PERSONALIZED VIDEO BILLING

THE NEXT STEP IN THE EVOLUTION OF DIGITAL BILLING

Issuing bills and statements has long been regarded as one of the costs of doing business.

When invoices were largely delivered by traditional mail, the high cost and low customer impact associated with billing did not provide an opportunity to truly engage customers.

However, with the variety of digital tools available today, bills now offer a strategic frontier. Transformative companies use billing as a digital touchpoint, incorporating interactive elements and promotional offers in each delivery. Rather than a cost of business, the digital bill offers a potential revenue stream.

But this digital delivery system, while more strategic, fails to optimize as a customer loyalty vehicle. Despite substantial evolution, fundamental challenges persist. Customers still experience confusion and bill shock, both of which funnel them towards the call centre and a higher likelihood of brand abandonment (known as “churn”).

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THE SOLUTION: INTERACTIVE PERSONALIZED VIDEO BILLS

Invoices or statements can be an ideal recurring opportunity to communicate with your customers.

Done properly, they can help build your brand and strengthen your customer relationships.

Interactive personalized video creates the opportunity to do just that.

Personalized video billing is an elevated digital approach. The format narrows in on personally relevant bill and statement data on a one-to-one basis for each viewer.

By excluding extraneous information and educating the customer about relevant details, personalized video lessens the likelihood of bill shock and confusion.

Personalized video bills or statements offer frequent opportunities to communicate with customers, to cross-sell, and to inspire brand loyalty – without persistent customer churn and call centre triggers.

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EMBRACING DIGITAL IS NO LONGER ENOUGH

As outlined in a recent Forrester report, companies intend to place more focus on the care of recurring customers, adding increased frequency of customer engagement, investment in technology, and simplification of process, product, and service design.1

As companies strive to streamline their business processes to optimize the customer experience and support customer engagement, the shift toward the most effective digital solutions is inevitable. To really leverage the full strategic opportunity of bills and statements, companies must include video in their strategy.

“You said addressing rising customer expectations was an important initiative. What action is your firm currently

taking or planning to take to accomplish that?”

© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc.

Increase the frequency of our customer engagement

Improve IT systems to enable us to better serve our customers

Simplify/streamline our business processes that support customer engagement

Improve product/service designs and ease of use

Use customer satisfaction metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of activities and/or investments

34%

31%

28%

28%

28%

1 Varon, Lily, “The Forrester wave: recurring customer and billing management, Q3 2017,” July 31, 2017. Accessed at: http://billing.gotransverse.com/assets/The-Forrester-Wave-Recurring-Customer-And-Billing-Management-Q3-2017.pdf

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BILL SHOCK AND THE RISING COSTS OF CUSTOMER CARE

Bills – be they paper or electronic – have traditionally been a major pain point in the customer journey, a potential source of friction that can result in the loss of customers.

While churn takes place throughout the customer life cycle, billing is one of the key times when the risk of churn is at its highest.

That’s because invoices are often a source of customer confusion, with unexpected line items or charges that lack detailed explanation. They can also be lengthy, complex, and replete with regulatory information and industry jargon.

Just like you, your customers are inundated with information on a daily basis. Couple that with the dramatic decrease of the human attention span, and it’s not surprising that a sales commitment they made three or four weeks ago is already forgotten.

Often, they fail to read their statements in detail, looking instead to the amount due without digging deeper for the details. And frankly, most billing statements lack clarity and don’t provide a straightforward outline of services, accessories, taxes, and other fees.

“Bill shock” – when a customer receives a bill they don’t understand, or that they believe is higher than it should be – can contribute to a negative perception of your company and your industry as a whole. In this era of online reviews and social media communications, there is reputational risk in almost every transaction. Additionally, it can lead to payment delays, customer retention issues, and greater call centre volumes.

Consider the expense of maintaining a call centre. “It is commonly accepted that it costs about $1 per minute for the average call center to service a customer.” 2

If that’s the case, 1,000 calls that last 10 minutes each will cost approximately $10,000. A billing enquiry, one where your representative must walk the client through their invoice line by line and possibly research individual billing items, takes time.

Can your business afford to allocate more resources to helping customers read and understand their bills?

Wouldn’t you rather spend your resources on other activities – like those that generate revenue?

2 VHT website, “Call center metrics: cost per minute”. Accessed at: https://www.vhtcx.com/call-center-metrics/cost-per-minute/

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VIDEO BILLING: ACTIVATE USERS, DEACTIVATE CALL CENTRES

Your billing strategy continues to evolve, changing to meet consumer expectations and to help your business remain competitive. Billing is trending toward greater transparency and granularity, offering a wider array of choices in frequency and format.

A recent report from Gartner reveals that the next generation of billing and statement solutions includes artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to create more intelligent offerings.3

Say hello to video.

When video is introduced to the billing or statement process, a traditional experience is transformed for the viewer. Video turns your invoices and statements into marketing drivers, lowering your costs, increasing operational efficiencies, and helping you gain higher revenue possibilities.

A video bill is one that is personalized to each customer, providing an experience unique to

the individual viewer. Using the customer’s specific data, the video provides greater detail on each invoice or statement line item.

Video is a more effective learning channel than a static print or digital asset, and helps to improve clients’ understanding of your services.

