Steps Towards Ensuring Ongoing Paperless Adoption
After a period of rapid digital transformation across all sectors this year, organizations will need to identify ways to make new digital users comfortable, so that they will not revert back to paper communication or face-to-face interactions.
Fortunately, there are ways a company can avoid reverse digital transformation. By encouraging their customers to continue with digital communication. the company will realize the ongoing benefit of 2020’s paperless adoption.
Benefits of continued paperless adoption
When receiving physical mail wasn’t an option due to pandemic-related restrictions, customers were happy to receive their bills and statements digitally. But, once mail services normalize and the infection risk reduces, will they continue with digital communication? Or will they prefer a hybrid (receive both digital and print communication), or even revert back to paper completely?
Retaining customers on digital communication is clearly beneficial to the organization when you consider a 40% – 70% saving, compared to the total cost of print, postage and labor.
However, there’s a risk that customers who were forced to interact digitally during the 2020 pandemic, may need to know more about the benefits in order to convince them not to revert back to physical channels.
What happens next has massive cost implications for organizations
The number 1 priority is to make the digital customer experience better than any other. For example, digital alternatives, such as online bills and statements, must be simpler to use and less work for the customer overall.
While critical, this is easier said than done when customers are digital novices who potentially don’t feel comfortable viewing and paying a bill online.
Here are 5 steps towards achieving ongoing paperless adoption
1. Plan it out
It’s advisable not to leave this to chance, but instead, have a strategy that will ensure customers are happy with digital communication and therefore will continue on paperless processes.
This plan needs a defined goal, a suitable solution and technology to achieve the required outcomes.
2. Give customers a number of digital options
Not all customers like using the same channels, nor are they at the same level of digital maturity. The best approach is to offer a range of digital options and let the customer select the ones that best suit their needs.
3. Make it easy for customers to adopt and use digital options
Remove all obstacles in the process of signing up to digital communication and make the whole experience as frictionless as possible.
Nothing will send people back to paper faster than a frustrating registration requirement or a complicated online bill payment process.
4. Cross-team collaboration is essential to drive results
Successful retention requires everyone to be on the same page. Every team that is responsible for a customer touchpoint – marketing, operations, social, call center – must be aligned in terms of the goal to retain customers on digital.
5. Track and change tactics based on results
Revisit the results of your strategic plan regularly and tweak your execution based on what has and hasn’t worked. Measure where customers tend to drop off digital channel/s and remove potential friction at those touchpoints.
In order to ensure that you don’t see a decline in your digital transformation targets in 2021, plan to support your digital users and ongoing paperless adoption. Don’t leave this to chance!
