Billing related support queries can account for a significant portion of your inbound calls if your invoice is misleading, confusing, or poorly designed. You company's invoice, both paper and electronic, should follow the 5Cs of good bill design:
The 5Cs of Good Bill Design
- Clarify content
- Communicate brand values
- Consolidate products and services
- Customize content
- Capture information
What's that you say? Bill design is a marketing communication thing and not really that important? Wrong. Designing a good bill is a cross-functional team effort involving customer service, marketing, finance, billing & collections, legal, sales, and IT.
A customer-driven approach to bill design helps:
- Reduce billing support queries
- Reduce costs
- Improve cash flow
- Speed payment / encourage direct debit
- Increase loyalty and retention
- Promote upsell / cross-sell opportunities
- Promote new products and services
- Differentiate service offering
- Reinforce brand values
Good bill design also enhances the customer experience:
I previously developed an invoice using a customer-experience schema to map customer and company drivers across three functional areas: Communicate, Monitor, and Reinforce Value.
Here's an example of the final bill design incorporating the 5Cs of good bill design and an enhanced customer experience.
