Telenet customers with Doccle pay on time and use the app more often
In 2014, Telenet linked its administrative systems to those of Doccle. As a result, customers can receive and pay their bills fully digitally via Doccle. An analysis of this data provides some remarkable insights into the payment behaviour of this customer group.
With around 1.7 million residential customers, Telenet has one of the largest administrations in Belgium. Naturally, the Mechelen-based telco has already automated many of its processes.
But when Telenet customers were able to receive their bills via Doccle, Telenet hoped that this would have a positive impact on payment behaviour. After all, Doccle users who link their account to Telenet receive their bills digitally via Doccle and can manage and pay them in the same environment.
Jeroen Sabbe of the Telenet Data Acceleration Tribe, which conducted the 2023 analysis, explains: “Our goal was to find out if there are measurable differences between customers who are Doccle users and those who are not. We focused on three aspects: payment behaviour, app usage and customer contacts.”
Comparing customer groups correctly
Telenet was in no hurry to assess the impact of Doccle on its customers as accurately as possible. One of the challenges was that there were relatively large differences between Telenet customers who had Doccle and those who did not. Jeroen Sabbe explains: “We did not simply look at the differences in payment behaviour between Doccle users and non-Doccle users. That would not be an accurate comparison because Doccle users have a different profile than non-Doccle users. They are younger, they have more bundles, they have a higher internet usage, they are more progressive, etc.”.
Jeroen Sabbe’s team therefore compared the group of Doccle users with a carefully constructed control group that had the same characteristics as the Doccle users, but did not have Doccle. This is where data science comes in. Specifically, they constructed the control group by looking for each individual in the Doccle group to find the most similar individual in the non-Doccle group. “This gives us the strongest possible indication that the difference should be due to Doccle,” says Jeroen Sabbe.
Not only do we see that Doccle users are much less likely to receive initial reminders from us, but they are also much less likely to receive multiple initial reminders.
Results of the analysis
For the payment behaviour aspect, we looked at a 6-month period starting in June 2022. At Telenet, three reminders are possible for unpaid invoices. Jeroen Sabbe summarises the results: “Not only do we see that Doccle users are much less likely to receive a first reminder from us, they are also much less likely to receive multiple first reminders. For the second or third reminder, the number of Doccle users is still significantly lower.
In addition to payment behaviour, the study also looked at the use of the Telenet One app. Are Telenet’s Doccle customers more active than the other customers? Again, there seem to be clear differences between Telenet’s different customer groups. For example, Doccle customers use the Telenet app almost twice as often on a monthly basis as other customers.
Customer experience
Finally, the extent to which Doccle customers contact the Telenet helpdesk more or less was analysed. Again, they found significant differences between the two user groups: Doccle users are much less likely to contact the helpdesk for administrative issues.
Johan Morel, VP Billing Experience at Telenet, confirms the good results: “We are striving for a better customer experience and this analysis proves what we already felt: Doccle helps us to effectively support the customer experience we have in mind. That’s why we will continue to strengthen our relationship with Doccle.
Bram Lerouge, CEO of Doccle, is delighted with the results at Telenet: “This independent analysis confirms that Doccle has a lasting effect. However, this is only a first step towards further digitalisation. We want to continue to innovate in the areas of billing and archiving, but also in the area of data exchange, where structured, validated information can also be requested from customers”.
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