Is your Transactional Document Flawed?

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll continue to hear it – the transactional document is your guaranteed monthly appointment with your customer. It’s an appointment that you can’t afford to miss, be late to, or present anything except your best work. In fact, you should be planning perfect execution of the appointment with “Best-In-Class” transactional document practices.

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Transactional documents are the ultimate expression of a valued customer relationship. From financial statements listing account balances, to explanation of benefits containing personal health history, to credit card statements listing detailed transactions – these documents feature highly sensitive, private customer information. To be considered “Best-In-Class” by your customers, you must ensure that your document preparation efforts include a focus on address hygiene, quality, integrity, security, and regulatory compliance to provide accurate, safe document delivery each and every time.

Transactional Documents – Here to Stay!
It’s a fact - consumers still like mail. Despite the various e-delivery methods available, consumers still want a paper copy of their documents. Think about when an email is received, the recipient will print the email to review it in closer detail, highlight important sections, or file it for future reference. Yes, consumers like mail and many prefer paper-based transactional communications over electronic distribution. The USPS delivers the mail, but it’s up to your company to ensure that every piece meets the highest standards. It’s also up to your company to ensure that your transactional documents include the right information, at the right time, and most importantly, are delivered to the right person. What are we really talking about? We’re talking about “Best-In-Class” transactional documents.

Address Hygiene
Can you imagine planning an important event, such as a graduation celebration or a wedding, but forgetting to send the invitations? “Unheard of” you exclaim! Indirectly, a multitude of companies forget to send out their “monthly appointments” by sending out mail that does not meet address hygiene standards and doesn’t get to their customer – or is caught up in address correction services that the USPS provides, for a fee, and delivery is dramatically delayed. The customer name and address are the most vital components of the transactional document. If either is inaccurate the document creation, production and delivery process yields little-to-no value. When was the last time you took a peek at the USPS website and read about the severe return mail problem? Millions of mail pieces are deemed undeliverable each year because the address block is in error. Therefore, it is imperative that every document that leaves your company incorporates a stringent address hygiene process to ensure on-time delivery.

Document Quality
Clear, precise print quality is critical when presenting transactional information for review and response. Transactional documents can include rows and rows of transactions and multiple columns of data and numbers. It is essential that your documents are prepared on printers that produce premier, error free printing in black, highlight or full color to produce the best documents on the market. While address hygiene is crucial to enable successful document delivery, equally important is the document presentation. Your corporate image is immediately expressed on the pages of the transactional document. Is the print quality pristine? Is the document clean and simple to understand with the call to action clearly recognizable? When was the last time you took a serious look at the documents leaving your data center? What are your transactional documents saying to your customers? Remember, if the transactional document is the ultimate expression of a valued customer relationship, then document quality should be of utmost importance.

Document Integrity
Frequently, a transactional document consists of more than a single page. Most customer’s transactional document mail pieces contain several document pages, a few inserts, and possibly more. Each and every document package was designed and selected with the customer in mind. At minimum, the transactional document portion should be whole. Specifically, if the complete transactional document consists of five pages, all five pages should be created, printed, and delivered to the recipient. Additionally, if marketing inserts were earmarked for the customer, or a special newsletter, or a regulatory document was required, then all components should be created, produced and delivered to the customer. Document integrity ensures that each and every piece of the document package makes it safely into the customer’s transactional document mail piece.

Document Security
How many times have you heard the story of a customer who opens up their transactional document to find that the back side of their document is actually the front side of another customer’s document? While the scenario seems far-fetched, the reality of its occurrence is more frequent than companies care to admit. Documents containing sensitive customer information bear a high degree of risk during the document creation, production, and delivery process. Imagine a bank statement or a health care document being opened by the wrong recipient. Customer privacy would be violated and that all-important customer relationship would be at risk. It is absolutely imperative that mission-critical transactional document processes include stringent document security checks and measures. The document security part of “Best-In-Class” transactional document practices could very well be the most difficult step to implement. However, without it, this may be the missing component that puts your company in the most difficult situation if in-secure processes fail.

