Mark Daoust, Chief Customer Officer at InvoiceCloud, along with Michael Moeser, Sr. Content Strategist at Digital Insurance explore how inclusive digital payment solutions are reshaping the insurance landscape—making payments faster, more accessible and more cost-effective for all.
Listen to the podcast to learn:
- Why inclusivity matters: understanding underserved groups – from check-writers and seniors to non-English speakers and the unbanked.
- Proven outcomes: how carriers and others are benefitting.
- Operational wins: seeing the benefits of fewer support calls, reduced mail/print costs and fewer missed payments.
- Trust-building tools: why guest checkout, IVR, multi-language support and mobile-friendly workflows are important.
Transcription:
Michael Moeser (00:06):
Greetings. I'm Michael Moeser with Digital Insurance, and I'm here today with Mark Dous, chief Customer Officer of Invoice Cloud, and we're going to be talking about digital payments for everyone. Greetings, mark.
Mark Daoust (00:20):
Hey Michael, how are you?
Michael Moeser (00:21):
Doing great. Doing great. So in your role as chief customer officer, how do you manage the customer experience in terms of strategy, advocacy, and then really how do you measure success? I mean, I imagine there's more metrics than just is the customer staying or leaving?
Mark Daoust (00:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Let me describe the department I lead a little bit just to answer some of the questions here. So the chief customer officer typically reports the CEO. It's part of the senior leadership team. I lead a team called Customer Success, and that includes our implementation and services team, a team of customer success managers. They work with our larger customers. And then we have a support team and our training and enablement team. And one of the most critical points to understand in leading customer success is it's a company-wide thing. So it is not just sort of my department. We work with product, with engineering, with marketing, with sales to deliver the best experience for our customers. So that's just really important to understand is a foundational item. And then getting into your question in terms of, I'll start with measures of success. As you might imagine, customer satisfaction is a key measure, net promoter score.
(01:48):
So are your customers recommending your solution to colleagues and friends? And then are they references, are they referenceable? All our customers are references. It's whether they're a good reference or not. They're going to talk to their colleagues because a lot of our customers are not necessarily competitors. For instance, if you're a farm bureau in different states and those kinds of things. And then financially, some of the more tangible financial metrics are the retention numbers. So gross retention, so retaining your customers. And net revenue retention is not only do you retain your customers, but do they adopt your software? Do they grow in usage of your software? So the number one thing we focus on to really simplify all those metrics, some of those gross retention revenue, those are internal, right? Those are things we look at internally for the customer. What that should look and feel like is we're trying to help our customers maximize value, so get the most out of our product and our service. And we are in digital payments. So what that really means is driving maximum digital adoption in digital payments.
Michael Moeser (03:05):
So can you talk to me then, as you're relating the digital payments, the services that you provide for customers, how does that sort play out in the marketplace? Can you give us some examples in terms of, as you talk about digital payments for everyone enabling that adoption? Can you lay the groundwork in terms of some examples or success stories?
Mark Daoust (03:31):
Yeah, sure, absolutely. So we partner with some of the large, larger farm bureaus in the country, and it's really a privilege to partner with these incredible organizations. They're out there supporting their communities every single day. One of the farm bureaus we work with serves over 150 communities across their state, and we partnered to boost digital adoption by 62%, which helped them save around a hundred thousand dollars in print and mail costs in the first year. That's amazing. It really is, isn't it? So very tangible results for them and for us. And then there's another farm bureau. We more than doubled their auto pay enrollment, so it went up by 6%. We saw their payment related calls drop by 30%. So it's very tangible value, both financially and also with their policy holders. It's just a much more smooth experience for them. And in terms of paying their premiums.
Michael Moeser (04:34):
That sounds really impactful. Very interesting. And then I think it speaks to this concept of digital payments for everyone. You folks have done research in that area, and Invoice cloud has really looked into that concept of digital payments for everyone. Could you maybe explain to us what is it, why it's important and what you folks have looked into deploying it?
Mark Daoust (05:01):
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Digital payments for everyone is our company mission. And what it means is making digital payments both accessible and effortless for every payer, regardless of age, language, income or tech savviness. We partner, like I mentioned prior with our customers to maximize digital adoption. And if you're going to do that, you've got to get the whole population. And so some of the folks that can get left behind are those in some groups, there's kind of four main groups that can get left behind. One is those over 55, the non-native English speakers, the Czech writers, the folks that have that habit of just writing a check every month, just refuse to pay digitally.
Michael Moeser (05:57):
Sounds like my mom.
Mark Daoust (05:58):
Yep. Yeah, there you go. Yep, absolutely. And then you have the unbanked. There's folks that just don't have the traditional things that you need to pay digitally. They may not have a bank account, they may not have a credit card that they can make a digital payment, but there's options for them. So we design our solution to work not just with the majority of the population, but do with these specific groups that tend to get left behind.
