Pitney Bowes and Group 1 Software Redesign for Satisfaction
Pitney Bowes had a vision — simplify and improve customer invoicing and the associated processes, to ultimately boost customer satisfaction and reduce costs. This vision was multi-faceted and encompassed various initiatives, including:
- Designing and creating new invoice forms
- Converting to an enhanced electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) solution
- Deploying an optimal enterprise system architecture for more effective customer communication management — and new self-service applications
To address this opportunity, a cross-divisional team was engaged to discover, evaluate, and make recommendations for invoicing redesign and standardization. During the assessment phase, the team learned that:
- Four distinct mainframe systems fed 42 separate billing applications, each with its own invoice format and template, representing 23 million invoices from several business units
- Customers needed bills that were easier to read and interpret
- Customers that do business with multiple Pitney Bowes divisions needed access to online account information from a central web site
- Customer-facing employees needed the ability to view exact replicas of hard-copy bills
Pitney Bowes knew that this vision could only be accomplished through a strong, collaborative effort across a number of business units. This collaboration set the ball in motion from vision, to initiative, to reality. Pitney Bowes turned to its own business unit, Group 1 Software, for critical customer communication management (CCM) technology and Professional Services expertise.
Through Group 1's CCM solutions, Pitney Bowes was able to deliver on multiple objectives, namely the following 10 impressive accomplishments:
- Created a standard, uniform look for all invoices
- Realized a 70% reduction in paper and processing costs
- Doubled customer satisfaction through clear and easy–to–read statement designs
- Generated over $56 million in online payments in the first four months alone
- Reduced call center calls
- Enable call center agents the ability to view, print, and send exact replicas of customer documents
- Updated addresses in real time, drastically reducing returned mail costs
- Lowered postage costs through duplex printing
- Consolidated billing for multiple accounts, thereby reducing manual effort
- Converted 68,000 account to web-only statements — eliminating paper altogether
The powerful, flexible set of CCM software solutions helps empower enterprises to efficiently produce, personalize, and present intelligent communications across all customer touch-points. Group 1's CCM Business Editions span a wide range of communication channels, systems, and users to provide an all-encompassing solution to address the complex needs of organizations worldwide.
The task of hosting this solution lies in the hands of Group 1's Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) group. This organization maintains the document creation environment, document loading process, and moving all online payments to the appropriate credit card clearing facilities or for electronic ACH processing. Multiple site and system monitoring systems assure system and web uptime and performance.
While cost savings are important, the ability to service customers more effectively was a key objective for Pitney Bowes. Overall customer satisfaction with the statement design doubled — 80 percent of customers rated the new statements as excellent or very good. Enrollment in Pitney Bowes online bill presentment has skyrocketed, with 68,000 customers choosing to turn off paper-based statements within the first four months alone. With accurate, easy–to–follow statements, incoming calls have decreased significantly. When calls do come in, customer care agents are equipped to provide more responsive service. Agents no longer need to toggle between three or four systems, and customer invoices can be viewed instantly, allowing for reprint, fax, or email as needed by the customer.
Savings. Satisfaction. New online services. Pitney Bowes had the vision and took the steps necessary to simplify and improve processes, thereby boosting satisfaction and reducing costs. Your company can benefit from this same knowledge to improve your business. If you're currently living with the limitations of legacy billing software, find out how the Pitney Bowes team can help you enhance your document designs and production processes. Call us today at 1-888-413-6763.
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