Issue 8

Some companies that provide monthly bills to customers also offer an electronic bill presentment option, either through the Biller's website or through a consolidated bill payment site, such as a bank. The question arises as to whether electronic bill presentment provides significant savings to be made over and above postage savings.

A study was performed by Aspen Analytics, a division of Aspen Marketing Services in partnership with Finserv. This study focused on the Biller Qwest Communications in the USA and explored the impact that bill presentment and bill payment has on customer loyalty and profitability from a Biller perspective.

The study found that how customers receive their monthly bill has a significant impact on how it will be paid. For customers that receive bills electronically through their bank, 75% will pay their bill electronically.

Furthermore, from a customer loyalty perspective, customers that receive their bills electronically (either through the Billers website or through their internet banking service) generally had more products with the company and demonstrated an improvement in customer loyalty of 15-25%. These customers were also 20% more profitable.

For those bills presented through the Biller's website, half the payments are processed via the higher cost credit card or debit card. In comparison, for bills presented through a banking website, 75% of these are paid via an electronic bank bill payment channel, which is cheaper to process than a credit card payment.

While this study was conducted in the US, there are parallels to the Australian market. Electronic bill presentment via a Biller site or through BPAY View both provide significant cost savings and an increase in customer loyalty.

However, BPAY View provides extra benefits to Billers as it encourages a payment to be made via BPAY. BPAY provides significant back-end reconciliation costs savings and an improved cash flow for Billers.

Research conducted by TNS examined the behaviour and sentiment of Australian bill payers to ensure the campaign messages resonated with consumers in the current economic climate. The findings showed that the key indicators of ease, convenience and security were strongly associated with BPAY, reaffirming BPAY's campaign strategy. The current media strategy was also tested, confirming that targeting the 1st and 15th was most effective as this is the time when people are thinking about paying bills, due to the alignment between paying bills and pay day.

BPAY has chosen a multimedia approach for the campaign: Outdoor, press and online advertising. For the first time, mobile phone advertising will also be used, as there are an increasing number of financial institutions beginning to offer consumers the ability to use BPAY through mobile banking. The campaign will have an increased presence online with research revealing that 81 per cent of the Australian bill paying population considers the internet a useful or extremely useful source of information in providing financial management information.

As always, BPAY encourages all Billers to participate in the campaign and offers a number of support options including tailored statement inserts, banners and messages on Internet Banking websites, IVR and ATM messages as well as staff promotions. For further information on how you can get involved in this campaign, please contact your Account Manager or the BPAY Marketing Department at marketing@bpay.com.au.

City West Water is a leading retail water supplier in Melbourne owned by the Victorian Government, providing drinking water, sewerage, trade water and recycled waste services to approximately 310,000 residential and 34,000 industrial and commercial customers across Melbourne.

City West Water is committed to sustainability, and is investing in a number of programs and activities across the business to promote sustainability within the business, including BPAY View.

City West Water launched with BPAY View in July 2008, and now have over 4,900 customers registered to receive their City West Water bill via BPAY View.

Angelo Iacobaccio, Data Analyst for Customer Information Systems at City West Water, has been extremely positive about the use of BPAY View within City West Water. After three to four years with no electronic bill presentment solution, City West Water was ready to implement an enduring and forward-looking solution for their customers. "BPAY View allowed customers to view their bills as PDF files, which is exactly how they looked on paper. There were no formatting issues, which made implementation of BPAY View really easy," Angelo said. He also commented that the benefits to City West Water customers were clear: BPAY View is a sustainable, convenient solution that is well aligned with their own corporate environmental strategy. The success has been remarkable: The incidence of churn has dramatically reduced with 95% of customers who registered with BPAY View have being retained."

The youth market has become increasingly important to BPAY's future. Communicating effectively to this market of 16-24 years olds now, will ensure a new generation of bill payers use BPAY going forward. BPAY is developing a campaign targeting the youth market with the objective of building awareness of their bill payment options and the benefits of using BPAY. The campaign will be 'drip-fed' over a period of 12-18 months.

It is important to billing organisations to ensure the future generation of bill payers are educated on lower cost payment channels.

The campaign includes several key elements including a dedicated microsite to be launched in early 2010 and a number of 'virals' or mini-films that will each promote a different feature of BPAY. This will lead into a competition "The Biggest Most Awesome Waste of Time" where people are invited to suggest their idea of the biggest most awesome waster of time. The winner of this competition will have their idea created and filmed.

Christina Aventi, Strategic Planner at BMF, BPAY's advertising agency, spoke to BPAY about the challenges and strategies required to communicate effectively with the youth market. "Youth are apathetic to bills, they are just not on their radar. We had to find a way to engage them so we translated a core BPAY benefit of 'saves you time' into their currency, it 'gives you the freedom to waste time on things you want to'. We didn't want to judge but instead celebrate time wasting pursuits. We knew that youth wanted a brand that stayed true to itself and gave them some control by giving them tools to hone their creative skills. This idea does just that," Christina commented. "The mini films are basically part of the promotion, giving people ideas on how others have indulged in time-wasting and the entertainment it can generate. They are meant to surprise, inspire and engage."

Visit awesometimewasting.com.au early in the new year to view the virals, or feel free to add your own awesome time wasting idea!

Now that you have become a BPAY Biller, there are certain aspects of your invoicing that you can not change without first speaking to your financial institution. This will ensure the BPAY process will not be interrupted. The area that can potentially cause problems with BPAY processing is the lack of understanding of the information held about your BPAY solution and how this information is used.

The information that is required of the Scheme includes:

These are examples of processes that a Biller should know about the BPAY Scheme if they want to make any changes to the billing process. If you would like to make any changes to your BPAY details you should contact your Biller Institution.