Service Billing Done Manually Hurts Customer Satisfaction

Billing Automation Ensures the Quality of Invoicing

When any billing department collects information about service usage and manually assures correct rates and prices, there will be revenue leaks and errors. When pricing and billing of services are done manually, customer complaints cannot be avoided.

In this blog, I will discuss billing execution in the recurring revenue business model: Manual steps in billing versus automation. I will also highlight why billing automation is the only way to ensure the quality of invoicing and thus improve customer satisfaction.

Why manual billing should be stopped?

Modern business is based on data. This applies to all industries. Data about customers, orders, products, service usage, and so on. All this crucial data is located in various systems.

The great amount of data needed for service billing is spread widely in different systems and cannot be used effectively without an automated billing process. In a recurring revenue business model, a basic legacy billing software and processes are not enough. 

DATA IS SPREAD AND CONSOLIDATING IT MANUALLY FOR BILLING OFTEN FAILS, BECAUSE:

• There is no single place for customer prices and terms
• Customer contract changes all the time
• Usage-data and customer information is in various systems
• Usage-data quality is low or it needs to be enriched for billing
• The billing system does not support the recurring revenue business model, subscriptions, entitlements, and usage
• Companies use ERP systems that are not flexible enough for modern recurring revenue billing.

WHAT SERVICE BILLING TASKS COULD BE REPLACED WITH AUTOMATION?

AUTOMATION COULD BE USED FOR:

1. Collecting service usage data
2. Entering billing and accounting data to systems
3. Verifying billable items and pricing
4. Management of customer contract data ensuring correct invoicing
5. Connecting contract content, price information, and service usage data
6. Ensuring all data is in the billing process
7. Combining or splitting invoices as required by the customer

All the above are examples of manual work in service billing and can be replaced with automation. 

BENEFITS THAT CAN BE SEEN AFTER DEPLOYING A BILLING AUTOMATION SOFTWARE ARE:

1. Revenue leakage stops
2. Cashflow accelerates
3. Less manual work costs
4. Less dependency on people
5. Less human mistakes
6. Short time to market
7. Single source of truth with the customer
8. Improved transparency 
9. Increased customer satisfaction
10. More satisfied employees

Read more about billing automation benefits: 

CUSTOMERS JUDGE COMPANIES BASED ON BILLING AND PAYMENT EXPERIENCE  

“Billing and payment experience has been a key in B2C brands online. Now, also customers in B2B judge companies based on billing and payment experience,” noted Matthijs Koorn from MGI Research at the Monetization 13 Event in Amsterdam in 2020.

If your company still consolidates service billing data manually every month, maybe it is time to automate the process?

Automation gives you full scalability to launch new services to market faster. And most importantly, it significantly improves customer satisfaction thanks to accurate and timely invoices.

GOOD SIGN

We at Good Sign help our customers solve existing pain points in monetizing service contracts and managing subscriptions and pay-per-use services. We help companies freely grow scalable services.

Read how our customer Enfo was able to stop manual work in billing: