Servicing your eBill Service customers

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the eBill training. Today, we're going to be focusing on how to look up a customer as well as go through the customer overview screen. And then we'll show you how to take a payment through Payment Center.

So, initially, when you log in to the Payment Center application, you're going to be presented with a screen similar to what you're seeing right now. In order to look up a customer, there's a couple of different ways that you can accommodate this. What's most common for look-ups is an account number that the customer has. So you can simply just put in the specific account number, click on the Search key, and the system will bring up that specific account.

Another option, if I go back, to look up information is you can utilize a first name field, you can utilize a last name field, and you can also utilize a transaction reference ID. These are the most commonly used fields for look-up. So if, for example, I put in last name and I click on Search, what the system is going to do is look through the entire database, and it's going to pull up all of the line items that matches that last name. And then you'll have to specifically look in and select a particular account.

Now, if you want to become a little bit more specific in your look-up, you can actually go in and select the partner. You're going to be having all these customer accounts under U.S. Bank. So what you can do specifically to hone in your search is to go and find the specific customer that you're looking for. So, in this case, I'll use the EBPP demo, put in that last name, click Search. And again, it only found one Murphy, so it took me right to that screen.

So what I'd like to do now is go through the screen itself and explain the data and where it's coming from and what it means. So when you first come into this Customer Overview screen, at the very top here, you're going to have the name of the customer. And again, this information is being sent to us, most times, in what we call an account master file. And so the details of that is what is displayed on the screen here.

So you're going to notice that customer name-- in this case, it's Jose H. Murphy-- which partner that customer belongs to, the account number, and then the enrollment status. So these are the general information items that come up as part of that Customer Overview screen.

This down here is additional details that were sent in that account master file. So you'll see that we have the account number, the name, address information, phone numbers, things like that, which is actually a part of that file. Now, not all customers may send over all of the details, so in some cases, you may notice that some of these just don't have any information in it.

Over on the right-hand side, if it hasn't been added through an account master file, it may not have anything. But once the customer database is actually created and activity begins, that customer since will have an actual date in it. Here is the email address that was associated with that account. And then there's fields here that basically tell us whether this customer has been enrolled online, which is more of a customer-facing application. If mobile payment phones are enabled, which in this case they aren't.

And then we have two fields here, card account usage and bank account usage. So, again, these are fields that can be sent as part of that account master file. And what the card account usage does is basically tell our system that if they is a set to enabled, it would allow the customer to make credit card payment. If that field is updated to disabled, then basically, they wouldn't be able to use a credit card to make the payment.

And then the same thing applies with the bank account usage flag. If that's enabled, they can use a bank account, such as an ACH account, to make a payment. If that's disabled, then the system would not allow them to use that ACH account to make a payment. If you look down here, you're going to notice that there's also some tabs here.

Update Enrollment Status-- so if I click here, this is basically going to allow a customer service rep to disable a customer's account. So the clickdown here is revoked and suspended or active. So if a customer's online account needs to be revoked or suspended, this is something that a customer service rep, so long as they have the permissions, are able to go in and actually do that.

Going a little bit upon these card account usage and bank account usage fields, this is where if a customer service manager has permissions, they can go in and actually either enable or disable those. The maintenance log is really just more of an audit trail that tells you what the customer has done. And then the session summary, again, it's another audit report, sort of a footprint, of activity within the application.

Now, this log in and reset password, most of the time, if customers are using the portal, their customer-facing portal, they have the ability to self-serve as far as user ID and passwords. But occasionally, a customer will lock themselves out. So this gives a customer service manager the ability to go in and just reset that password.

And so what happens when a password is reset is that an email goes out to that customer with a system generated temporary email. The customer would then use that temporary password to log into the application, and then it would ask them to reset that. But this is something that a customer service manager can do on behalf of the customer.

And then the last option here is when a customer enrolls through the online portal, they have to agree to terms and conditions. When they do that, we stamp the date that they accept those terms and conditions, so there's a date and a time stamp there. And should the customer question that, you can actually click on that and see the actual terms and conditions that the customer agreed to.

So, again, these tools kind of across the top here are more audit type trails that can be used by a customer service manager to update enrollment status, update funding source usage, and then look at maintenance and session summaries. Moving down into the next section here under Current Billing Details, this, again, is based on data that was sent to us in that account master file. So it reflects there was a current balance field. It will display that. If a minimum payment amount field was sent in that, file again, it'll display that.

In this case, we didn't do an amount past due, so that's showing N/A. And then we have a current statement balance amount that's displaying the value here. In that file, there's also, typically, a payment due date that's sent, and so that due date would be populated here.

This next section here is basically going to be a list of payment history. So we break out scheduled payments, processed payments, payment enrollments, and then the last one here is refunded payments. So there's nothing here right now, but once we make a one-time payment, you'll see that there. Scheduled payments will show when a payment is made, let's say today, and it hasn't been processed yet. So you may see scheduled payments showing up here.

Any credit card payments that are made or debit card payments would show up immediately under the processed payments section, because those funds are validated real time. And so when we enter one in a few minutes, you'll see that the one that I entered for a debit card is automatically put into this status here. The payment enrollments are going to show whether or not a customer is enrolled in either an autopay setup or a recurring payment setup. And those would show down here in the payment enrollment.

