The Opportunity
54% of Americans report making late payments, proving that even the most diligent of customers can misplace a bill and ultimately forget to make a payment. Late payments impact everything from customer satisfaction to business operations. This creates an imperative for billers to leverage tools that can deliver timely, automated and actionable notifications that simplify the ability to pay a bill.
The Solution
Enterprise Communication Manager (ECM) is a proactive and reactive advanced customer notification feature that simplifies biller-to-customer communications. A standard capability of the Paymentus billing and payment solution, ECM allows billers to alert customers to payment reminders, service interruptions and more via configurable text (SMS), email and phone messages. For VARCOMM, ECM proved transformative in expanding its ability to serve and drive on-time payments.
VARCOMM is a leading broadband provider serving thousands of customers throughout California and Oregon. VARCOMM’s legacy billing and payment solution limited its ability to communicate with subscribers. All messages were auto-generated with no link for customers to return to the payment interface to pay their bills.
“Our motto has always been: make it easy for people to pay their bills. We want to make it easy for our customers to do business with us,” said Jenifer Vellucci, President & CFO, VARCOMM. “ECM makes that possible.”
To enable immediate success, Paymentus worked with Vellucci and her team to securely deliver accurate customer data and provide ECM training sessions to develop a process that allowed for proactive notifications and reminders to be sent to their customer base. Data was particularly essential, as this made it possible to send clear and specific bill-related messages to specific customers. The Paymentus team also helped VARCOMM establish templates using our vast library and experience across many billers to meet its needs.
In total, VARCOMM was able to segment its audience base and deliver campaigns for payment notices, payment information, community events and promotions—only limited by VARCOMM’s imagination.
Each of these campaigns was set up using a multi-channel approach that included email, text and IVR.
The Results
According to Vellucci, ECM has been a game-changer for the broadband provider. One of ECM’s most important functions is its ability to immediately address specific customers. Vellucci used this capability for an early campaign targeting customers whose bills were due the next day.
VARCOMM has taken full advantage of the configuration capabilities by now including a link in all messages—putting customers one click away from making their payment.
ECM has also proven influential in promoting additional payment options for VARCOMM subscribers. In particular, VARCOMM targeted in-person payers with messaging promoting IVR (phone) payments and other digital transactions. This both reduced office traffic and spurred an increase in digital payments, which drove savings and increased staff productivity.
The extended benefits go well beyond on-time payments. Vellucci reports that ECM has helped drive increased usage of self-serve capabilities including chatbot and in-store retail payments such as Walmart Bill Pay. Additionally, subscriber satisfaction has increased thanks to the ease and optionality within VARCOMM’s new billing and payment system.
Ultimately, ECM has enabled VARCOMM to live up to its mission, leading to fewer shutoffs, fewer fees and happier customers.
1Datos Insights, The State of Bill Pay: Digital Payment Trends and Growing Demand for Text Messaging
