Taming Today’s Top Billing and Payment Monsters

What’s keeping you up at night?

It’s a question we ask when introducing the top challenges wreaking havoc in the billing and payment market for billers. Our monster-taming journey began with two decades of service and partnership with our clients that led us to identifying, taming and containing their biggest billing and payment problems that drastically impact adoption, cost, customer satisfaction and more.

Ready to meet – and tame – these masters of mayhem? First, take this quick quiz to see which monster is potentially wreaking the most havoc on your organization’s billing and payment solutions.

MEET THE MONSTERS

Brock "The Blockhead"

Brock is defined by the clunky payment experiences that create roadblocks on a customer’s path to payment. These roadblocks can lead to customer frustration, abandoned or missed payments and in the case of competitive markets such as insurance and telecommunications, customer churn.

Taming Brock

Brock’s biggest enemy is a holistic, omnichannel billing, communication and payment platform. A unified platform offers a seamless, frictionless payment experience regardless of payment type, payment channel or device. Consumers can pay how they want, when they want to help ease the stress of making payments, while billers can ensure more on-time payments and greater consumer satisfaction.

Stinger "The Sneak"

Stinger is the looming security risk that can leave billers stung and vulnerable. But it’s not simply enough to lock up your billing and payment solution like Fort Knox. Security must enhance the payment experience, not damage it.

Taming Stinger

Security done right means consumers safely pay using their preferred payment method without a lot of additional steps or clicks. Capabilities such as Secure Service® remove the significant risks and non-compliance issues associated with live phone and text payments. The PCI-compliant technology keeps sensitive information protected while maintaining the support and troubleshooting benefits of a real-time employee and bill-payer interaction.

Mort "The Sluggard"

Sluggish systems and outdated payment platforms muck up customer transactions, stifle innovation and limit a biller’s ability to serve. And when innovations are introduced, billers affected by Mort are unable to capitalize and offer consumers these capabilities – potentially negatively impacting customer satisfaction.

Taming Mort

The best way to overcome legacy limitations is to deploy a holistic, omnichannel electronic bill presentment and payment solution that is built with maximum flexibility. In this way, billers can rest assured that when new payment channels and capabilities come on board, they are prepared to leverage these advancements.

Argus "The Ungainly"

Argus is the ungainly reporting and reconciliation caused by siloed solutions with piecemeal fixes that don’t work cohesively and impedes payment visibility. While it’s true that all transactions produce data, it’s not true that all of this data is visible or capturable. And these blind spots impact decision making and the ability for staff to have the answers they need at hand.

Taming Argus

A holistic billing and payment solution is Argus’ main adversary and a surefire way to tame this monster. Due to the purpose-built nature of the solution, each piece of the platform is built to seamlessly integrate and communicate with others. For instance, each payment channel is connected to Agent Dashboard, allowing for a single, comprehensive view of payment performance, something not achievable with piecemealed systems using various vendors.

Ingrid "The Frostbound"

Ingrid can be found in those heavy and cumbersome systems that feel impossible to change and move into a modern solution. A recent survey showed that among the 26% of billers not interested in offering a holistic bill payment experience, 43% said it was because they thought integrating bill payment portals would be too complicated. Ingrid will ensure that many of these billers remain stuck and unable to catch up.

Taming Ingrid

Start with a digital billing and payment solution that’s rated best in class by a leading financial analyst firm. A key component of this solution is the class-leading product features Paymentus can offer our clients. This allows billers to not only offer more ways to pay but more convenient and innovative options surrounding traditional methods. For instance, cash-preferred customers can now use local retailers and PayPal to pay their bills.

Crunkus "The Misfit"

Crunkus is that unattractive user experience and interface that creates problems with adoption and customer satisfaction. Whether unwieldy, confusing or just plain dated looking, Crunkus can make it hard for consumers to pay while also doing untold damage to your brand.

Taming Crunkus

The payment experience should at all times be sleek, modern, intuitive and easy to navigate. Billers deploying a single-vendor solution ensure that bill payers enjoy a unified experience that looks and works the same regardless of the chosen payment method, channel or device.

Fraggle “The Frazzled”

There’s nothing Fraggle loves more than a patchwork of billing and payment capabilities cobbled together to create siloed, disparate solutions. Think multiple vendors, layers upon layers and systems that can only share data through rigorous workarounds (if at all). Not satisfied with hampering the efficiency of your platform, Fraggle also loves the added cost and maintenance necessitated by this piecemeal approach.

