Home

By Greg Van den Heuvel, SVP Customer Engagement Solutions, Pitney Bowes

Billing. It's rarely been a subject to spark lively conversations. But new technology is driving huge change, and soon, you might actually look forward to receiving your bills. The reason? EngageOne Video Billing.

Smart service providers are taking these transactional customer touch points and using them as opportunities to educate and engage with customers. Rather than sending a bill through the main channels of communication (like direct mail or email), customers receive a personalized, interactive video experience, taking customer engagement to a new level. The videos draw on different customer data sets, such as demographic, historical and location intelligence data to create dynamic, meaningful, real-time video content which changes based on responses to customer prompts.

Whether it’s a telecommunications service or insurance provider, consumers are interacting with businesses how and when they want to--with the help of video—and for businesses, they’re now able to upsell and cross-sell products and services in ways like never before.

The birth of a trend

Video is huge. A shift in lifestyles, an increase in device ownership, the improvement in quality of film produced on devices, and the ease of sharing it are all key drivers for the uptake of video. Globally, nearly four billion YouTube videos are watched every day, totalling six billion hours per month. From the Frozen “Let it go” theme song, to Donald Trump’s latest faux pas, to Fantasy Football strategies, we look to video to entertain, educate and quickly inform us in our time-pressed lives.

Videos can be consumed anytime, anywhere; whether you’re on the Metro commuting to work, or sitting at your child’s soccer game – more than half of YouTube video views come from a mobile device. What’s more, consumers want control and choice. The desire for more content options and content-on-demand drives consumers to source online-delivered content (historically the domain of traditional media sources). Consumers exercise their choice on how, when and where they obtain their content and are more active in their media habits than ever before. With a strong appetite for video content, why would businesses continue sharing linear and passive viewing experiences, when customers would prefer a personalized and interactive experience?

Enterprise video uptake is growing too, as employees look to replicate the multimedia content experience they're used to experiencing outside the office. From in-training videos to new product education, businesses are using video as a way to share complex information. In fact, video has been shown to improve the understanding of a product or service by 74 percent, so it’s no surprise companies are turning to video to also explain complex information to customers in a clear, precise and accurate way.

Shifting the customer experience

For businesses, abandoning the traditional monthly statement in favor of a personalized, EngageOne Video can reduce operating costs, with resources diverted away from front office customer service desks as the video explains complexities firsthand. Additionally, it generates brand loyalty and higher retention rates, as customers can easily understand their services through interactive explanations.

For customers, EngageOne highlights and prioritizes information, and it reduces the need—and time spent—talking through bills and insurance quotes with call center reps (not to mention the frustration this can cause). It facilitates a virtual two-way relationship in real-time, as different prompts embedded within the video lead to instant outcomes: more detail on charges, credits and account inclusions, for example.

Ultimately, today’s empowered consumers want self-service, flexible payment options and the ability to change their policy details online. According to research from E&Y, consumers want to choose their communication channels: 80 percent of insurance customers are happy to use digital and remote channel options for different tasks and transactions. And they want “more frequent, meaningful and personalized communications.”

Businesses have a duty to respond to this demand, and must do so if firms are to remain competitive, build relationships and retain customers. This doesn’t require an expensive, complex new customer communications strategy. Instead, insurers and telecommunications providers can make the most of every touch point they have with their customers, and use these opportunities to engage and impress customers, generate interest and excitement, develop trust and drive loyalty.

Reasons to believe

One of the greatest challenges for telecommunications providers is customer churn. When a customer walks into a cell phone store, their eyes go right to the shiny object: the cell phone. Often they miss important information concerning pricing, so when they receive their first bill, they go into a state of mind we call “bill shock.” In fact, the majority of customers who cancel their service with a telecommunications provider will do so within the first 90 days of service.

We worked with a leading, global telecommunications provider to help reduce bill shock and increase customer satisfaction. The provider sent a total of 125,000 videos to new customers and those customers who recently made changes to their service plan—over 85 percent viewed the videos, with 32 percent completing the survey offered at the end of the video. Forty-six percent of those customers who viewed the bill paid their bill on time, equating to just over $5 billion of revenue paid on time.

In the insurance sector, Security First Insurance, a privately-owned homeowner’s insurance provider who offers protection to Florida residents, introduced EngageOne Video communication as an extension to its strong customer commitment and community focus and to convey important policy information. To date, the company has sent out about 52,000 videos, with an open rate of 55 percent, with 76 percent of those viewers who opened the video watching it to about the 4-minute mark. Now, following the success of the English language version, Spanish and Portuguese language versions have also been launched, responding to customer demand and driving tailored, immersive communications.

The future of video communication

The very nature of this new interactive media fits perfectly with the ethos of the empowered consumer, as it is the customer who decides which content to view and when in their journey they choose to view it. Those service providers empowering customers–giving them flexibility, choice and accuracy in their communications–are driving transformation across the customer experience while reducing operating costs, generating brand loyalty and increasing retention rates.

Humans are visual animals. Up to 90 percent of the information that comes to the human brain is visual. We learn faster and remember more when we participate and experience things for ourselves. Video can be captivating. And how often can you say that about a bill?