Utility Bill Payments are one of the most challenging customer-facing documents, as customers receive these bills post-usage, and the due amount can change considerably from one month to the next.
The Utility bill payment experience is a crucial part of the customer life cycle and a major influencer of customer satisfaction.
When customers see unexpectedly high bills or experience bill shock, they overwhelmingly online want to know the root cause of the increase. The typical questions they might ask include :
- Help me understand my utility payment processing.
- Why do I owe this much? Why is my bill so high?
- Why do I have these prorated charges?
- How can I sign up for automatic payments?
- How can I switch to paperless billing?
- Where is the contact information?
- Why do I have to hunt for answers?
These queries leave customers confused and frustrated, and they flood the provider’s call centers with similar and repetitive questions, dragging down the call center’s productivity and raising its costs.
Utility Billing Software and Customer Experience
Utility providers want to educate their customers on what affects their usage, and how they can employ conservation measures and manage expectations of future billing amounts. The unexplored opportunity for Utility Providers is to leverage bills as tools that can proactively alert, engage, inform and empower their customer experiences.
Deliver An Exceptional Utility Billing Experience for Better Customer Engagement
A proactive, rather than reactive approach to bill management, provides a superior customer experience. Utility Customer Experience enables us to gain more insights and control consumption levels within the Utility billing cycle. Doing so provides a seamless customer experience, cuts down sharply on the volume of angry bill shock-related calls, and allows you to allocate your resources to more productive uses.
FCI’s Interactive Utility Billing Solutions anticipate customers’ questions and answer them before they’re asked. This seamless, automated, and proactive approach gives households visibility during each step of the billing journey—from when their bills arrive, to after they have acted on them.
To explore further, schedule a demo and see how we can help you deliver a superior utility billing experience and higher customer satisfaction.