Best-In-Class Transactional Documents
Transactional documents are a core output in most data centers. For businesses to succeed and stay competitive, “Best-In-Class” transactional document practices must be implemented. As the marketplace evolves and new trends and technological advancements are born, your data center must change to keep up. Change can be hard, or change can be easy. You decide.

Thinking About Highlight Color?

Imagine your customers opening up and reviewing their transactional documents – white paper, black ink – where each document looks like the other. Now imagine you’ve added just a touch of color - the documents are more engaging and your customers are responding the way you planned. Integrating highlight color within transactional documents can create substantial outcomes when designed correctly. Specifically, highlight color can improve cash flow, bolster customer response rates, reduce customer errors, and strengthen brand image.

Improved Cash Flow
Payment response rates can improve by up to 30% when highlight color is used to emphasize the date and amount due. By highlighting these key elements, a sense of urgency is established in the recipient’s mind and the typical response is to pay their bill faster. Additionally, customers are 2.5% more likely to pay the full amount due when it appears in highlight color. Bottom line, faster and full payments will be sure to improve your company’s cash flow.

Bolster Customer Response Rates
With just a dash of highlight color, response rates can skyrocket up to 80% higher than the black alternative. Highlight color can be used to frame a special promotion, or draw attention to a complementary cross-sell offer. The results will be beneficial for both you and your customer.

Reduce Customer Errors
Believe it or not, your company’s customer service representative can spend a fair amount of their day answering questions such as: “When is my payment considered late?” or “Where do I send my payment?” Emphasizing the amount and date due, special mailing instructions, and payment protocols can alleviate substantial costs in the customer service center and facilitate easier payment experiences for your customer. Frequently, late or lost payments are simply the result of unclear payment directions on the transactional document.

Strengthen Brand Image
Every communication that reaches your customer’s hands makes a clear statement about your company. Highlight color can be used to colorize your corporate logo, or set your transactional documents apart from the rest of the “black ink on white paper” documents. Take a look at your documents – what statement are you making to your customers?

Now which one of these do you think creates the best impression of your company?

   

When designed properly, highlight color can almost give the illusion of full color

Can 4 color work for your statements and invoices?   

At first glance, it may seem crazy to think about printing your Statements or Invoices in full color; but, upon further review you may see things in a different light. Some of the most compelling reasons may not be the most obvious. 

Studies have repeatedly shown that people are more apt to read communications that are printed in color. However, if the communication is a statement or invoice, then the document will most likely be read anyway. Yet color on mission-critical documents will enhance the reader’s experience. Color, when appropriately used, increases the understandability of the document. What do I mean by this? Which one of these is easier to figure out? 

Comprehension is a benefit for many reasons. You are getting the intended message across to the customer, but a clearly communicated statement or invoice will also limit the number of calls coming into the call center or customer service department. 

You know a lot of information about your customers based upon their buying history. What if you included a special offer or even just information about a related product or service printed right on the statement or invoice? This new trend is called TransPromo; adding a promotional message to a transactional document. 

This concept can dramatically reduce, or even eliminate in some cases, the number of customer facing documents such as brochures, inserts, coupons, that you normally send out to have printed on offset press. Plus, you are putting the information in the hands of a captive audience - a current customer. Marketing departments often struggle with buying lists and how to get the company message to the right people… this is an answer. It doesn’t have to be limited to just promotional though… what if you sell plant seeds and you print the proper growing instructions. Tie into that the fact that Postal rates are sky rocketing, and the argument becomes even stronger. Turn your statements and invoices into advertising vehicles. 

Click here for our coming webinar regarding our Data Management Center covering not only the above piece on transactional documents but how adding color to your statements and invoices can actually improve your cash flow. 

 *Offer available until May 31, 2009 - please click here to contact us!