In the 1990’s when usage of the Internet was really beginning to grow, everyone assumed that paper postal mail would quickly go away. In fact, mail volumes actually increased by more than 20% over the subsequent 10 years. Today, while over 70% of households pay bills, make transactions and buy things on the Internet, only 5-15% of those households have given up receiving paper mail. This means that more than 55% of households could easily be paperless, but aren’t.
When we ask consumers why this is, we get exactly the same answer they gave Forrester Research in their 4th Quarter study in 2010:
- “I need the files for my records…” – Consumers want a paper copy of important mail for their files. In the past, major banks, enterprises and credit companies only offered to store paperless bills and statements for a limited amount of time.
- “I need my files all in one place under my control…” – Consumers receive bills from multiple businesses each month, creating what we at Zumbox call the 20 mailbox problem. According to the US Postal Service Household Mail Diary from 2009, most households have up to 21 different logins and their documents are scattered widely around the Internet, only available for a unknown periods of time ranging from a month to a couple of years. Consumers want a central consumer archive containing ALL of their mail, not remote access to 21 different biller archives hidden behind 20 different logins they often can’t remember.
- “I use paper mail to remind me to take action and pay bills on time…” – Consumers bring their paper mail in from the mailbox, write notes on the most important piece of mail and prop it up somewhere prominent where they walk by it all the time, often called the “mail cubby.” This reminds them to take action each time they walk by it. (I know, but try asking the questions yourself, you’ll be surprised at the answer.)
- “It needs to be secure…” – Both consumers and enterprises do not consider email secure enough to handle sensitive information. Due to these concerns, communication sent to customers via email is limited, forcing them to, again, visit multiple sites to access their private information or store their paper files in bankers boxes and file drawers at home.
In response to these concerns, at Zumbox we centralize a consumer’s mail in a single, central, highly secure place, provide them with notifications and reminders by a variety of channels when they need to take action and archive it for each household forever, for free. We have seen that by solving these consumer problems, consumer households feel confident and secure enough in their digital recordkeeping to be willing to let go of paper records and files. This means dramatic cost savings for large mailers who at the same time actually improve customer communications.
