Late bill-pay notification has become one of the most heavily used applications for PerfTech’s in-browser messaging platform, Bulletin System. In fact, our customer ISPs often cite this application as proving so effective that it alone returns investment for the PerfTech product within months.
Each ISP designs their own notices, writes their own text, specifies the action options they wish to offer, and sets their own delivery schedules. Because each ISP uses the PerfTech platform in an individual way, varying results are produced. However, each generates statistics that showcase the effectiveness of Bulletin System for this application. Included here are results from 3 separate ISP customer profiles: a top-tier MSO, a mid-size MSO, and a small cable ISP.
Profile 1: Top-Tier MSO
Time period of stats: September 2014 – July 2016 (22 months)
Result summary: Sequence of 3 notices resolves at least 97.2% of late-pay subscribers
Beginning the first day of delinquency, one top-tier MSO customer sends a series of 3 notices, each sent daily for an interval of days, until action is taken by the subscriber. Although each of the 3 messages uses verbiage that gradually conveys more urgency, all 3 present the same action options:
· Pay online with link to account
· Pay by phone with phone number included
· Go to a payment center to pay in person, with link to pay center locations
· Mail in payment
The only 2 subscriber actions that can be measured solely through bulletin statistics are: 1) the percentage who immediately link to pay online, and 2) the percentage who link to a list of payment center locations. At all 3 message levels, the number who linked to a list of pay center locations was less than 1%. While the number of subscribers who linked immediately to pay online was under 10% at each of the 3 message levels, the significant effectiveness was revealed by the reduction in numbers of recipients from one notice to the next, since as soon as the pay issue was resolved, the subscriber was automatically removed from the list for the subsequent notice.
Recipients Paid online immediately Cumulative % resolved by next notice
Notice 1 1,362,181 9.2% 90.0%
Notice 2 136,323 6.4% 97.0%
Notice 3 40,363 5.6% 97.2% *
Profile 2: Mid-Size MSO
Time period of stats: March 2016 – July 2016 (4 months)
Result summary: 53.6% overall interaction rate; 15% reduction in billing-related churn
A mid-size MSO customer delivers an in-browser, account-issue notice daily once a payment due date is missed. The notice also includes a customer-support phone number for those who wish to pay over the phone. Once action is taken to pay the bill, the delinquent subscriber is removed automatically from the daily recipient list. The MSO is very pleased with the high interaction rate and fast-pay results, and reports independently that billing-related churn decreased by 15% after beginning to use in-browser notification, presumably due to timely notification and the ability to resolve without confrontation. The overall interaction rate is shown below, the sum of the percentage of subscribers who chose each of the available action options:
Close/Acknowledge this message: 24.9 %
Log in to the subscriber’s account: 15.4 %
Remind me later: 12.3%
See information on in-browser notifications: 1.0 %
Total interaction rate: 53.6 %
Profile 3: Small Cable ISP
Time period of stats: January 2016 – July 2016 (6 months)
Result summary: Sequence of 2 notices resolves at least 91.5% of late-pay subscribers
Beginning 5 days after the billing due date, a small cable ISP sends a notice of late pay daily for up to a week. Those subscribers who do not resolve their bill after a week are then delivered a more urgently worded, walled-garden message for up to an additional 3 days. The percentage of subscribers who take action to log in and pay immediately upon seeing each in-browser notice is shown below. But the real effectiveness is shown by the cumulative percentage of total late-pay recipients who resolve their bill either by the end of the first or the end of the walled-garden notification period.
Paid online immediately Cumulative % resolved by next notice
Notice 1 21.2% 82.4%
Notice 2 51.5% 91.5% *
* probably higher; the percentage who resolved using other payment options is not known by PerfTech