Bob’s Corner: Why We Love Self-Service (a Valentine’s Day message)

Published 2/8/24

 

Love can sometimes make simple things complicated. In InvoiceCloud’s case, love is what drives our passion to uncomplicate what should be simple.

It started with a challenging experience trying to pay my monthly utility bill – something I already had no love for was somehow becoming even more tedious. It occurred to me that a simple, everyday task like this should not be so complicated. That notion would go on to attract some truly incredible, like-minded people and become a critical tenant upon which InvoiceCloud was built.

We quickly discovered that the key to making the mundane task of paying bills more convenient was enabling simple self-service at every opportunity. High-quality customer service remains an important piece of the pie, but it became clear that customers wanted an experience that was easy enough to navigate alone, without the help of their biller. The typical customer wanted payment options built for convenience (like the ability to check out as a guest or establish automatic payments) and, when an issue arose, they wanted to feel empowered enough to solve it themselves. As a once-frustrated bill payer, I could relate to this – it has usually been easier to find a fix myself, rather than contacting my biller.

An Exploratory Research Study: Customer Experience and Customer Self-Support, reveals 79% expect organizations to provide self-service options.

In a way, the freedom to self-serve is a form of self-care, not to mention the benefit of time savings. People want to spend their precious time with the people and projects they love, and simplifying tasks outside that purview allows them to do just that.

The win-win comes from all the positives this generates for billers who use our frictionless payment solution. In my experience, you all have an incredible passion for serving your communities and customer bases – and you love to see your processes become more efficient. Encouraging self-service is the bedrock of all this, which is why our team is extremely passionate about what we do, from our Customer Success Managers and Marketing team to our product engineers and beyond.

I will leave you with a little poem, for the love of self-service: Roses are red, violets are blue; let’s save customers time, and your billing team, too!

Happy Valentine’s Day, from my family to yours.

Bob