CheckFree maximizes billing/payment capabilities via e-mail

Throughout more than 21 years in business, CheckFree has become the leading provider of financial electronic commerce services and products. Recently, the company identified an opportunity to add even more value to its electronic billing and payment (EBP) offerings -- and to achieve powerful internal efficiencies -- by designing and deploying a single, integrated, flexible system that would support the diverse needs of both its institutional customers and their end users.

CheckFree's competitors had all begun offering either e-billing or electronic payment services to their customers. CheckFree realised that it could differentiate itself by offering both, enabling individual customers to receive their bills through a secure, personalised web site and pay them through the same system.

To achieve that goal, CheckFree needed to create a single system that would transparently support its three constituencies: utility companies and other billers; banks, brokerages, credit unions and portals, which use CheckFree services to enable their customers to pay their bills online; and the end consumers themselves.

In addition, CheckFree wanted an efficient, convenient solution for its individual customers.

"Because e-mail is our customers' preferred communications channel," says Carol Davis, CheckFree's vice president of software development, "we wanted to be responsive in handling such issues as customer queries and responses, welcome messages and e-bills sent directly to e-mail accounts -- all while reducing e-mail turnaround and case handling times."

CheckFree's EBP processing engine, 'Genesis,' is a groundbreaking, industry-leading application developed with help from IBM Global Services. IBM also helped design and implement the Genesis Correspondence Management System (GCMS) -- an automated, integrated solution for managing customer service e-mail communications.

And IBM Global Services consultants helped CheckFree effectively leverage IBM WebSphere MQ -- a product the company had never used before -- as the central middleware component in the GCMS solution.

"GCMS allows us to monitor the volume of e-mail in each work queue to ensure that we meet our internal quality goals as well as our external service level agreement goals," says CheckFree senior manager of customer operations, Beth Mullet. "It enables us to plan for the number of resources that we will need to complete our e-mail work volumes on a daily basis."

CheckFree expects GCMS to enhance the consumer experience by reducing case handling time by 50 percent and helping to ensure 100 percent e-mail turnaround within 24 hours.

"By enabling us to respond faster to customer issues, our new IBM technology-based correspondence management system will heighten customer satisfaction and strengthen customer loyalty," says Davis. "It will also increase the cost-effectiveness of our contact center operations by doubling our productivity."

Robert Catterall, CheckFree's director of strategic technology adds: "For many years, IBM has responded to our needs with innovative strategies and cutting-edge technology solutions that strengthen our abilities to serve our clients. Online bill payment has really taken off in the past few years, and the IBM solution has proven its scalability to meet that growth."