Microsoft Product
Siemens
Microsoft Commerce Case Study
Mobil Corporation is not only a leading oil and gas company but also a massive U.S. retail operation—the company sends out 36 million credit card statements each year. To lower billing-related costs and take advantage of the Internet’s ability to customize mass-marketing messages to individual customers, Mobil is piloting the TransPoint Internet-based bill delivery and payment system. TransPoint is a joint venture between Microsoft Corporation and electronic payment processing leader First Data Corporation. Mobil is set to launch its new Internet-based bill payment service in early 1999.
Mobil Corporation is a leading global oil, natural gas, and petrochemical company with operations in more than 140 countries. But it’s also a savvy, experienced retailer and marketer. Mobil has manufactured and marketed automotive and industrial petrochemical products for an astonishing 130 years; today, the company has more than 7,700 branded retail outlets throughout the United States.
True to its history as a technology leader, Mobil is one of the first companies in the world to test a new Internet-based bill delivery and payment service called TransPoint, jointly created by Microsoft and First Data Corporation. The TransPoint will lower billing costs, increase the level of statement detail while making statements easier to read, and give retailers the opportunity to customize marketing messages to individual customers.
A Technology Innovator
Most people pay for gas with a credit card. While most private-label cards have seen declines in recent years, Mobil Card users have maintained their loyalty and in fact have increased their annual purchases. Annually, Mobil Oil Credit Corporation sends out 36 million Mobil Card statements totaling 167 million transactions and $3 billion in sales.
Like most major companies involved in credit card processing on a massive scale, Mobil is always looking for ways to make the process easier for customers, less expensive for Mobil, and grow brand loyalty. Mobil was first in the oil industry with pay-at-the-pump service, debit card acceptance, prepaid gas cards, and radio frequency transponder technology—Speedpass, that allows customers to pay for their gas without reaching for their wallet or purse.
In 1994, Mobil outsourced its credit card processing to lower costs. In 1996, the company offered Mobil Card customers the ability to pay their paper bills over the Internet. Although a move in the right direction, this service had shortcomings that prevented Mobil from promoting it. The third-party Internet site had no Mobil branding and lacked an electronic bill delivery. Mobil continued its search for the perfect Internet-based bill delivery and payment solution.
TransPoint: A Win for Customer and Mobil
From First Data Oil Services, the company handling its credit card processing, Mobil learned about TransPoint. TransPoint (www.transpoint.com), a joint venture between First Data Corporation and Microsoft, is an Internet-based service that securely and reliably delivers richly formatted electronic bills, statements, invoices, notices, and associated advertising to any online consumer or business. It also returns payment, remittance instructions, and related information to the biller. TransPoint’s unique, round-trip approach to Internet bill delivery and payment resembles the function of the post office in communicating between billers, consumers, and their respective financial institutions.
“We chose TransPoint as our Internet billing solution because of the strong Microsoft and FDC relationship and their vision for the future,” explains Sara Jordan, manager of Consumer Card Products for Mobil. “Internet bill delivery is uncharted territory. The TransPoint team has been a tremendous help in fostering communication between all the TransPoint pilot companies and making sure Mobil has a successful implementation.”
TransPoint also met Mobil’s requirements for strong Mobil branding on the statements, low overall costs, rich statement detail, zero cost to the customer, and complete geographic coverage.
How TransPoint Works
TransPoint is a complete end-to-end billing and bill payment system. Statements that would have been printed are rendered on the consumer’s PC from data sent by First Data within an online statement template to the TransPoint Service Center. The TransPoint Service Center consolidates Mobil’s bills, as well as those from other billers, in one place for consumers. The Service Center is also linked to the consumer’s financial institution Web site. If the consumer’s bank or credit union is not a TransPoint participant, customers will be able to access their Mobil bills through Mobil’s Web site (www.mobil.com) through a link to the TransPoint site or at TransPoint.com.
Consumers visit their financial institution’s Web site to view their Mobil e-bills. The e-bills are formatted in a standardized, easy-to-read way that shows consumers the current amount due, previous bills, summary information, a wealth of activity detail, a special offers button, and a billing inquiry button where customers can fill out an online form to submit to Mobil customer service if they need assistance. Customers can also click the www.mobil.com hot link.
Consumers review and pay e-bills with a click of the mouse. If linked with their financial institution, they can check their account balance at the same time and transfer funds if necessary. Consumers can either pay the bill immediately or schedule a future date for the payment to be delivered to Mobil. TransPoint returns an electronic remittance to the biller and routes payment from the consumer’s financial institution to the biller.
There is no paper, no writing checks, no transposing numbers, no trip through the mail, and far fewer consumers confused about their bills. “TransPoint is allowing us to improve customer service by simultaneously simplifying and expanding our statements,” Jordan says. “The top reasons customers call Customer Service involve inadequate transaction detail, which we can now provide on electronic invoices using information layering and font variety. We want the statement to be so clear and so detailed that customers won’t have to pick up the phone.”
A big benefit of TransPoint to most billers is the ability to dramatically lower billing costs through the elimination of printing and mailing. Mobil has already lowered its billing costs by outsourcing the TransPoint Biller service functions through First Data Resources. Now they are focused on making the e-bill a powerful new marketing communication tool.
Personalized Smart Ads
The most important benefit of TransPoint to Mobil is its allowance for heavy Mobil branding on the statement, allowing Mobil to reinforce its marketing messages with customers. Besides including the Mobil logo and other graphical elements, TransPoint allows Mobil to include personalized marketing messages.
“The ability to merge our transactional data with our billing system opens up a huge marketing opportunity for us,” Jordan says. “We’re using the transactional data we already have to deliver smart ads–personalized services and messages–which is something we just can’t do with paper-based statements.”
For example, Mobil can discern from its transactional data that one customer comes into a Mobil station two to three times a week around 7:30 a.m., buys gas, and pays at the pump, which means she’s not going inside the station. Mobil might send this customer a personalized offer on her TransPoint statement letting her know that the station offers gourmet coffees and pastries and offering her a discount on her first purchase.
Says Jordan, “With the flexibility of the Internet and TransPoint, we can turn a routine operational function such as billing into a powerful customer communications opportunity.”
In the future, Mobil has plans to link its TransPoint statements more closely to transactional data, its growing customer database, and its Web site for forging even richer customer relationships. “We recognize that the Internet can be a very impactful way to interact with customers in a very personalized, yet cost-effective way. Mobil is demonstrating its strong leadership and innovation by providing the Internet Bill Delivery and Payment service to our customers,” Jordan concludes.
Mobil Corporation