companies aggressive about paperless billing..

Key clients of CXN already include IBM, Vodafone & Singapore Post- it won't be a difficult sell IMO to increase their client base:

Paperless Telecom: Verizon gets aggressive about electronic billing

Feb 19, 2009, By Joan Engebretson

Communications service providers are getting serious about reducing the amount of paper they consume. The drive to “go green” is part of the motivation behind paperless telecom, but increasingly telecom companies are seeing financial benefits as well. Verizon is just one telecom service provider—along with Cox Communications, AT&T and others- that has benefited itself and the environment by reducing paperwork through green initiatives such as online ordering and electronic billing and payment.

As Mike Coyne put it, “Doing the right thing is actually saving money.”

As director of finance operations for the services organization at Verizon, Coyne oversees billing for Verizon’s three main business units—consumer landline, business and wireless. Each unit generates about 25 million bills each month, and bills for all customers are available in a secure manner online. Increasingly customers are relying solely on the online option. For 2008, 8% of Verizon’s consumer landline customers, 18% of wireless customers and 32% of business customers chose to forego the option to receive a paper copy.

“Verizon has very aggressive goals to significantly increase that,” Coyne said. “The goal is to double the number every year for the next several years.”

Verizon also is considering offering some type of incentive to customers to opt out of paper bills. On the consumer side, one option might be to include electronic billing as part of a discounted multi-play service bundle. Another possibility might be to automatically enter people into a drawing to win a prize.

On the business side, where bills can include thousands of pages, Verizon is already offering incentives. As Coyne explained, “We’re going to senior-level management and saying, ‘Perhaps we can plant a tree in your name and you can get some good publicity from it in the home town of your headquarters location.’”

Qwest Communications has already found some success with financial incentives for its customers to go green. Qwest heavily promotes a “Pay It Green” initiative to encourage customers to pay their bills electronically and eliminate paper billing. “For customers that sign up, we actually give 1% of their total bill to the K-12 school of their choice within our 14-state local service region,” said Darrell Lingk, director of Environmental Health and Safety at Qwest.

For the full article check out:

http://telephonyonline.com/bss_oss/news/verizon-electronic-billing-0219/index1.html

JB