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Taxi service bill format for Public Relations

[Music] and welcome everybody I am Zach Miller te sheets editorinchief joining me today is Nick babinsky Chief product officer at solutions by text we're going to be talking about the state of bill pay digital payment Trends and growing demand for text um we're doing it in this LinkedIn live the tear sheet live format it's an experiment we're doing uh let us know if this is something that resonates with you but U the idea is to bring the same great conversations that we've been doing for years um in our studio to bring them live and and you know to to to to enable conversations collaboration um with you guys as well so I appreciate you uh tuning in and Nick I appreciate you joining us today Zach thanks so much for having me and uh you know in the theme of experimentation I'm a product guy so I love it so glad to be uh kind trailblazing we're building in public that's what we're doing love building in public the best way to build real time feedback right exactly um so so let's talk about I mean I think one one of the things that caught my eye was some of the recent research that you guys put out um this this state of bill pay really like can you talk about maybe some of the findings there and we can use as maybe a lens to to move into the conversation yeah absolutely so I think what we're finding maybe the biggest surprise for me in all of the research that we did with with doos a great research uh firm that many in the financial services space know well um especially since their time as itate group um one of the biggest takeaways for me was the fact that the majority of consumers are still paying bills on a one-time basis so not necessarily setting up auto pay doing the set it and forget it they're still every month or every billing cycle uh taking the the time to go out look at the balance VI the bill and make a payment and so that just creates all sort of implications for us and the provider space uh in the banking space fintech and so on as to how do we support consumers who do take on so much responsibility every month to pay all these household bills and do so in a way that isn't set it and forget it they're managing their time still this is like the other end of the spectrum from setting I forget it right these are totally totally even even if doing these every month it's still it's still one time it's an action that stands on itself right yeah absolutely so I think what we saw is you know in terms of delinquencies and Mis payments a lot of that is driven by folks just forgetting and that makes sense right because our lives are so busy uh these days and there's so much noise in terms of you know technology and responsibilities and uh if we if we are seeing that consumers must remember to pay you know their dozens of household bills each month we need to be thinking about how to remind them and how to make it as seamless and as simple of a process as possible that makes a lot of sense and Nick why do you and I know let's talk about your background um I know you've primarily been in B2B and this is this is an interesting Evolution for you but given the fact that we've spent so much time and energy building the the recurring payments infrastructure and experience why are these people not using that why do they choose to make these payments like one time I guess maybe set the stage for us yeah so in terms of my background I've spent the last 15 years really the majority of my career in the bill pay space um you know started off early on in BDC so thinking about utility bill pay municipalities uh collecting tax bills water bills power bills fun stuff all the fun fun stuff yes and tax let me show you Tax Collectors don't necessarily care about innovating in the consumer bill SP bildas space as much but uh yeah and it's spent uh a great decade Plus at Bill trust uh you had a Pioneer uh B2B billing and making it easy for Mid mid-market and Enterprise businesses to to get paid uh by their business customers and uh really alltimate time focused on what are the applications what are the products that we can build to facilitate a better bill pay experience and over the last couple years I became enamored with text right because when you think about text messaging it's pretty ubiquitous everyone texts 96% of Americans text once per day right and it's a pretty normalized experience you know what to expect when you open up your texting client and so when I started thinking about my career and where what I wanted to be building Simplicity and ubiquity and widescale adoption were some of the traits I was looking for and Sol by text and texting uh and thinking about the bill pay experience over text is really what enamored me because I don't I can't think of an experience more simplistic than you know receiving the reminder hey Nick you owe your car payment of $300 this month whatever it may be you know respond pay to complete the transaction and so that really has attracted me to you know coming back to B Toc the consumer bill pay space if you will and thinking about how to Pioneer and how do we really scale up um what I think could be the most simplest form and fashion of transacting with Builders you know I think it was Mark Twain that said like I would have written you a shorter letter but that would have taken longer yeah so creating Simplicity requires you know thought and and and really good product design like what do you think the role of two-way text communication is is in in in enabling people to get over the hump of these one-time payments or reducing late payments yeah so I think in general um text allows you to create and cater to Consumers how they want to be transacted with and interacted with you may have consumers who are paying off debt who may be want very little interaction and they want the simplest fastest path for resolving that you know that balance right you may have other consumers who are very confused about a balance they want to ask a lot of questions and giving them that ability to do it 247 uh over text when they're sitting on the couch and they have their phone they get a reminder that says hey you owe this payment and they want to get some more information about that how do you serve up that experience in a fast fashion right a fast fashion isn't making them call a 1800 number a fast fashion is not making them log into a website and create a set of credentials or m a set of credentials that are different from their other 20 billers right fast fashion isn't making them download an app they have to navigate figure out to store new payment credentials