Improving Paperless Adoption Rates with Industry Best Practices Report Update

PAPERLESS BILLING CAMPAIGNS Lucky draws/Sweepstakes Toronto Hydro, SaskPower, BC Hydro, Nalcor Energy, and others have run similar monthly or quarterly digital campaigns.

SaskPower for example plans to run a $1000 Visa gift card contest in 2021 where all paperless billing accounts (new and existing) are entered into the draw for the first month of the campaign. In the months to follow, only new customers will be entered into the draw.

Cash prize/Gifts and Gift cards In general, members who have made strategic decisions to not enroll customer accounts to default e-billing tend to invest more in incentives and gifts than members who have enabled a default e-billing setting. For example, SaskPower decided to run a monthly draw for a $250 account credit amongst every customer that converted to paperless. Running these monthly promos for the 2019 calendar year saw a 4% increase (from 19% to 23%) in paperless numbers for that year.

Community Outreach Campaigns Members have engaged in “Go Green/Paperless” campaigns that promote social causes. Between 2015 and 2019, Hydro Ottawa partnered with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) to plan and execute its annual “Go Paperless” campaign, which encouraged customers to adopt online billing. This strategic partnership has contributed an annual operational savings of more than $2.1 million for the company while enabling 54.2% of Hydro Ottawa’s customers to e-billing.

Alectra Utilities initiated the “Go online for our Frontline” initiative to support Ontario’s healthcare workers. Last year, Alectra donated approximately $200,000 to the frontline fund and this year, they have committed to donate an additional $50,000 from savings received from every customer who switches to e-billing before July 2021. Additionally, 1 in every 10 customers will be entered into a draw to win free electricity for a year. To date, Alectra Utilities has been able to convert 23,000 customers to e-billing and because of their overall digital bill conversion, the utility was able to saves about $3.5M annually in postage, packing, printing, and paper.

Trial Periods In 2020, NB Power and Hydro One conducted pilot initiatives for their online users where customers could receive both e-bills and paper bills for three months. After the pilot period ended, if the customer did not opt out of e-bills they were automatically converted to e-billing mode.

This year, NB Power will launch an auto-enrolment initiative in the summer for the remaining customers who have a profile created their website and who are not enrolled for e-billing. Hydro One is running an e-billing initiative where they will automatically enroll customers to electronic billing. Customers will be sent an email and letter advising that they are enrolled in e-Billing and before they receive their first e-bill, a reminder email is sent out to advise them that their next bill is going to be delivered via an electronic channel.