The customer experience (CX) and improving customer engagement is a primary focus for utilities in 2021, and will be for many years to come. Did you know, however, that one of the best ways to improve utility CX is by offering eBilling solutions to your customer?
EBilling is a highly-attractive strategy for a number of reasons. In this blog, we take a look at what exactly eBilling is, why it’s important for the success of your utility and how the award-winning SilverBlaze Customer Portal for Utilities can help.
What is eBilling?
In its simplest definition, eBilling – also known as electric billing or paperless billing – is the process in which a utility sends its bills or invoices digitally (through the internet)t so that customers can pay their bills electronically.
E-Billing replaces the traditional utility method in which an invoice is sent to a customer via a letter, and then the customer would manually pay that bill by sending back a cheque or physically coming into the office to make a payment.
E-Billing goes one step further than just allowing customers to pay their bills online. Online billing also allows utilities to contact their customers through notifications and alerts to improve customer engagement, and speed up payment times for instance.
Why is it important for your utility to offer an eBilling solution?
Implementing online billing and payment solutions into your utility’s processes can greatly improve the experience that your customers have with your business, and in return they’ll be far happier with the services that you provide.
E-Billing improves customer satisfaction by:
- Improving engagement
- Establishing trust between your utility and the customer
- Building better customer experiences
- Providing self-services
While eBilling improves customer satisfaction and helps your utility build a superior customer experience, it’s not just your customers who benefit from a seamless eBilling solution – your utility will benefit internally too!
E-Billing reduces printing and mailing costs, delivers faster payments, and helps reduce costs associated with the notification and collection of past due payments. In addition, offering self-service account information also relieves the strain on customer service departments by reducing the number of common/redundant customer calls, and directing customer service efforts to more time-sensitive, complex customer requests.From an internal perspective, eBilling will help increase productivity while reducing company expenses.
Any continuous service delivered to consumers is a candidate for an eBilling solution – such electrical power, waterworks, gas, and telecommunications.
How can the SilverBlaze Customer Portal help?
The SilverBlaze Customer Portal for Utilities is a comprehensive web platform – specially designed for utility providers who want to offer convenient services, such as eBilling, usage and consumption tracking, and much more; all the functionalities and self-service options that increase customer engagement.
The white labeled multi-device platform can be fully customized with corporate branding to create a truly unique customer portal – viewable on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
Designed with the customer in mind, The SilverBlaze Customer Portal solution has been created with a clean look and intuitive usability – making it incredibly straightforward for your customers to pay their bills online.
The SilverBlaze Customer Portal can be set up with eBilling integrations, including PDF bill repositories, links to banking sites, and prefered online payment processors for credit cards, debit cards and eCheques.
With customers having access to eBilling and online payment functionality 24/7/365 through the implementation of a customer portal, your utility will be able to significantly improve its customer experience and internal processes.
Want to learn more about the eBilling and other features that the SilverBlaze Customer Portal provides, schedule a personal demo below or contact our team of customer engagement experts today.
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