Transcript Slide 1

Utility Payment Conference
The Utility of Automation:
Best Practices for eBill Adoption and Paper Turn-off
Mike Meeks,
Randy Vyskocil,
Revenue Officer
VP Utility Market
Agenda
Payment vendor solution, ebill and City
of Tallahassee overview
City of Tallahassee challenges
eBill implementation best practices
eBill solution
Lessons learned
Next steps
Summary of benefits
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Payment Vendor’s Solutions
Making it easy for consumers to send payments to utilities
Vendor
Vendor
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Western Union’s Money Mindset Index
58%
Worse off financially than 6 months ago
40%
Prioritize which bills get paid first
50%
Consumers pay bills online (50% in Q3 vs. 42% in Q2), and pay fewer
bills by mail
18%
Are paying bills after the due date (down from 22% in the previous
quarter)
33%
Are waiting longer to pay bills
38%
31%
Consider utility payments a high priority
(31% Rent, 27% Car insurance, 25% Mortgage, 23% Primary credit card)
Utility customers have trouble paying balance off when behind in
payments (29% Primary credit card, 21% Cell phone, 20%
Cable/satellite, 15% ISP)
The Western Union® Global Business Payments Money Mindset Index is a quarterly
economic tracking study of over 3,000 respondents conducted by Javelin Strategy and
Research in June 2009.
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EBPP (“Pull”) vs. eBill (“Push”)
“Pull” bill presentment is where
a customer registers online
and retrieves a bill image
“Push” eBilling is the electronic
delivery of a bill to the customer’s
email inbox
Cover letter email with secure
ebill attachment
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Benefits of eBilling
Reduce costs and increase revenue
Significantly higher adoption rates
Significantly less time and resources spent on marketing
Cut billing costs by 30% to 70%
Increase overall electronic payment adoption
Improve DSO significantly
Improve customer service and satisfaction
Reduce document delivery time
Enhance bill delivery ‘visibility’
Ensure customer security and increase convenience
Establish real-time communication
Enhance consumer choice
Reduce the environmental impact of paper statements
To generate 4.6M paper bills, you need:
120 tons of paper
240 tons of trees
2M gallons of water
As a result:
232,000 pounds of solid waste are generated
605,000 pounds of greenhouse gases are emitted
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Sample Utility e-Billing Comparisons
Utility
Current Service
Description
Opt out conversion of
“pull” eBill program
Regional Water
Company
Opt in/out blend
(response to welcome
eBill)
Opt out for all
Regional Electric
Regional Water
Company
Opt out with phased
implementation
Opt in for all
City of Tallahassee
Previous
Adoption
Current eBill Adoption
6.5%
adoption via
previous
“pull”
solution
11% adoption
N/A - No
previous
eBill solution
30% adoption
N/A - No
previous
eBill solution
N/A - No
previous
eBill solution
12 months live
Currently considering opt
out for all
12 months live
9% adoption
6 months live (phased)
17.5% adoption
10 months live
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City of Tallahassee Overview
Population
275,000
Customer
accounts
110,000
# of bills
1.4M annual bills and
notifications
Revenue
Revenue $800M of which
$550M is utility
Billing
frequency
Monthly with a quarterly
bill coming on line this fall
as the City will begin to bill
for the County’s Fire
Services Fee
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Previous Solutions for our Unique Challenges
City of Tallahassee
Tallahassee is home of
Florida State and Florida
A&M Universities
Influx of 40,000 – 50,000
residential customers that
arrive annually during
“Student Rush”
Needed a solution to
support influx
Payment Vendor
Provided their standard,
compliant payment solution
To support student arrivals
during “Student Rush”, they
created a web site to
Initiate service
Transfer service
Stop utility services
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Next Challenge: eBilling
Residential customers were actively demanding
an e-Bill presentment and payment
The City was having issues completing paper bill
batch with current staffing
Could not increase staff due to citywide layoffs
Customer base was continuing to grow at ~ 2% per year
The City Commission and Manager mandated a
Green Initiative
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eBilling Focus
Create an effective and non intrusive enrollment method
for the customer
Make enrollment voluntary as required by City Manager
Gather and verify email addresses
Contain budget within signature approval
Convert paper bill to PDF
Internal programming
Training
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eBilling Decision Timeline
2008
The City
contacted
payment
vendor to help
determine the
best approach
for an EBPP
solution
Go-live
In January 2008,
the payment
vendor’s contract
was amended to
include ebill after
an internal
evaluation of Push
vs. Pull
Payment vendor
offered an
electronic bill and
payment solution
through their e-Bill
partner
The City delayed the
By July 2008,
the process was
completed,
tested and
ready for
production
launch until November
2008 to allow the
annual Student Rush
and a recent CIS
upgrade for our Smart
Metering Program to
settle down
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Email Gathering Best Practices
COT had ~5,000 (or 4%) good email addresses before the
project and went live with 33,000 (or 30%)
COT had 20,000 (or 20%) e-addresses which needed to be
scrubbed of bad data by Striata; only ~ 5,000 were valid
An Invitation was emailed to the validated e-address inviting them
to join; 6% accepted
CSRs were charged with collecting an e-address for every contact;
over 50% of the enrollments took place via a CSR contact
An email address was obtained from each new customer contact
that called or walked in
Ran a call center contest in July and August where the team that
collected the most email addresses won a luncheon. Addresses
jumped from 10K addresses to 14K
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Strategy and Integration
Existing Payment and New eBill
Western Union developed an
opt-in page for the City
Opt-in page interfaced with
existing City / WU functionality
November 2008 the City
began a soft launch of the
product with a control
employee group
As of September 1st 2009
14,100 active SmartBill customers
6,300 (or 44%) had enrolled via
the payment vendor’s designed
opt-in page