into that um those are all barriers to getting the job done if the job done is is getting a payment made and a consumer in and out which is really what they want to do spending the least amount of time as possible paying a bill um that's why I've got a lot of conviction around text being being that simplistic uh and that the responsibility that we have to to drive those so that those could be automated exchanges over text those could be you know Zach Miller text a number on a bill instead of calling into an ivr system and Zach saying I've got a question can you send me a copy of that enabling uh MMS to present a bill back over text without having to log in to anything um it could be you and I exchanging an agent with an agent at U company or another biller um who's live responding to questions or or a robot so there's so many Believe It or Not experiences that you could power over text um whe it's two-way oneway MS SMS you name it but that's that's what we're thinking about every day when we wake up I could have used it guys this morning I actually paid uh municipality taxes monthly taxes I just moved recently and I got a bill in a PDF no link um I had was forced to call in um and it wasn't an ivr I had to wait for somebody to answer the phone and they asked for some number that didn't appear on the PDF so I'm fumbling on my phone looking at the PDF trying to call them didn't couldn't find the number at the end and ultimately whatever it was it it it was not it was not a smooth uh an automated experience of course though I could have paid there was no there was no there was no barrier on my on my end as a consumer that stood in my way of paying um what about on the institutional side like what's what's some of the friction that maybe an fi would have like when integrating more automated processes for online payments yeah well I think you know uh for FIS um even large large billers for years you know we've thought about the traditional barriers being you know how do I integrate with my systems of record um what are my online platforms I'm hosting what's currently on our road map and I think that you know at the end of the day we're still seeing the industry strive and you saw in the research with with Doos is that you know bill pay portals direct is still the predominant Channel by which consumers pay um which I think will change over time but I think there's a lot of um capacity and focus spent on you know building up these rich experiences online which are you know kind of stand in the way of of achieving some more Simplicity when it comes to Consumer interactions and transactions so I think it's the the multitude of channels would be the most concise way I would I would respond back to that question Zach is the multitude of channels and the responsibilities FIS feel in terms of supporting all these different channels that consumers may come through um but at the end of the day when you see that 66% of consumers would interact over text and that number increases to 88% when looking at the younger Generations um I do believe and this is a bit biased uh in my response but Tex needs to take more of a front and center um focus for you know technology road maps product road maps and just overall consumer experience road maps to fi other businesses have because of the propensity of consumers to pay an engage of a text versus you know what we're seeing is a lot of app fatigue right we're seeing a lot of fatigue among consum yeah right throw them all away yeah yeah exactly so um in you know different parts of the world we hear about things like super apps and maybe super apps will continue to emerge and and dis intermediate what you know uh Bank aggregators want sought out to do in terms of owning you know all the consumer payment experience in One Bank they'll pay experience maybe super apps will supplant that that Vision that opport Unity um but if you don't have to again force a consumer to log into an app or website or call in and you can meet them where they live which is on their damn mobile device um which I'm guilty of it I'm on it a ton each day um that's a winning strategy in in our opinion yeah and it's almost like this Simplicity that you're talking about runs counter to some of the trends that we've seen in the industry building as you said these rich experiences login experiences um this talking about removing all that right and like just that's for one type of experience and I think you that experience matters and I think that's part of the interest around embedded Finance right it's like banking is not somewhere I need to go to it's it embeds in the things that I'm already spending my time in I'm spending time on my phone send me a message so I just need to take care of this right and I don't all the other stuff is a distraction in fact I get lost in the app sometimes absolutely absolutely and I think there's there's a natural fear of change right with if our strategy for so long has been build the most damn compelling enging front end for consumers to spend time in right and now we're saying the opposite which is if deconstructing all that yeah it is it very much is and you know you think about let's like Amazon right Amazon's a fun uh you know example to use where Amazon doesn't necessarily think about how to keep you on their website the maximum amount of time they think about how to direct you to the products that are most attractive to you and get you to do what pay right and in fact now we're seeing them do things to move you off their interface like sub subcribe and save right I've got four kids we run through quite a bit of toiletries in our house and if I can subscribe and save I'm not going on Amazon every month to remember to you know order from them it's just happening right and so if banks or billers can enable similar behaviors where things are just happening money is money is moving into my account right our balances are being paid and it's just happening that to me is is success and you you don't necessarily lose promotional opportunities right because again if you're then promoting new products and services or property consumers to do over other things over text they're probably more likely to read that text than they are going to open up their mail or even open up an email when you got email clients now filtering out noise for you into different folders and things like that so I mean deconstructing I like the way you put it Zach deconstructing that that front end experience I think H presents a lot of opportunity to businesses and Banks out there I I think I'm hear you say ni I also think like we're in an era of that overwhelm that