Moving is always a headache. Just ask any biller since customer moves account for a major portion of return mail. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 9.8% of the population moves every year. But of those 31 million people, only 60% file a Change of Address with the USPS.
Companies that don’t have an effective workflow for return mail will send bills and statements to outdated addresses month after month, never to reach the customer. Not only do companies fail to collect payments on time, the cost of remailing is $3 per piece, according to the Office of the Inspector General. Add in the manual labor to remail, and it reaches $25 or more, says Pitney Bowes.
Our quality verification records indicate that return mail volume is about 5% across all industries. If you’re mailing just 10,000 monthly statements per month, that’s 500 pieces of return mail every month. Reprocessing them could run $12,500—and that’s not including uncollected payments.
Nordis’ full-service solution
When COVID-19 hit, and offices shut down, undeliverable mail got worse for many companies. It returned to their offices, silently piling up after they shifted to remote work. Billers kept sending financial and transactional communications to bad addresses, leading to delayed payments, more customer service calls and negative consumer experiences.
To prevent this scenario, clients turned to Nordis’ Return Mail Processing and Servicing. Starting 18 months ago, we had a surge of additional clients activate the service, which integrates with our Expresso® customer communications management (CCM) software and print and mail solutions.
Here’s how it works:
- Even if you don’t use Nordis’ Return Mail Service, every file that comes into Expresso is processed using National Change of Address, Coding Accuracy Support System (NCOA/CASS) and Delivery Point Validation protocols from the U.S. Postal Service. So before a single mailing goes out, we’ve ensured you receive the lowest possible mailing rate with address standardization and minimize return mailings due to incorrect or inactive addresses, reducing cost and waste. We provide the results so you can update your records and improve database accuracy. But even with that level of address hygiene, you’ll still have some percentage of returns.
- With Nordis Return Mail Service, we add a barcode and client-specific P.O. box address to each outbound mail piece, which then routes to our return mail processing center.
- When an undeliverable mailing comes back to our return mail processing center, we capture and scan it and send you a digital file with all the non-deliverable records. Nordis provides record-level detail on the actual returned communication, whether a letter, a statement mailing or document legally required to be sent via mail. You can track return mail on your Expresso dashboard.
- Next we securely destroy and recycle the mail piece, reducing your risk exposure and improving compliance.
- Any correspondence mail (where customers send mail to the P.O. box listed on the statement or letter) is segregated and shipped to our customers on a daily or weekly basis depending on preference.
Industry leaders turn to return
At the start of the pandemic, one of the biggest names in financial services added Nordis Return Mail Processing and Servicing for all their billing communications. One of the largest vacation clubs in the hospitality industry chose it for its timeshare owner communications. Both organizations tell us work from home is no longer the issue it once was, but the continuing labor shortage makes managing return mail impossible to handle in-house.
Two of our leading revenue cycle management (RCM) clients not only use Nordis’ Return Mail solution but position it as a competitive advantage because it enables them to more quickly collect on overdue accounts on behalf of their provider clients from healthcare consumers who moved.
Collectively, these new return mail processing accounts generate more than 150,000 returned mail pieces per month.
Best practices in CCM include proactively handling return mail, keeping data updated and not sending communications to a bad address. Ready to move on this? Talk to us about activating Return Mail Processing and Servicing today. Please contact us for more information.