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Enrollment Best Practices
Employees were encouraged to enroll
TV ads and the City’s web site invited customers to enroll
During Student Rush, customers were encouraged to sign up; of the
50+% CSR enrollment, 28% took place during Student Rush
Western Union built an opt-in enrollment process; 44% of the City’s
enrollments took place via Western Union
The SmartBill bill was promoted as the e-solution for customers who
wanted a no fee payment option
Each new enrollee received a welcome email
The entire enrollment process was automated
Bill batch sent PDFs and file containing business rules to Striata
All customer clicks were tracked and automatically enrolled new
customers, un-enrolled opt-outs, and change of email addresses
were included in the automation
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Enrollment Issue Handling Best Practices
Any failed deliveries of the welcome email were handled via a call
to the customer to verify email address
The City developed an email Matrix based on the Subject Line for
Striata notifications; email groups were established to handle
issues based on the subject line
Any bill delivery failures automatically returned the customer to
postal and generated a duplicate paper bill that included a letter
with an explanation and invitation to call
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Challenges
Getting the customer to upgrade their
Adobe version
Waiting for Adobe to fix issues involving
MAC users
Educating the non PC savvy customer to
the e-world
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Payment Analysis
Comparing several control groups, customers appear to pay
approximately on the same payment schedule and a small
percentage paid slightly later (2-days). We feel this is due to the
confidence gained after using the system for several months and
scheduling the payment on the very last day
SmartBill payments have increased each month and now account
for 16% of the City's payments
SmartBill payments quickly rose to 5% of the City's total payment
volume helping to contribute to the City's over 37% electronic
payment participation
Customers continue to request a free credit card payment option but
the City has remained firm that the cost of cards will be paid by the
user and not absorbed by the City
Customers continue to request a means to cancel future dated
payments without calling a City CSR
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Electronic Payment Volume
eBill Volume Continues to Grow Dramatically
Aug
08
Sep
08
Oct 08
Nov
08
Dec
08
Call Center
AWWA CONFERENCE
Jan 09 Feb 09
Web
Mar
09
Apr 09
IVR
May
09
Jun 09 Jul 09
Aug
09
eBills
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Introductory Email
Introduces service and
benefits
Provides information on
how to enroll in the
service, next steps, and
contact information
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Welcome Email
Reminds customer
about service and
benefits
Provides information on
ebill process, security,
next steps, unsubscribe
details and contact
details
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Sample eBill Cover Letter
Explains how to open
the attached secure
email bill
Explains how to make
a payment in the
secure email bill
Can include targeted
messages– can track
“clicks” to study
success rates
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Opening the eBill
No password to look-up.
Simply enter shared secret
(e.g., zip code) to decrypt
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eBill Opens as Offline PDF
with Real-Time Payment Options
Entire itemized bill
opens as an offline
PDF
Real-time ACH
payments can be
made directly from
within PDF bill
Link to the Western
Union Speedpay
site for credit card
payments
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Additional Billing Pages and Inserts
FAQS
Bill detail
Change of
email address
form
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Confirmation Email
Re-confirms
payment success
Provides
information on
adding address to
contact,
unsubscribe and
contact details
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Overwhelmingly Positive Customer Feedback
Customers say they “love it!”
Easy to use
New electronic payment option
It’s “pretty”
No customer complaints to
date about not receiving a bill
Customers appreciate the
time, attention and patience
received from CSRs
Best Practice
CSRs can view the
same bill the customer
receives so they can
walk the customer
through how to use it
in detail - using every
effort to avoid turning
paper back on
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Lessons Learned:
Challenges with a Digital Solution
Beware of using zip code as shared
secret for foreign customers
Pop-up blockers
Optical
Character
Recognition
line (OCR)
can’t be read
from eBill
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Lessons Learned (cont.)
GoodMail program increased delivery rate
Purchasing credits significantly lowered cost - all costs
recouped in the first eight months
$50-70K expected savings in FY10 postage
Invitation to sign up had lowest adoption of all methods
Developed method to re-route high priority ebills to City
staff before delivery
Allows ebill proofing before final delivery
Good process for problem and/or high profile customers
(e.g., City Major, high bill complaints)
The vendors’ project management teams provided a very
smooth implementation
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Next Steps
Continue to Analyze and Make Improvements
Test many different subject lines and their ebill
adoption rates, continue to fine-tune message
Study open rates, contact customers who don’t
open ebills and find out why
Ask customers who receive and open ebills but mail
in their payments
Why they are still writing checks and mailing?
What can be done to convert them to e-payments?
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If 20% of Customers Sign up for eBilling…
Every year the City of Tallahassee will avoid using:
8 tons of paper
152,000 gallons of water
336% of energy consumed by average household
100% emissions of 4 average cars
Every year COT will reduce billing costs by over $100,000!
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Thank You!
Randy Vyskocil
VP, Utility Market
Western Union
Global Business Payments
[email protected]
800-252-9638 x240
Mike Meeks
Revenue Officer
City of Tallahassee
[email protected]
XXX-XXX-XXXX
Visit our website at http://talgov.com/you/uos/smartbill.cfm
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