5-Billing-Statement-Sins-that-Could-be-Damaging-Your-Customer-Experience

5 Billing Statement Sins that Could be Damaging Your Customer Experience

Are You Getting the Basics Right on CX?

In this eBook, you’ll learn five of the most basic billing statement “sins” that leading companies still commit against customers, and how to rectify them—all backed by comprehensive consumer research.

ENJOYABLE

“How enjoyable were they to do business with?”

“How easy were they to do business with?”

EASY

“How effective were they at meeting your needs?”

MEETS NEEDS

Suppose your company just rolled out major projects to improve customer experiences (CX). You launched a new app that makes it easier for customers to find account information and seek support. You revamped your website for easier navigation, complete with a chatbot to assist customers. Despite all that, however, your contact center keeps receiving waves of billing calls from customers confused by what they see on their bill. Their negative associations with your billing increase churn even after the CX advancements you made elsewhere.

Companies striving for easier and more enjoyable CX risk overlooking the consumer’s most basic requirement: meeting their needs. Meeting customer needs is the foundation of the Customer Experience Pyramid popularized by Forrester Research.1 2 In our consulting work with companies across industries, CSG found even the most sophisticated, CX-driven companies underperform at key functions in the “Meets Needs” layer.

One of the most common problem areas, according to our consumer research, was billing—namely, billing statement design. Customers are frustrated with unclear due dates, unexplained charges, unintuitive layouts and other issues with their bills.

This reinforced what the CSG Communication Design and Delivery team saw throughout their extensive work with companies to redesign bills.

Companies have a clear opportunity to stand out from competitors by designing a billing statement that’s attuned to what customers really want. They can take advantage of a reliably-read communication they send up to 12 times every year.

1 Outside In, Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, Forrester Research, 2012 2 Converging Perspectives: Product Development Research for the 1990s, E.B.-N. Sanders CSG® IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF CSG SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, INC. © 2022 CSG SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, INC. AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES (“CSG”). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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What a Better Billing Statement Can Do When we say the billing statement is a major opportunity for improvement for companies, here’s what we mean. A more customer-focused bill: Reduces billing calls to the contact center. Ask contact center agents to list the most common reasons customers call with a billing question, and they’ll likely place confusion about the statement at the top. That’s what we discovered in our interviews with agents at various companies, including ADT. When ADT redesigned their bill, their inbound billing inquiries dropped 20%.

Increases on-time payments. Clear statement composition reduces the chance a customer will misinterpret when their payment becomes late. For customers, that means fewer inadvertent delinquencies and late fees; for companies, that means fewer past due accounts, collections activities and unhappy customers leaving.

Strengthens trust in the brand. A trustworthy brand is clear and transparent about the information customers need to know, and they don’t muddy the waters with information they don’t— especially in the billing statement, which is at the heart of the trust exchange.

Minimizes negative emotions associated with the billing experience. For many consumers, opening their bill can still be a stressful experience even if they aren’t calling in with questions or complaints. A reader-friendly and appealing statement design can keep this common pain point from feeling cold and transactional.

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Reinforces the brand identity. Does the bill talk to customers with the same voice and terminology as the brand’s website or other customer communications (print, email, app, etc.)? Is it following the visual brand guidelines? If not, the bill might be weakening the brand’s identity with customers.

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HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THE STATEMENT YOU’RE SENDING CUSTOMERS IS DOING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS?

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We Couldn't Find a Tool That Measures Bill Quality from the Consumer's Perspective. So We Built One. It ’s common to see billing statement quality assessed by rankings—i.e., comparing Company A to Company B in bill design. What ’s been missing is an instrument that identifies what exactly the bill does well and how the company can improve it.

CSG sends print and digital billing statements to half of US households, ever y month. Knowing the reach of a billing statement, we found the lack of a bill design standard puzzling.

So we developed the Bill Design Assessment: a 23-question test to determine if a bill has all the qualities it needs, based on what customers expect. To create it, we drew from not only our 35-plus years’ experience in bill printing and composition but also comprehensive research. It identifies concrete improvements a company can make to their bill to increase the benefits discussed on the previous page.

CSG® IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF CSG SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, INC. © 2022 CSG SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, INC. AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES (“CSG”). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Methodology Behind the Bill Design Assessment

We gathered consumer preferences from primary and secondary research, analyzing over 130 studies on what consumers wanted from bill presentment.

Studies were dated from 1993-2022, were both national and international, and spanned various industries.

We distilled that research down to 23 Yes/No questions to assess any bill for metered or subscription services. These questions deal with two categories: ingredients (Does the bill include X?) and structure (Is X in the right place?)

Sample Questions

( Ingredient) Is every charge explained somewhere in the bill?

(Structure) Is the amount due the largest (by size) piece of information on the bill?

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5 Billing Statement Sins

Highest Score

13

Passed

10 Failed

Using the Bill Design Assessment, we analyzed print and digital bills from 30 different companies in communications ser vices, utilities and other industries that use metered or subscription billing. All of them showed ample opportunity for improvement; even the highest scoring bill failed 10 of the 23 criteria questions.

Of the common fails, we’ve identified five that caused customers some of the most pain across the 130+ studies we examined.

1. Not presenting the amount due as the most prominent information 2. Not providing a clear due date on the bill 3. Not linking the amount due and clear due date 4. Not explaining changes (or acknowledging no changes) since the previous bill 5. Hiding mission-critical information Read on to see examples and how to fix them.