And then the refunded payments, again, this is something that a customer success manager or customer service manager would be able to do as far as refunds, so long as they have the permissions. And any refunds would show up here. So this is going to provide you with a nice history of this customer's account, as well as the payment history that's available. When we show these screens, you can notice here that we show a confirmation number. We show whether it was a checking or a card account, if it was a one-time payment, the date that the payment was scheduled for, the total amount, the last status, and then any statuses associated with that.

Now, the first step to taking a payment as a customer service rep when your customer calls in on the phone is to look up their account. The next step is to look at any funding sources that have been set up. When I look at this, I see that there's actually no funding sources that have been set up. So the first step that a customer service manager would need to do is to add that either bank account or card account.

So to go in and add that bank account, I can click here. I would get the name on the account that the customer would give me over the phone. I would indicate whether it was a personal or commercial account and whether it was a checking or savings or money market account.

The next step, then, would be to have the customer provide that bank routing number to me over the phone and then confirm it. And then the next step is to get the full bank account number and confirm that as well. Now, the memo is here if you want to put in a memo that this was a over-the-phone payment or whatever makes the most sense to your organization. You can include those in the memo field.

Now that I have this, I can click Continue. And it's going to go ahead and ask me to confirm. So now the bank account has been added successfully, but the next step, then, to take a payment would be go into the Manage Payment tab and then click on Schedule A Call Center Payment.

Now, the setup here is going to vary from client to client. In this example here, we have a one-time payment option, we have a recurring payment option, and we have a payment plan option. So for today's demonstration purposes, I'm going to go ahead and click on the One-Time Payment. I'll enter in the payment due date. And then I have to select the funding account that I've saved. So in this case, I've only saved one.

Now I have the option to either pay the current balance, the minimum payment due, the current statement balance, or to enter some other amount. So for demonstration purposes, I'll go ahead and add $25. And now I can click Continue.

So this screen here is basically a confirmation page that shows you that you're going to be making a one-time payment for this account with the account ending in this number here for $25. The other thing that we have here and available that some customer service reps like to actually read out is this script here that basically says, Michelle Bundy is requesting your authorization, and it will insert the date and the time to electronically debit $25 from your account ending in.

So this is a nice little script that can be read to the customer over the phone and basically get their confirmation to go ahead and process that payment. So once the customer confirms, I can go ahead and click confirm, and now that payment has been made. The other thing you're going to notice here is that there is a confirmation number that's automatically assigned by the system, and that is the payment confirmation that the customer will want to know.

Now, what happens behind the scenes is once you process a payment on behalf of a customer, this email address that we captured is going to-- our system is going to generate an email out to this email address. And it's going to contain the details of this payment. So it's a payment confirmation that will get emailed out to the customer.

Now, if I click on the Check Payment Status button, you're going to notice here that this payment that I just made is populated. And it's showing up in the scheduled payments, because I used an ACH account to actually make the payment. With ACH accounts in our system, this is going to stay in a scheduled payment status until we run the nightly batch process to move it from scheduled to processed.

So what that means is that if this needs to be edited, you can actually go in and can edit that payment, because there's still time to do that. So maybe it shouldn't have been $25. Perhaps it should have been $250. And so now if I click Continue and Confirm, check my payment status again, you can see here that that amount has now been updated to be $250.

The other option that I have-- again, because this payment hasn't been processed-- is that I could actually go in and I could delete this payment. But once the batch process runs and these payments move over to a processed payment status, you can see that there's no longer the ability to either edit or delete that payment.

Now, one other option that may or may not be available, depending upon the setup of a customer's call, is the ability to set up a recurring payment. And for recurring payments, the one thing to keep in mind is that the customer really dictates when a payment should start. So if the recurring option is selected, the system will ask for a start date. And we can just put in 15th of the month.

It will ask you for a frequency, and the frequencies are populated based on what the biller wants to offer. So if we wanted to do a monthly payment, we could do that. And then you also have the ability to fix the number of payments. So if a customer only wanted to make five payments, you could state that here. And then down here, you could put in the payment amount that's going to be reflected on a monthly basis of $50.

Now when I click Continue, you can see that the payment type, instead of a one-time payment, is actually a recurring payment. And you can see here that the frequency is going to be monthly payment. The number of payments are going to be five, and the payment amount each month is going to be $50. So when I click the Confirm button here and I go to check my payment status, this is going to show up under payment enrollment. And again, because it's ACH, I can go in and I can actually cancel this recurring payment. But in an overview situation, these are the types of payments that you're going to see, and it's going to continue to build the customer history.

So we've talked about the Customer Overview screen. We've talked about how to add funding sources. We've kind of walked through how to manage payments. This Statements page, this may or may not be anything that you have available. But if we're going to be presenting statements to a customer, those statements would be here and visible for our customers to actually be able to click on and view. With this particular customer, we don't have any, but this is another option that's available should this bill presentment be set up.

So just a few things to remember-- that you have the ability to go in and look up customers. You can look up customers by their account number. You can do look-ups by first name, by last name. You can do look-ups by a confirmation number. So there's multiple ways that you can look up a customer.

Anytime that you make a payment on behalf of a customer through Payment Center, a funding source always has to be there. Before you actually begin the process of making the payment, one of the things that you always need to remember is to check the funding sources to see if there's any funding source is saved. And if not, you'll need to add that.

And then, again, if we look at the Managed Payment screens, you're going to be able to see all of the history as far as payments and the types of payments that have been made with each of your customer accounts. So that really covers our customer look-up and our Customer Overview screen. I hope you found this demo helpful. Thank you for your time today.

[MUSIC PLAYING]