A recent advertisement by an Indian Communication Service provider (CSP) for reducing the use of paper got me thinking…Can the Indian telecom industry do a little more in this regard. No doubt, generating awareness on the potential use of mobile applications to reduce the use of paper is a great idea. But providing a monetary incentive to their customers to move from using paper to an electronic medium will go a long way in ‘Walking the talk’.
Though the broadband density in India is currently not high and not every bill paying customer has access to a web enabled medium, but this strategy can definitely be used to target the ones who do have access, thus making them early adopters to the use of electronic billing/web self care. With the increase in broadband density, this idea will only grow with more customers adopting the web as a medium to receive (and pay) their bills.
For a CSP, the bill printing and postage costs are 5 times more than that of delivering an electronic copy of the bill. Passing these cost benefits down to the customer who opt to receive an e-bill is a good strategy to promote the ‘Green’ initiative. The bill could be mailed to the customers email ID or loaded on to the customer’s online account with the service provider and the customer can easily access it via any web enabled device. Its not that the Indian CSPs do not have an online presence or are not using an EBPP (Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment) application to enhance their web presence and promote customer self care and payment. It is just that not enough incentives are being provided to effectively promote these to customers. Promoting the use of E-billing/ web self care applications will, additionally, help drive down the billing support costs by diverting traffic from notably the most expensive customer support channel i.e. the Voice customer care channel. This will help the CSP in reducing costs as well promoting the ‘green’ initiative.
Another idea could be to promote automated payment methods to pay bills (ECS); this will ensure that the money is automatically deducted from the customers account at a preagreed date/schedule after bill generation. The benefits of reduction of payment processing costs can also be passed in the form of discounts to customers who pay by direct debit. This will also reduce the use of paper (paper currency/ cheques).
The idea of transferring the cost savings to customers who choose to receive only an electronic copy of the bill or choose to pay their bills automatically, is already being used as a promotion strategy in Europe by some CSPs. In a hyper price sensitive Indian telecom market, these promotions are bound to succeed.