Michael Moeser (06:28):
So Marco, among these different groups, the elderly, non-native speakers, check writers, et cetera, the ones that you've identified in this research, is there a common thread or multiple common threads, sort of what ties them together in terms of the challenges that they're faced?
Mark Daoust (06:48):
Yeah, absolutely. I think the first group, right, older adults, they may struggle with technology or worry about security. The non-English speakers, they often just lack translated materials or support. So it's a bit intimidating making a payment and then check writers, they value, again, this maps to some older adults, but they just value the familiarity, the habit of writing a check each month and then the unbanked, they just may not have access to traditional payment methods that I said before. So some of the ways we handle that is first on the lack of trust or security concerns. We spend time educating 'em. And what a lot of folks don't necessarily know is this is especially picked up during COVID, is that sending a check in the mail actually has more risk than entering your banking information into a PCI compliance solution like invoice cloud. If you think about putting a check and putting in an envelope, you are putting all that routing information, your information into an envelope and sending it physically versus a PCI compliance solution.
(08:08):
We also made accessibility core product priority. So in some of the other areas, for instance, if they're non-native English speakers, we have multilingual IVR systems. So it actually is in your language. We also have things that make it really convenient, like one click and guest checkout. So you don't have to put in your username or your password. In one of our studies, we do the state of online payments every year we do a study. In that study, we found the number one reason that people don't make a digital payment is because they go to make that payment and they forget their username and or their password. And that happens 21% of the people that don't pay online. That's the reason. And so we have a guest checkup where that's who you are, and you can make a payment without knowing your username or password and also get reminders, which by the way is the second reason people don't, so they don't get a reminder. So we have smart reminders where you'll get up to three reminders and smart and that it knows if you've made a payment. So it won't send the second one if you already paid after the first reminder. And it seems like a small thing, but it is a big deal. People actually are more apt to pay their bill if they get the multiple reminders, and we can see it in the numbers and in the adoption numbers.
Michael Moeser (09:34):
Well, speaking of numbers, there was a great example that you shared with me earlier in our conversation before the podcast where you talked about one example in Florida that had actually a confluence of multiple groups, the Czech writers, the elderly, some of the non-native speakers. It was a retirement community in Florida, I think it was called The Villages, where you were faced with a number of these issues and you actually turned things around and were able to really create a great case study, if you will. Could you talk to us about that example and then share with us some of the results?
Mark Daoust (10:10):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so The Villages is a large retirement community in Florida. And before Invoice Cloud, many of the residents were still paying by check and they were having some issues with digital adoption and all the lack of efficiency with that. And so when they adopted Invoice Cloud, we implemented features like IVR and also an easy to use online portal. And we saw a significant shift towards digital adoption. And so one of the biggest differences was just the simplicity in this, the continuous reassurance. So showing that digital could just be as safe, some of that education that it's safe, it's also really convenient and even safer and more convenient than the paper methods that were used prior. And what the villages ended up seeing was a 77% digital payment adoption. So that's amazing increase. They also saw a 26% increase in paperless adoption, which saves a lot of money. And also your 98% more likely to make a digital payment if you're on paperless. So that's a big payer retention, if you will. They also saw 64% autopay adoption, 45% decrease in mail checks, and then a 20% decrease in payment related call volume. So the villages were thrilled, especially the folks that run kind of the CSR or the support desk right there, 20% of their calls went down. So just a lot of efficiency and tangible value all the way around.
Michael Moeser (11:54):
Can you relate that now to the insurance industry, insurance carriers, how people pay and why that's important and then the value delivered there?
Mark Daoust (12:03):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for insurance, if I've learned anything about insurance, it's a relationship business. And if policy holders find it hard to make a payment, that frustration impacts the brand trust and retention for that carrier. And customers and insurance, the policy holders, they typically interact with the carrier only once or twice a year. And this is different than other financial institutions such as banking, where the customer's going to interact 10 or 20 times or even more often in a given year. I mean, a lot of times we're on our bank every day, right? On the online bank account making payments, that kind of thing. And so with the low frequency customer touch points and insurance, that means each one better go really well, right? It's going to be a problem if it doesn't. So making a seamless or frictionless payment experience when they're paying the policy holder is paying their premium. And also if they do need to get payout on a claim, we also do outbound payments. So making that a seamless process for them. So it is just really important to make that easy, simple, both for the policy holder but also for the insurance carrier with all those cost elements that they can take out of their business in terms of feeling calls, the paper costs, and all those things to make 'em a more modern provider.
Michael Moeser (13:38):
Very interesting, very impactful. Mark, as we come to close, any final thoughts or words of wisdom that you want to share with the audience?
Mark Daoust (13:48):
I don't know if I have any words of wisdom. I just really appreciate the time, Michael, and would love an opportunity to come on again at some point. This has been great. Thanks for your time.