Two years ago, I wrote about the 2012 Fiserv Billing Household Survey and offering your customers payment choices.

2014 Billing Household Survey

In December, Fiserv released the updated 2014 Billing Household Survey slideshow. In this article, I’ve recapped some of the highlights of the 2014 Survey.

Multiple payment methods

According to the survey, the average household uses three different payment methods each month (slide 5) and offering multiple bill payment options increases customer satisfaction (slide 7).

Customers paying with a mobile device increased 69% from 2013 (slide 12). Over half of all tablet owners have used their tablet device to pay a bill (slide 16) and the most common way to pay a bill by mobile device is your website (slide 15).

What this says to me is, if you’re not offering your customers online bill pay, they aren’t going to be happy with you.

Late payments

36% of customers pay bills late for several reasons, and second only to cash flow problems is forgetting the due date (slide 8). Over 75% of customers say due date reminders increase customer satisfaction (slide 17).

Offering due date alerts can increase the chances of those same customers adopting e-billing (slide 18).

If you aren’t alerting your customers of an impending due date (and I’m not talking about old-fashioned printed second notices), you’re missing out on an opportunity for improved customer service.

Paperless billing options

Almost a quarter of all U.S. bills are sent electronically with no paper bill produced and nearly half of all customers indicate that receiving paperless bills increases customer satisfaction (slide 19). As could be expected, the youngest customers are most interested in doing away with paper bills (slide 20). However, nearly half of all bill payers choose to receive a combination of paper and e-bills (slide 21).

Knowing the demographics of your customer base can help predict the adoption rate of offering paperless billing.

Need assistance?

If you have questions about offering additional payment options or improving the way you communicate with your customers, please give me a call at 919-232-2320 or e-mail me at gsanders@edmundsgovtech.com to learn how a business review could help your utility.