Organizations across industries struggle to engage their customers. We live in an increasingly busy world, meaning it’s increasingly difficult and important to capture your audience’s attention. For government agencies and departments, this means improving the experience across the board to increase citizen engagement.
Streamlining billing and payment processes are often overlooked, but they are among the most essential tasks to do.
Think about it this way: if you try to pay your utility bill on a disjointed and confusing online payment portal, would you be more likely to give up and try again later? Oftentimes this scenario leads to late or missed payments, which can slow your organization’s cash flow.
In this article, you’ll learn all about the solution—an integrated bill paying service that keeps your residents engaged and ensures a smooth process.
What Is Citizen Engagement?
What is citizen engagement, and why does it matter to your organization? What is it we’re trying to accomplish, and how can we measure it?
When citizens are engaged with your billing processes, they’re actively paying for services, utilities, local events, and more. If they need a service your organization provides, they don’t hesitate to log onto your online payment portal and make a payment. They aren’t late paying their utility bills and regularly attend and pay for recreational activities and community events.
This is a dream scenario for many government organizations. The most important question is: how do you make it happen?
Using modern bill paying services can help you clean up, actively monitor, and streamline your financial processes so your citizens feel no friction with the system. The simpler and more convenient it is to make a payment, the more likely they are to engage.
Watch: CORE’s recent webinar on flexibility in payments
6 Ways Implementing Bill Paying Services Can Improve Engagement
When looking for the perfect software solution to increase citizen engagement, bill paying services are the best bet. Your financial system is the backbone of your organization. It allows your constituents to take advantage of your services and is often the main bridge between your organization and those you serve.
Here are six ways that bill payment services increase citizen engagement:
1. Connects to Your Existing Technology
Technology runs the world in our modern era, which means your organization depends on several softwares and systems. Financial processes require an extensive lineup of solutions to properly execute daily tasks such as collecting, reporting, processing, and more.
Having disconnected processes creates bottlenecks in your cash flow and operations. When your software doesn’t communicate with each other, it creates disjointed experiences for your customers and leads to frustration. The alternative is using a platform that seamlessly leverages and integrates with the rest of your technology.
Having a disconnected solution is no solution at all. That’s why CORE is committed to bringing you the most integrated, innovative payment platform on the market.
This isn’t only great news for your citizens, but also for your government’s treasurers, budget and finance teams, and comptrollers. CORE ensures your financial systems are connected to automated procedures, reduces costs and risks from manual data entry, and improves revenue flow.
2. Provides 24/7/365 Self-Service and Mobile Payments
Convenience is one of the most important things you can give your citizens, as it’s what they’ll appreciate the most about your billing process. A bill payment platform provides around-the-clock self-service and mobile payment options.
Self-service payment portals allow citizens to login to an online portal at any time of the day, any day of the week, any day of the year. They can make payments on their own time, and your organization can collect without needing staff on hand.
Mobile payments also allow for increased flexibility to meet your residents where they are.
For government entities, you’ll enjoy a sped-up billing process that accelerates cash flow and top-level security that meets industry standards and is PCI compliant.
3. Gives a Seamless and Consistent User Experience
The main goal of a bill payment system is to provide a seamless and consistent user experience for your residents. Because most businesses are now providing a variety of flexible payment options, your residents are coming to expect that level of convenience when they pay a bill.
Disconnected processes are the opposite of a seamless user experience. When using a payment processing platform that doesn’t offer complete functionality and flexibility, your constituents will grow frustrated. This may be especially true for under or unbanked citizens.
The evolving expectation of what a great user experience looks like can be difficult to keep up with. An integrated, secure bill payment process makes fulfilling that expectation much easier.
4. Offers Web Page Design
Because so many of our interactions happen online, your internet presence is more crucial than ever. That’s where web page design comes in. A clean webpage for bill payment collection that matches the branding of your organization can establish trust with your constituents.
CORE is a bill payment processing platform that offers custom web page design. We go beyond a simple design job—we provide unparalleled attention to detail, strategic thinking, and integration to take your engagement levels to new heights.
5. Manages Content and Strategy
While having a webpage and design services can remove workload from your team’s shoulders and increase your engagement levels, sometimes you need more strategy. Having an all-in-one payment processing platform that manages your digital payment and citizen engagement strategy can be a game-changer.
6. Handles Event Ticketing Processes
Your ticketing systems are vital to drawing residents to any event. Event planning can be a meticulous and daunting process. Do you find your organization doesn’t have the time, budget, or attendees to make it worth it?
CORE’s event management platform can solve those pain points and more. Our software automates your entire event planning process and helps you create a truly engaging event that citizens want to attend.
Assess Your Constituent Payment Experience With CORE
With the right bill payment processing platform, you can go from a disconnected and frustrating user experience to a convenient and streamlined system. Reducing friction and creating a flexible payment process for your residents builds trust, establishes relationships, and increases overall engagement.
