Enhancements by Verizon Business to its Verizon Enterprise Center self-service capabilities are pushing electronic bill adoption for small- and medium-sized businesses beyond the industry average.
Sure, customers get a tree planted in their name through the American Forests Global ReLeaf project, but confidence in, accessibility to and malleability of the electronic bills through Verizon Business’ portal – to say nothing of the cost savings – have driven paperless adoption rates to 25 percent. Mark Chodoronek, executive director of global customer enablement and billing assurance at Verizon Business, said the industry average is between 10 percent and 17 percent.
In the last year, the number of customers who use the VEC portal to view, analyze and pay their bills online grew by 50 percent. More than 40,000 trees have been planted in their names. Just like Verizon’s large enterprise customers, SMBs can now review and pay all their Verizon invoices, check status of a repair case or an order and access network management tools and dashboards.
“Once customers are comfortable with receiving their bill electronically and see there is no difference from their paper bills, no magic discrepancies, those who can make the change make the change,” Chodoronek said, allowing for the few businesses that are bound by law or contract to use paper billing.
Earlier this month, Verizon Business included a focus on the environment to be one of the top technology trends that will support business expansion in the economic recovery. The company said in its report that, “Businesses and consumers will continue to embrace energy-efficiency in the workplace and at home. Green supply chains will be enabled by supply chain automation – eliminating the need to produce and transfer paper bills, and businesses will choose their partners more selectively as more companies set carbon reduction goals.”
In a study this summer, Fiserv found that electronic billing users are 12.5 percent less likely to go to a competitor and 35 percent more likely to pay their bills on time than customers who get paper bills.
And in IDC’s “Green IT & Sustainability Survey 2009”, the firm found that 92 percent of the 300 U.S. companies surveyed said their goal within the next year was to get customers to move from print to online services. In fact, among the four projects IDC identified with strong change goals behind them, the move away from print ranked first over migrating to a modular data center design (81 percent), implementing better client device strategies (80 percent) and deploying software for data center thermal dynamic modeling and control.