With our interactive personalized video platform, IndiVideo, 90% of customers who receive a video statement report greater satisfaction with – and a better understanding of – their company’s products and services.4

When customers better understand their bills, companies receive fewer service calls, thereby reducing customer care costs. Video bills help to increase customer retention because video viewers are less likely to cancel their services out of shock.

Personalized video billing may also increase sales because videos can provide targeted and personalized promotional offerings.

Digital bills and statements help to smooth the customer journey, while making the process of receiving payments easier and more cost effective. Research also suggests that digital customer statements and invoices enjoy significantly higher open rates than any other type of email communications.5

This means that if you’re interested in communicating regularly with your customers, digital billing statements are much more likely to be opened and read. Couple that with video – which, according to Hubspot, leads to a 200–300% increase in click-through rates6 – and chances are you’ll see your engagement go through the roof!

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Interactive videos also allow for satisfaction metrics to be gathered more often and more accurately. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can then be analyzed to provide clear feedback on the effectiveness of activities and their return on your investment.

For your customers, video bills and statements provide convenience, clarity, and a significant enhancement to the customer experience. Customers become more satisfied with your products and services, more loyal to your brand, and more likely to deepen their relationship with you through the purchase of additional products and services.

But the value of video billing to your business can be even more significant, increasing brand trust and reducing customer care costs.

3 Anderson, Robert, “Competitive landscape: cloud subscription and recurring billing management,” November 14, 2018. Accessed at: https://www.gartner.com/doc/3893079?ref=mrktg-srch

4 BlueRush website, “Kunder: creating greater knowledge and engagement.” Accessed at: https://bluerush-prod.bluerush.ca/en/resources/kunder/

5 Goodfellow, Jennifer. The Drum, “Email click through rates drop to 1.6%, with publishing industry hit hardest,” August 15, 2017. Accessed at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/08/15/email-click-through-rates-drop-16-with-publishing-industry-hit-hardest

6 Templeman, Mike. Forbes, “17 Stats And Facts Every Marketer Should Know About Video Marketing,” September 6, 2017. Accessed at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/miketempleman/2017/09/06/17-stats-about-video-marketing/#6cdb9819567f

4 REASONS VIDEO BILLING IS AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS-BUILDING TOOL

Increase your revenue potential

With every digital invoice or statement, you create another opportunity for communication with your customer. A video bill is a more targeted, personalized experience for customers, providing an enhanced cross-sell opportunity.

Lower your costs

Video billing will reduce costly one-on-one call centre enquiries regarding statements. Indeed, interactive video bills provide the means for customers to drill down into details or link to support directly from their bill. This delivery method encourages customer self-service.

Better serve your customers’ future needs

Electronic delivery can open channels for your company to learn more about each customer based on how they interact with the content and what subsequent actions they take. It allows for the gathering of more data, with greater accuracy. KPIs can provide feedback on the effectiveness of activities and return on investment, and can inform further optimization.

Improve your customer relationships

A video bill is personalized and includes content that specifically addresses each customer individually. Personalized content makes for a more direct, one-on-one experience, which feels more intimate to the customer, and can help increase customer loyalty to your brand.

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VIDEOS MAKE A MEASURABLE DIFFERENCE

A pension funds firm recently leveraged BlueRush’s IndiVideo platform to transform their customer statements.

Customers had been struggling to understand their text-based pension statements. The shift to interactive personalized video statements improved customer education and engagement, and their ability to make informed financial decisions.

Customers were greeted by name, taken though their statements, and presented with options to optimize their pension. A whopping 70% of viewers remained fully engaged and watched the entire video.

The pension funds firm was able to eliminate a large number of paper statements, gain up-sell opportunities, and learn important customer insights through targeted data gathering.

Put the power of personalized video billing to work for you

Personalized video billing and statements can help to alleviate pain points along the customer journey, culminating in an overall more positive and less expensive customer experience. If 59% of senior executives prefer to watch video over reading text on the same topic,7 it stands

See for yourselfClick to watch how this personalized pension statement uses video to explain account data and urge the customer to increase contributions.

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to reason that your customers are similarly inclined. Reduce your call centre volumes, better engage your customers, and easily scale for the future with personalized video bills and statements.

7 Digital Information World, “25+ stats that prove 2017 is the year of video marketing – infographic.” Accessed at: https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2016/12/infographic-video-marketing-statistics-2017.html

Customer expectations have transformed how brands create digital engagement.

Meet the challenge with IndiVideo by BlueRush.

Create a memorable experience, simplify complex products and ensure immediate relevancy using BlueRush’s Interactive Personalized Video Platform, IndiVideo.

The platform’s data-driven video ensures a seamless customer journey from initial attraction to retention. Increase conversions and decrease funnel abandonment at every stage of your customers’ journey with IndiVideo.

IndiVideo’s proprietary technology is built to scale cost-effectively and can be deployed behind your firewall with no compromise to data security.

lift in conversions using

IndiVideo

40%MORE THAN

engaged beyond first minute of the

IndiVideo

70%MORE THAN

of viewers click an IndiVideo

CTA

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bluerush.com416-203-0618

info@bluerush.com

CONTACT US FOR YOUR SOLUTION

IndiVideo creates engagement, brand loyalty, and upsell opportunities across the customer lifecycle.

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