you're describing it's like I'll go on to Amazon to go buy something and and leaving for who knows why like my attention span wasn't long enough the price wasn't right but I leave and it's typically that email the alert that comes afterwards saying hey did you check this out that I do make the transaction on so that that's very similar I think there's there's a parallel to to what you're talking about here um one of the things we've discussed on the podcast um is this multi-year trend where Banks from some perspective lost out as people gave their credit cards to to to to Merchants they lost out on that billing experience right and so take trying to go back after that billing experience is is they left a lot of business on the table I guess during this time period do do banks recognize it how hungry are they to to get um the building experience back onto their platforms I think at the end of the day the the most fundamental concern that I've been exposed to is the bank wants a consumer relationship and wants the the majority of the wallet share if you will right and so if consumers are starting to get credit cards issued from their Airline or from an Amazon or other types of retailers or you think about um how they're paying for things right if I'm starting to pay more through venmo or Apple pay how do you embed your banking product or experience into those preferred consumer not necess channels but platforms applications right I think that's where I'm starting to see the shift concern uh the shift of concerns of of of the institutions at least is how do we make sure that we're being more flexible and you're seeing that with you know know open banking has been slow to take off but you've seen some creative banking Partnerships Investments and even products launched to make um your bank account your bank credit card more accessible through some of these other platforms and so that's one of the things that we think about when talking with banks is you know how do we make it as easy as possible for Zach when he goes to pay that bill through text to use his XYZ bank account versus you know another product right that's a little less accessible how personalized are these um would you suggest these types of messages be um in terms of creating you know that that type of relationship customer biller relationship how how other than just you know here's you're late on this Bill here's the link does there need to be any more I think so right because so there's there's this balancing act right um You can be highly highly customized right and you and I are joking about how AI is coming up in Prett much every single conversation that we have these days and um you know in all seriousness AI does allow for you to design a highly tailored experience for each consumer interaction should you want it but The Balancing Act is you know from a from a regulatory perspective from a compliance perspective from a consumer safety perspective you need to really be in control of how you're interacting with consumers you want to be fair in your debt collection practices you want to be fair in your Outreach methods you want to make sure that what's being exchanged in the conversation is fully compliant so what we do in our business is we really focus on how do you how do you create that appropriate balance of compliant control messaging it's tailored right what are the types of variables you want to put into messages what are the types of questions that we want to be able to respond to automatically like if I want to see another copy of my bill yeah sure we can automate or facilitate that that return right if you want more information about a past balance or debt um or if you want just to be able to get you know into a conversation of hey you know what I plan to pay this but I want want to pay this on the last day of the month can you schedule this for then right like those types of experiences over different messaging uh channels I think is is the right level of customization versus you know free form or completely letting a model like a a a large language model completely take over the the interaction I don't think we're ready for quite yet but the more engaging we are while being compliant the more um of a result we're going to drive in terms of faster um and higher conversion rates for payments from consumers I I is there also an element of consumers being increasingly more receptive to like advice I won't call it advice but at least um push from the from their financial institutions like I I actually like having a checking account having a deposit account like that's that's a commodity but if you can tell me and help me live a better Financial life so that I don't have late payments so that you know it it's aligned with sort of my my my behaviors like I appreciate that you know yeah no I think so I think the consultative you know approach to driving consumer engagement is is the right approach and we're seeing it from our customers right so whether they be Bank customers of ours or Partners um or just billers or the types of agencies Financial uh firms you know the more they will consult with consumers about strategies managing their money or options to pay uh a bill or setting up just automation right so the they can and forget it um or pay via pay methods that are more conducive to their needs um sometimes putting it on a credit card is is more attractive to Consumer and educating them or whether it's new payment methods that are coming out um like we're starting to look more and more seriously at at venmo as an example for a bill payment option so the more that you're helping and Consulting with consumer um I think is is what drives you know more brand loyalty more engagement more results Nick in the beginning of our conversation you mentioned um you know younger customers or younger demographics being more open to this like are you seeing that are there specific demographics or segments of consumers that are more responsive to text reminders for bill payments yeah I think we saw with you know Millennials all the way down to the more recent the newer Generations just this high high not only propensity but expectation that this is just going to be the way they interact and transact um so we're absolutely seeing that you know you you can see it from different um Industries or verticals that we serve you know medical tends to be uh medical bills tend to be skewing towards older Generations um but text believe it or not is really uh taking on more proportion of uh payments in the channel whereas you know cars Vehicles mortgage where you start see earlier Generations taking on their first