers are able to take control of how, when, and where they pay their bills and access their information.
This level of access greatly reduces call volumes received at your contact centres, which, in turn, reduces the strain on your employees to effectively address customer concerns. With lower call volumes, you’ll see an increase in employee satisfaction. Employees will also be better prepared and focused on serving customers who do need to speak to a member of your customer service team.
3. Automating workflows allows your employees to shift focus
Paperless billing allows your utility to automate manual tasks that, while necessary, are not the best use of time for your utility’s employees.
With eBilling, employees can shift their focus from performing boring, manual tasks to completing higher-value tasks. Think of the old saying “time is money” – by making better use of employee time, you’re also making smarter use of your money.
4. Paperless billing reduces the costs associated with physical bills
When customers sign up for paperless billing, you utility will quickly reduce the costs associated with sending out physical bills. Not only that, the days of losing bills and payments in the post will be a thing of the past. Bills will conveniently be posted online right into the hands of your customers, allowing them to pay bills seamlessly with a few clicks of a button on their preferred device, and at their convenience.
If a customer moves, they’ll still receive their bill online at the same time they always do. As mentioned before, this will improve your utility’s revenue cycle while keeping your customer constantly satisfied with your services, no matter where they are.
5. Going paperless helps employees send and receive accurate information
Choosing a paperless option has additional benefits that aren’t specific to billing. For example, going paperless allows your customers to quickly provide you with information related to service issues in their neighborhoods without having to contact customer care and potentially face a long wait while your employees address other calls.
Push notifications and alerts also allow you to automatically inform customers about upcoming work or planned outages without having to send notices by mail. With this flow of accurate information, you’re less likely to have to spend additional time, and money, sending employees out into the field to address potential issues.
Instead, customers can be made aware of any changes related to their utility in seconds, and you can have a more accurate understanding of work requirements before sending employees on service calls.
Start saving money today with SilverBlaze Solutions
When you choose the SilverBlaze Customer Portal for your utility’s paperless billing needs, you’ll quickly see a return on your investment.
That’s because our customer portal is designed specifically with utilities in mind. Water, gas, and electric utility providers can all benefit from the intuitive design, customizable capabilities, and easy-to-integrate framework of our customer portal – both from a customer service standpoint, and a financial one.
To learn more about the SilverBlaze Customer Portal and its paperless billing capabilities, contact our team of experts today. We would be more than happy to answer any questions you have in regards to paperless billing or our unique customer portal solution.
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