Taming Fraggle

The key to taming Fraggle is to launch and deploy a holistic billing and payment solution from the start. The Paymentus electronic bill presentment and payment solution is purpose-built from the ground up to eliminate the layers and vendors often needed to create a comprehensive billing and payment experience.

The advantages of implementing a holistic solution through a single provider include:

• Accelerated innovation with built-in flexibility to help you deploy in-demand billing and payment features faster
• Cost efficiencies with only one contract and vendor to manage, saving you both time and money in running and maintaining your billing and payment solution
• Advanced financial security that always adheres to industry requirements, covers the entire platform and leaves no gaps
• Optimized reporting and reconciliation with a system engineered to seamlessly communicate and share data

Of course, building your platform has a place, too. Should you choose to build your solution, it is imperative that you work with a billing and payment partner with the flexibility to serve your initial payment processing needs, but also has the tools and capabilities to help you expand your offerings should you choose. In this way, you can build out a system tailored to your specifications without creating the gaps and siloes that Fraggle loves so very much.

Ferva “The Mysterious”

Speaking of gaps, meet Ferva “The Mysterious.” Ferva and Fraggle are thick as thieves – and just as detrimental to the health of your organization. Ferva’s favorite thing in the world is darkness, as in, the communications abyss that comes from gaps in visibility or communication that occur within a disjointed or overly-simplistic billing and payment solution.

Communication is one of the most critical elements of the billing and payment lifecycle. In a recent study, 23% of bill payers who missed a payment in the last six months say they forgot their bill entirely. Imagine the bottom-line benefits if these bill payers were sent advanced notifications – text, email – that a bill was due or past due.

But communication is about more than just alerting a customer that their bill is due. Real-time payment confirmations are a key piece in removing the stress often associated with bill payment. Without it, customers can become confused as to whether a bill has been paid, impacting their ability to best manage their finances while impacting your customer satisfaction scores.

This also affects internal staff, who are unable to track and view the performance of your electronic billing and payment platform. These blackholes that Ferva thrives in can limit decision-making, hide potential problems and make it impossible to deliver a best-in-class customer experience.

Taming Ferva

If you are able to tame Fraggle, you will most likely be taming two monsters – Ferva and Fraggle – with one solution. Holistic billing and payment solutions give you the ability to surface key data and ensure capabilities that are able to speak and share information with each other.

But the real key lies in the real-time capabilities offered by a network such as the Paymentus Instant Payment Network® (IPN). IPN goes beyond expansive payment offerings to also surround customers directly with fast and frictionless modern communications. Because the data derived by the IPN is taken in real-time from your entire billing and payment solution, it’s more actionable, accurate and timely. This allows both customers and staff to enjoy a next-generation billing and payment experience.

Kludge “The Chaotic”

Paper-based processes are slow, ripe for error and above all, costly. Just the way Kludge likes it. While the world goes digital, Kludge prefers the chaos that comes from mailing, processing, tracking and reporting on paper bills and paper-based payment methods.

While the numbers vary, most estimates say that paper checks are around 10X more expensive than a digital payment. And the average cost to print and send a paper invoice? Close to $15. Compounding this is the human capital that must be expended to ship these bills and process these payments. Kludge isn’t just eating away at your efficiency, he’s gobbling up your entire bottom line!

Taming Kludge

Taming Kludge begins with expanding the digital billing and payment capabilities offered to your customers. The proliferation of digital payment methods and self-service capabilities makes this easier than ever. In terms of payment methods, credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets offer both convenience and real-time satisfaction for bill payers. Having these built-in options readily available gives consumers greater options and control over their bill pay experience.

Self-service payment options are another way for consumers to pay without having to mail costly checks. AutoPay is one such payment channel that offers a win-win for both the biller and the payer. The set-it-and-forget-it convenience ensures on-time payments without the need for either party to intervene or make a special trip to the mailbox.

eBills (i.e., paperless billing) are the fastest way to remove the clutter of mailing out paper invoices. But for eBills to be an attractive option for consumers used to paper bills, it is essential that billers offer eBills that can be viewed and managed through both email and SMS (text). What’s more, eBills should offer convenience-driving options such as one-click payment capabilities built within the bill itself. If customers are given advantages not found within their paper bill, they’re likely to adopt electronic billing.

Let the Taming Begin

Taming monsters that keep you up at night is easier than you think. With Paymentus’ best-in-class electronic billing and payment solution and collective expertise, we can help you not only ward off today’s biggest monsters but tomorrow’s as well. Contact us today to start a conversation with an official monster-taming expert and get the good night sleep you deserve.