Lowest Score

5

Passed

18

NOTE: The example images are based on real statements we tested. We’ve recreated them all in a sample “Lexar” brand to keep their brands and information anonymous.

Failed

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SIN # 1 Not presenting the amount due as the most prominent information Why it matters Consumers consistently confirm in studies that they consider the amount due to be the most useful and most important information in the bill. That’s probably not surprising; what is surprising, however, is how many companies don’t make the amount due the easiest information for consumers to find on the page.

If it weren’t circled, customers would have to actively search for the amount due on the top example bill. Notice how it’s in the same font size as less important information around it, and the only design element calling attention to it is a different color font.

In addition to being frustrating, a less-than prominent amount due shows customers that the company clearly didn’t design the bill with their needs in mind.

Disclaimer: While size is one of many ways (like blank space, color, position, etc.) to measure prominence, we believe it’s the most objective way to ensure critical information stands out.

How to solve it The most obvious fix is making the amount due the largest piece of information. However, that’s not the only way to give it the most prominence, and larger font size alone doesn’t make it easy to find.

See how the bottom example here also uses a prominent location to prioritize the amount due.

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SIN # 2 Not providing a clear due date on the bill Why it matters Aside from the amount due, the most important bill information to consumers is the due date. But the due date can be ambiguously phrased. This creates costly consequences for many consumers: paying a late fee, sinking time into customer service calls and having an overall frustrating experience.

A bill makes its due date clear when it is explicit about when the payment would be late. A phrase that doesn’t do that, yet shows up on bills all the time, is “Due By” (and its various forms including “Please pay by x date”). In this top example, is the customer still on time if they pay on March 10? Or does the payment become late on March 10?

How to solve it Keep it clear and simple, and avoid the phrase “Due By” (or “Please Pay By” or other similar versions) in favor of “Due On,” “Due Before” or even just “Due,” like in this bottom example. That helps eliminate the unnecessary ambiguity about when a payment becomes late.

Also notice something else the bottom example does well.

Evidence shows that finding the due date, like the amount due, is also a primary goal for the consumer, so it should be presented as next most prominent on the bill.

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SIN # 3 Not linking the amount due and clear due date Why it matters In our primary and secondary research, we’ve found that consumers report having a positive experience with their bills when they know 1) what they owe and 2) when it’s due. And to consumers, it makes the most sense that they would find those two pieces of information together.

Consumers don’t want to look in two different locations for the amount due and due date. But a bill is especially helpful when it links them visually, such as with a graphic like a circle. The top example, however, keeps amount due and due date confusingly separate.

How to solve it Group together the amount due and the (clear) due date using an outlined circle or unified statement. This helps the consumer minimize “information hunting” on the bill and improves their experience.

Avoid using rectangles and squares because they are increasingly associated with advertisements and are subject to “banner blindness”—which, according to the Nielsen Norman Group, makes anything near (or resembling) an advertisement less detectable to consumers.

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SIN # 4 Not explaining changes (or acknowledging no changes) since the previous bill Why it matters If consumers see any change in the amount due, they immediately investigate it, which includes making a call to the contact center.

It’s a time-consuming experience—and it can be prevented with an explanation on the bill itself.

The top example offers no indication if (or why) the current amount due is higher, lower or the same as the previous bill’s.

How to solve it A bill can indicate an increase, decrease or “no change” from the previous bill in various ways. What matters is whether it’s clear and frees the customer from the need to do the math, or remember or retrieve their last bill.

The bottom example has a clear sentence that says the amount stayed the same, and it shows a summary of the discounts and plan components affecting the amount.

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SIN # 5 Hiding mission-critical information Why it matters We’ve learned in our research that consumers are generally ready to call with a billing question before they even look at the back of the bill. So it’s important to put key information on the front page, with no page-flipping or scrolling down required.

Consumers consider these pieces of information “critical” when they view their bill: 1) whom it’s from; 2) the amount due; 3) a clear due date; 4) a date range for services billed; and 5) an indication if changes happened (or didn’t) since the last bill.

The top example shows the top half of the bill only includes numbers 1 and 2.

How to solve it Keep all mission-critical information above the fold, or the top half of the first page. According the Nielsen Norman Group, even digital billing information on mobile or web interfaces has a “fold”: if the consumer has to scroll, click through or drill down to find it, it’s below the digital fold.

The bottom example highlights all five pieces of mission-critical information in the top half.

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That Was Only 5 Out of 23 While these billing statement sins are pivotal to the customer billing experience, they account for just five elements of the bill that companies can improve. They also make up five of the 23 questions on CSG’s Bill Design Assessment. Other questions include:

Does the bill include any offers of financial assistance?

Does it briefly explain every charge in the detailed charge table?

Does it use data visualization (e.g., pie charts, line charts, or bar charts) to help explain usage, comparison or how the bill is calculated?

Want to learn more about our Bill Design Assessment and how you can use it to improve customers’ billing experiences?

Contact us today.

About CSG CSG empowers companies to build unforgettable experiences, making it easier for people and businesses to connect with, use and pay for the services they value most. Our customer experience, billing and payments solutions help companies of any size make money and make a difference. With our SaaS solutions, company leaders can take control of their future, and tap into guidance along the way from our more than 5k-strong experienced global team.

Want to learn more about how to be a change maker and industry shaper like our 1,000-plus clients?

Visit csgi.com to learn more.

CSG® IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF CSG SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, INC. © 2022 CSG SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, INC. AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES (“CSG”). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.