Paperless Telecom: Verizon gets aggressive about electronic billing

Verizon also is considering offering some type of incentive to customers to opt out of paper bills. On the consumer side, one option might be to include electronic billing as part of a discounted multi-play service bundle. Another possibility might be to automatically enter people into a drawing to win a prize.

On the business side, where bills can include thousands of pages, Verizon is already offering incentives. As Coyne explained, “We’re going to senior-level management and saying, ‘Perhaps we can plant a tree in your name and you can get some good publicity from it in the home town of your headquarters location.’”

Qwest Communications has already found some success with financial incentives for its customers to go green. Qwest heavily promotes a “Pay It Green” initiative to encourage customers to pay their bills electronically and eliminate paper billing. “For customers that sign up, we actually give 1% of their total bill to the K-12 school of their choice within our 14-state local service region,” said Darrell Lingk, director of Environmental Health and Safety at Qwest.

Even for customers who prefer to receive a paper bill, Verizon has made an effort to reduce the amount of paper used. Today’s bills are printed on smaller and lighter-weight pages than those of a few years ago. In addition to reducing the amount of paper used, that change also lowered the company’s postage costs.

About 1.5 million Verizon customers also have opted to receive fewer bills. “Instead of mailing separate bills for wireless and landline service, we put it on the same bill,” Coyne said. Customers opt in after learning about the single-bill option through a bill stuffer or a message printed on their bill.