A survey of telecoms professional commissioned by BriteBill has found they reckon they could be making much better use of bills to improve the customer relationship.

Now we know what you’re thinking: a company that specialises in optimising phone bills has commissioned a study that concluded we need to optimise phone bills. That’s what we thought too so we spoke to Becky Byrne of BriteBill and Teresa Cottam of Omnisperience, who conducted the survey.

They directed their questions at senior execs working for the largest operators but in non-technical roles including those responsible for digital, customer care, marketing and finance. The questions focused on their views on the bills their company produced so, while this was a highly targeted study, we’re satisfied that the resulting data stands up by itself.

Cottham said her company wanted to get a snapshot of operator attitudes to how phone bills are presented and concluded that it remains an afterthought for most operators. This shouldn’t be confused with billing itself and all the other stuff handled by BSS, the actual physical or digital bill itself hasn’t really evolved much over the years. You can see a summary of the findings below.

One of the biggest missed opportunities regarding bill presentation, according to Byrne, lies in using it to interact with the customer. Apparently 40% of people read their bills but only 4% read marketing material, so in other words you’ve got ten times more chance of getting through to them through the bill. And it should just be used to flog them stuff either, regular communication about the benefits of their contract can do a lot to reduce churn, a big chunk of which can be directly attributed to billing issues.

“It’s good to see that service providers understand the importance of customer experience to their digital transformation and innovation programs,” said Byrne. “However, in the rush to transform their businesses, many have completely overlooked the bill’s role as the most common and critical customer touchpoint. Improving and innovating their customers’ billing experience is one of the most tangible ways service providers can communicate the benefits of digital transformation and innovation. This in-turn transforms bills from dull financial statements into strategic customer engagement tools.”

“Service providers face conflicting investment demands, from upgrading their networks to creating new revenue streams and enhancing the customer experience, which can take years to show value,” said Cottham. “However, they’re beginning to realize that by focusing resources on customer experience blackspots such as on boarding processes and billing, they can make a more immediate impact for often modest levels of investment.”

At a time when operators are more worried about new competitors such as OTTs than each other, CEM seems like an obvious area of differentiation. Not only can the bill be a more useful, functional thing itself, in the digital era the operator app through which people increasingly access it is a clear opportunity to engage with them in loads of other ways.