home or their first vehicle text is absolutely just dominating over you know biller direct as an example where consumers you know go into a a dealer and the dealer says I need to see your pay stub I need to see your tax turn maybe some other kind of government ID consumer says oh you know what I don't have it on me uh and the dealer says let me just text you so that you know later on you can take a picture when your home and just text it back to me like that is such an engaging experience that consumers especially the younger Generations are completely comfortable with um and I think it I think it will apply more and more to older Generations um because it's just less intimidating than logging into a website as an example what are some of the frictions or hurdles that I know I asked you this in a different way earlier on but that a financial institution might face in terms of rolling something like this out um one of the things we discussed was it maybe going against the you know the trend of building these rich experiences but is there a technical issue is there expertise issue uh so I think technically I'll say this you know having worked in you know print mail and email billing and Bill direct and aggregator for online bank uh channels technically we're not talking about a whole lot of different you know steps right you know the platforms from a text perspective need to know who owes you what they owe you when they owe you right and some of the consumer contact information so I think it's more around ensuring a few things one is the complimentary nature of the channel to your existing channels so how does this how does this augment how does it support your online channel right how's this uh support your call center right um and and reduce call center volume by offering consumers the ability to text into an agent versus always call and how do we train your agents so you know making it making it complimentary training just like in other channels um compliance is a big thing right compliance is probably the biggest uh consideration to navigate because you again need to make sure that the messages um are are conducive to regulatory requirements both financial and other um like the mobile networks um you need to make sure that um not only the the the tone of the messages but the timing for example like you don't want to be setting up a program where you're texting Zach at you know 1:00 a.m local when you know you're you're you know 3 p p.m. Eastern like that's right those are things you want to avoid so being thoughtful in compliance is probably the number one thing that our customers look to us to help them navigate because the technology and the training uh and and how you compliment other channels is kind of run-ofthe-mill at this point you know Banks businesses have been adopting new technologies for decades this point um but what makes texting a bit unique is I think some of the compliance pieces but also the opportunity for it to tie in and compliment your other channels more so than you'll see in other other um forms of Correspondence or or interaction with consumers it's interesting as you say that like and I'm thinking about myself and my own behavior like it almost feels like at this time we we talked about app fatigue my email inbox is a disaster um it almost feels like text it is quieter I only give text to really to people who I have direct relationships with yeah how how do we is this just a channel that feels like it's open now how do we avoid overloading that channel channel to make sure that um it doesn't become another one of those channels that I just I'm overwhelmed with yeah so uh I'm going to get a bit nerdy here as it relates to Tex technology and just the way it works I'm still learning this being relatively new to the space but I think the the mobile networks Verizon T-Mobile AT&T are doing a very good job when it comes to policing the spam right and so you know as a consumer you're going to get text messages from sometimes short codes we're called short codes like those five to six digit numbers um the brand of carrier networks do a great job of registering the entities that are sending messages over those short codes to kind of keep down the noise right and um governments from around the world are also involved in regulating um what kind of activity um can be sent across text right um certainly um you know it's a bit easier to service a customer who's an existing a customer and send a message through a carrier Network than it is to Market to a brand new consumer who is not quite clear how they opted into messaging so opt-in is a very big thing in Tech still the brands uh like Verizon T-Mobile others are doing a great job of placing that and and and creating a framework by which we can contain the noise and I think governments are going to continue to look at the space to ensure that messaging remains less noisy and more um just you know cater to what consumers want and then long codes which are the 10-digit numbers or depending on where you are in the world um you know have a tendency to be a bit more called spammy um but again I think the the the providers are doing a good job enabling tools to block spam enable opt outs um and better than the than the email providers yeah 100% 100% um it's a it's a much more contained I think Network than and closer to me personally it's in my phone as opposed to this inbox that exist out there you know it's actually getting to me it's very direct it's very direct so it almost has to be in order for it to survive um and and so that's why I think we're pleased to see how the space is evolving with government and and you know provider uh intervention and involvement and I think we're also excited to see personally for me you know we talked a bit about super apps earlier you know will Facebook Messenger or some of these other social media platforms like Twitter would that ever be a channel by which a bank want to engage with their consumer um because you know if if I'm on Twitter a couple hours a day or if I'm you know on Facebook at night you know that may be a good option for me to build brain loyalty and consumer engagement and I think those platforms are also navigating very very similar rules and requirements for what kind of messages can be sent how can consumers be opted in or opted out um and giving them optionality as it pertains to the frequency and the types of of messages they receive very interesting Nick thanks for joining us on this tear sheet live Zach it's been fantastic speaking with you and looking forward to the next conversation and thank you all for tuning in and uh we'll call it a night