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I don't think you're living in a vacuum - I think your experience is shared by most SMEs.  The technology and services available haven't suited SME eInvoicing up to now.  Hopefully that is changing now with these developments allowing PDF invoices to be read directly into accounting packages. 

It won't happen overnight but with a bit of luck you should be able to reduce your spend on fax paper in the near future. :-)

We certainly do!  And with paper turn-off rates of 70% at Wesbank, 60% at Multichoice (CableTV provider) and 12% in just 10 months at CoT Utilities, our clients' customers are making that decision - in droves!  With not a discount in sight...

Thanks for the comment, Ketharaman. 

It just seems a shame that billers have to "pay" their customers to use a service that should be more convenient and add value to them.  I still believe (and our client's adoption figures back it up) that the "right" eBill solution supported by the "right" adoption strategies will be more effective and save more money than discounting bills.

I guess we'll let the billers decide that one...

@Ketharaman. If there was some detail missing in the original article it's because it's a blog-post, not an eBilling Masterclass... :-) 

And making eBilling the default choice while offering paper bills as an alternative isn't forcing anything on anyone.  Watch this great presentation by Dan Ariely for details of how this works though.

Anyway, while everyone’s experiences are different, our experiences with our clients have shown that the solution we provide is easier than opening a paper envelope and more valuable with the digital experience it provides. Our successes are evident in the fact that we smash industry averages for paper turn off.

Perhaps it’s that your experiences are based on driving customers to portals which have proven time and time again to not meet with what customers want. Happy to have this conversation offline so I can tell you more about why these strategies work for us and for some of the biggest brands across the world.

Thanks for your comments, Ketharaman. 

While the open rates of paper bills can't be questioned, I'm not sure how these companies are measuring the conversion rate for their print transpromo as there's really no way to tell who's looking at what.  The Direct Marketing Association certainly rates the effectiveness of direct email marketing as several times more profitable than any other direct marketing media.  And a tracked link in an eBill provides companies with not only the facility to measure the effectiveness of any campaign, but also directs customers at the time of their interest directly to the page in question to take up the service.  From a marketing viewpoint, it just doesn't get any better than that! :-)

When taking on new customers, suggesting eBilling as the default while giving them the option to choose paper is the only effective way to save money on paper bills.  Using human nature (laziness) as a tool to enhance adoption within the existing customer base, while providing an easy 1-click "revert to paper" function on every eBill sent, is also just good business practice.  It's only where companies "force" eBilling on customers and don't provide an easy unsubscribe function that problems occur and customers are frustrated or put off - and it sounds like this is what happened to you.  We would never advise clients to do this...

Thanks for your comments, John and Ketharaman.  Both make good points as to how the Post Offices world-wide can update their business models to better suit customers' current requirements.  Let's hope they move forward in this way...

Yes, one (friction) at a time is good fishing, as the saying goes! :-)

For proof of address here in HK, I recently just had to open my laptop (at the Government Vehicle Licence Authority) and show my PDF electricity eBill for them to be satisfied.  Different countries moving at different speeds on this sort of thing...

It will be interesting to see how mobile payments (and QR codes) do in the future.  They've been on the cusp of great things for a few years now - maybe their time will come soon for paper bills.  For eBills, a 1-click button in the PDF works well, charging the card/account on file for that customer.

Thanks for your comments, Ketharaman.  You raise a great point about double-dipping – truly the worst of both worlds!

And the friction that you mention is certainly there for 9 out of 10 eStatements being provided to customers at the moment.  Most remove the convenience of paper and add no additional value.  But there are ways around most of this friction.

Security is important but should be set at an appropriate level for the document being delivered.  A simple date-of-birth probably provides more security than any paper bill/statement, but the biller/bank has to decide the trade-off between strong security and customer convenience and often errs on the side of caution.

The acceptance of eBills for KYC is something that I notice is getting better generally, but again some countries/companies are more conservative than others.  A quick-print button within a PDF eBill at least provides an easy facility to create a hard-copy when required.

And if the eBill is in PDF format, Adobe Reader X allows highlighting and annotation of the bill, which can then be saved/filed.

If you then add some additional features like payment facilities, graphs, downloadable data file, feedback forms – things that a paper bill can never offer – then turning off paper might just become more appealing.