How Utilities and Telecoms Can Deliver Customer Bills and Statements

Utility bills are recurring customer records

Utilities and telecoms providers generate large numbers of recurring documents.

These may include:

• electricity bills
• gas bills
• water bills
• broadband bills
• mobile phone bills
• account statements
• usage summaries
• tariff notices
• contract changes
• final bills

The immediate job is to tell the customer what they owe or what has happened on the account.

But the document may have value long after payment has been made.

Why customers need old bills

Historic bills and statements may be needed for:

• checking previous charges
• comparing usage
• resolving billing disputes
• proving an address
• preparing accounts
• claiming expenses
• confirming service dates
• moving home
• keeping household or business records

That makes the customer’s document history useful in its own right.

The weakness of monthly email attachments

If a provider emails one bill every month, the customer quickly builds up a large number of near-identical messages.

Finding the right document later can be difficult.

The customer may need to remember:

• which provider sent it
• which email address received it
• roughly when it arrived
• whether it was attached or linked
• what the subject line looked like

The older the document, the less reliable that process becomes.

Customer portals help, but the account may not last forever

Many utility and telecoms providers offer excellent online accounts.

These are useful for active customers because they can combine:

• current balances
• meter or usage information
• payments
• account settings
• support
• bills and statements

But customers change provider, move home, cancel services or close accounts.

A bill from two years ago may still matter even though the active service relationship has ended.

The document record and the operational account do not necessarily need the same lifespan.

A better recurring-document process

A good process should make every new bill part of a clear history.

It should support:

• consistent delivery
• easy identification by date and account
• secure access
• simple retrieval of older documents
• access that does not depend on searching email
• a sensible transition when the customer leaves

The goal is not just to get this month’s bill to the customer.

It is to make the customer’s accumulated record useful over time.

Final bills are part of the same problem

The end of the service relationship is particularly important.

A customer may receive a final bill, close the account and later need:

• the final statement
• proof that the account was settled
• historic usage records
• previous bills
• documents connected with a former address

A recurring document process that already gives the customer a reliable document history makes this transition much simpler.

Where Documentd fits

Documentd helps utilities and telecoms providers deliver important customer documents into the customer’s own document home.

Monthly bills and statements can accumulate in a place that is easier for the customer to search and retain than an inbox full of attachments.

The provider gets a repeatable delivery process.

The customer gets a clearer history of important account documents.

And when the customer changes provider or closes the account, those documents do not have to disappear with the active service portal.