Large corporations are often good at many things. Usually, things pertaining to their business.
Niagara Mohawk does a pretty fair job of delivering electricity in Upstate NY. They’re good about making repairs quickly and doing proactive infrastructure maintenance. They’re even tolerably decent at resolving issues, though customer service is not the business they’re in. What they’re terrible at, however, we hear from an employee who relocated from Albany, is sending out bills and billing documents.
Because they provide a regulated service, and the regulations determine when and why they can involuntarily terminate service,
the need to not only send the usual bills, past due notices, and customer communications, but they’re obligated to send certain types of additional notices and warnings at certain times in the billing process. Further, these notices vary based on the municipality, state, county, Medicaid recipient status of household members, disability status of the household members, the presence of medical equipment requiring power, and many other factors. This results in a billing and communication nightmare.
Many businesses have equally complex billing requirements and regulations.
Companies are always trying to save money, especially in this economic climate. But the requirements for customer communication and billing don’t change based on the status of the economy. The law is still the law, and your company still needs to comply with it. What’s the solution?
Outsource your billing. It’s that simple.
We’re not talking about sending your bill printing to Mumbai or Manila.
We’re talking about sending your bill generation, collation, mailing, return mail management, glossy insert production and insertion, and all the associated functions to Miami.
What’s in Miami, you ask? The foremost experts in Variable Data Printing in the country, that’s what. Print Farm has extensive experience in variable information printing. Here’s how the process works: The basic format of the bill, communication, letter, etc. is determined. You push a database to Print Farm at whatever interval is appropriate for your business. Print Farm then handles producing the bills or communications in one single printing run. Some companies will print the underlying document and then print the customer information on top of it. That’s often wasteful and impractical, as well as increasing the necessary time to produce the document.
Print Farm has a better way.
By using variable information printing and variable data printing in the proper way, the customer information and the underlying document are merged into a single file before being sent to press. Single-run variable information printing is the most efficient way to print bills, print billing notices, and print customer communications.
What happens after the printing is completed? Some companies will ship you a stack of documents and expect you to collate, insert, and mail. This is the least efficient way to handle it.
The Print Farm Way is to have everything handled in one place.
Once the variable data printing for bills is completed, the bill is collated with any necessary inserts, return envelopes, and the like, sealed in an envelope, and mailed in bulk. The process is streamlined and entirely hands-off for your company.
By having Print Farm take care of printing and mailing customer communications and printing and mailing bills, you gain several benefits:
- Accuracy – Page three of someone’s bill won’t end up on top of page one of the next person’s bill
- Cost savings – Often drastic, these cost savings enable your business to focus on what you do best
- Efficiency – With a single point of contact for printing and mailing customer communications and billing notices, you ensure that the final product is accurate and exactly as expected, and is mailed when and how you expect.
- Control – By engaging Print Farm to print customer bills, you gain more control over the process. You explain your needs to the experts, and they make it happen. There’s no question of whether your employee is doing the things they should, or whether you have enough employees that particular day.
- Time – Print Farm takes care of everything, allowing you to focus on what’s important.
- True Bulk Mail Rates – You may be getting bulk mail rates, but these are quite dependent on quantity. Because Print Farm handles printing and mailing customer bills for multiple companies, the volume of mailing is high enough to secure additional discounts from the postal service.
Ultimately, only a conversation with Print Farm can help you determine if outsourcing customer billing is the correct solution for your organization. Reach out to Print Farm today to start the conversation, with no obligation.
