Bills that do not arrive, crowded commercial offices, limited schedule and the call center with which it is difficult to communicate. Paying a bill then can become a great Odyssey for a user of service companies.
Nowadays, the user’s experience and the perception they have of each company is essential.
Any company-user contact is a key moment. If an organization provides a poor user’s attention,
everything achieved vanishes at once.
“I didn’t get the bill and the second due date is over. Now I have to go to an office to pay it but
to do this, I have to ask for permission at work”. “I was half an hour calling 0800 to pay with the card but I couldn’t get through” ”They didn’t send me the bill and it is me who has to look for a way to go to a branch to pay it” These are some of the users’ complaints that have revealed the fact that the companies are not doing their best to make paying a bill , regardless of their state, a simple task.
The collection, time to pay, can not be unaware of the user’s experience and the costs that a bad or poor solution can increase. Over the last years, the companies have included different collection entities, widening in this way the clients’ choices and even extending the opening hours at non-banking entities. Later on, the digital collection area started, as with PayMyBills that widened the possibility of paying to 7×24 during the 365 days of the year, at least for bank users (only 48 % out of the population over 18 years ). However, all these possibilities are not enough to meet the users’ needs and expectations.
Gustavo García, con-founder of ArtdeCode, explains that the information of each user’s debt is sent to the collection entities, generally offline (files or bar codes of the invoice). Then, they inform the payment to the companies, once it has been collected, offline too, so that it is usual a 49-72 hours delay for the company to know about the payment made at an external collection point. It can raise different problems , for instance:
- The bar codes cannot be read on the cell’s screen so that the user has to be in charge of printing this and then go to a collection entity.
- Unnecessary calls complaining for an already made payment which has not been displayed in the virtual company office.
- Moving to an office to pay because the bill has not been delivered by mail.
- Arrears actions taken on users that have already paid but the companies do not know.
- Service suspension to users due to lack of payment although it has already been paid.
- Payment over the second due date in most of the companies is only possible in commercial offices, which implies much of the user’s time spent on this action.
There are also some collection entities that support online and partially online operations. Both modalities greatly reduce the problems discussed by Gustavo García. They involve integrations between the commercial system of both the company and the collection entities. The online
operation requires that the entity invoke a service that provides the documents or invoices that inform the user’s current debt and then, after the payment , informs the milestone to the company immediately so that it impacts on the commercial system and , if it is necessary any arrears action or service cut can be avoided. In contrast, in the partially online operation, only the payment milestone is informed at once, Emilio Alberdi, founder member of Artcode, tells us.
When the user becomes the focus and the client is the center of a company, it has to think about each of the actions and contacts with the user. At this time, the problems brought about by the offline operation must be taken into account and a decision to face the change must be made. This means a resounding improvement in its users’ experience, in the company’s image they have made up. Simultaneously, great economic benefits for the organization are generated, by reducing costs in their internal processes. This is the moment when “the company meets the problem that each entity deals with a different integration protocol, as regards messaging and accountability and liquidation files. This implies that it has to develop, test, standardize and monitor as many integrations as payment entities it decides to include. For larger companies, it might make an
economic sense but for the smaller ones it is more complex. Anyway ,in both cases it ends up being an implementation project of about 6 and 12 months, as long as it can rely on resources trained on Systems to do the integrations”, Gustavo García explains.
In view of this situation and with the previous experience of having been working in service companies, Gustavo García and Emilio Alberdi, ArtdeCode founders, developed Innova CCS (Customer Centric Solutions). It stands as the solution to reduce the current frictions between the user of public service and the companies with the resulting improvement of the rates of satisfaction and service quality. At the same time, costs are reduced and the processes for the company are improved. This platform, cloud-based software, is made up of the following solutions:
- Customer Portal : it is a self-management channel for users to consult debt, download invoices, pay online, enter and follow claims and procedures. It has web, mobile web and
Android app and IOS.
- Business Manager : It updates the commercial system without replacing it, as it integrates with it. An integrated view of each user or client is available, that is; associated services , debt situation, bill and payment history, income and a monitoring system of claims and procedures. In turn, it simplifies the tasks of the commercial representatives as specific wizard type screens are available for each one.
- Comms Tracker : it makes it possible for the company to carry out a communications policy with its users, to shape different shipping rules so that each communication is sent to each user through the most appropriate channel ( email, SMS, push , etc ). It is ideal for the bills to arrive on time and in due form because of its greater effectiveness than the traditional mail and good traceable features.
- Cash Connector & Control: allows online operation with collection entities.
The last solution , Innova Cash Connector & Control has two main components : a payment hub (Cash Connector) and a conciliator (Cash Control).
Innova Cash Connector simplifies the integration to operate online against the collection entities and speeds up the implementation process, reducing the integration to only one, that is, the commercial system of the company with Innova Cash Connector.
Its ideal complement is “Innova Cash Control” by which the processes of accountability and liquidation are streamlined for both online and offline operations as it is shaped to have the accountability and liquidation files (email, FTP, web site, etc ) for its automatic process. Once it has been obtained, after being validated the different conciliations are carried out making it possible the complete traceability between the accounting entries and the associated transactions or vouchers. It also has graphics and reports for a better tracking of errors found in the accounting for their resolution by the entities.
In short, Innova Cash Connector & Control allows companies to start operating online quickly. It implies a reduction of costs of other internal processes, like early delay or reconnection management. It also improves the user’s experience and perception they have of the company and optimizes accounting processes.
“As we know , there are different realities in this type of companies, some of them are bigger whereas others are smaller, but we have shaped a marketing scheme that allows all of them to have access and benefit from it having the advantages provided by Innova Cash connector & Control”, Emilio concludes.
