StreamServe Utilities™

Read Any Good Bills Lately?

The answer is probably not. Most utility bills display information, but they don’t communicate well. Consequently, almost all of us simply hunt for the “amount due” and look no further if we aren’t shocked by the number.

However, given that the bill is the most regular touchpoint a utility has with its customers—and that it’s the one communication that customers are certain to pay attention to—the bill is a prime channel for customer communication.

At a minimum, better designed and clearly organized bills make a better impression on customers. They take less time to understand, and can provide additional explanatory information that help customers make sense of their usage without having to call customer service.

In addition to making it easy to upgrade the “look and feel” and include better information on the bill, StreamServe also enables the utility to use the bill as a marketing channel. Bills can be personalized to include messages and offers that are selected based on both the customer’s profile and the specifics of that particular bill. For example, this enables you to offer energy audits or equipment upgrades to customers with unusually high usage.

With its intelligent document assembly capabilities, StreamServe has helped customers to simultaneously improve communications on billing and reduce the cost of materials, production, and delivery. Many customers have been able to cut the size of billing mailings by intelligently consolidating information into fewer, better designed pages.

In general, costs are lower because all bills, regardless of output form, are dynamically assembled from one master template. Output is automatically generated to match the customer’s preferred delivery channel (paper, electronic, Web, etc.). Furthermore, as required, an appropriate image of the bill is simultaneously submitted to the utility’s archive system.