Objectives

As part of a major transformation, Australia Post identified the importance of its billing operations and was determined to dramatically improve it to enhance customer experience and increase employee engagement.

To support this, Bevington Group was engaged to:

Challenges

Poor customer experience arising from billing errors and issues High degree of preventable credit notes being issued to customers Personnel cost associated with resolving customer queries and issues

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“Customers come to us when they are frustrated and getting nowhere with their dispute”​​ “The issues prevent our customers getting on with their business”​​ “If I had more time I could get us more business”​​​ “A lot of the admin tasks we do are just box ticking exercises and they take us away from the true customer issue”​

Approach

Staff and management participated in several collaborative solution generation sessions, during which they identified a series of tactical solutions, strategic priorities, and radical long-term changes.

Bevington Group interviewed employees and customers to capture bottom up insight in detail

Findings

Over half of the total process effort was characterised as waste (non-value add)

The key challenges found related to failure demand including:

• Poor information quality, flow and visibility
• Unclear/fragmented responsibilities and accountabilities
• System and technology limitations
• Long elapsed time to resolve customer queries

Our recommendations

Six workstreams were proposed to deliver the target state

Customer self-service enablement To simplify billing information and support that is easy for customers to use, access and control	Process, roles, and responsibilities To maximise first time right, and achieve fast and effective dispute resolution	System enhancements and automation To ensure errors are prevented, detected early, and proactively managed
Product and pricing policy That support simplified invoices and a reduction in disputes	Operations and infrastructure That enables accurate and complete billing information	Governance and reporting To monitor process health and drive continuous improvement using process metrics

Implementation

• Supported by Bevington, the organisation began delivering Bevington’s recommendations commencing with six prioritised opportunities
• Bevington also gathered business requirements and provided inputs into business case development for subsequent changes
• The change program was underpinned by six transformation principles to ensure that billing issues continued to be addressed as other strategic decisions were made across the business

Benefits realised

55% reduction in resolution time The organisation was able to reduce credit note resolution time by more than half (from 22 days to under 10 days)	New and improved metrics Designed to track end-to-end process health and measure its success

Client feedback

“Great quality of output, very thorough and critical thinkers. Were able to provide really valuable insights to make decisions”​​​

“Bevington team were able to join the dots on a lot of insights and make meaning out of it. ”​​

“They are Professional, have the industry knowledge, and understand what best practice looks like – industry leading. Good at building capability with viable outcomes”​​​

“I really liked the practical approach. Bevington team were very customer focused and responsive.”​

Part of this work was supported by the XeP3 product (owned by Bevington and Partners Pty Ltd)