Billing statement customer acquisition system

Abstract

A customer acquisition system is disclosed that allows an offeror service provider to acquire new customers by making acquisition offers to customers through the billing statements of other businesses (“billing statement issuers”). An “acquisition offer” is an offer by the offeror service provider to pay an amount owed by the customer to the billing statement issuer, or a portion thereof, provided the customer agrees to become a customer of the offeror service provider. Predetermined criteria are used to automatically include an acquisition offer for eligible potential new customers of the offeror service provider with a billing statement or on associated promotional materials, and allows the customer to accept the acquisition offer using the billing statement. The customer acquisition system optionally ensures that the customer is not an existing customer of the offeror service provider before extending an acquisition offer. The acquisition offers can be tailored to the amount owed by the customer, and targeted to customers based on financial, geographic or historical data.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08 / 982,149, filed Dec. 1, 1997, incorporated by reference herein.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates generally to customer acquisition systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for facilitating acquisition of new customers using billing statements. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] The service economy has grown substantially in recent years. In the long distance telephone market, for example, over two hundred million (200 million) long distance calls are placed, on average, each day in the United States alone. For many such service-based businesses, fixed costs are high and variable costs are low, resulting in high profit margins for incremental customers (each additional customer after a threshold number of customers that are required to pay for fixed cost). Thus, it is clear why long distance carriers and other servi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a system that allows a service provider to acquire new customers by making offers to customers through the billing statements of other businesses. The system uses pre-defined criteria to automatically include offers on billing statements and promotional materials. Customers can accept offers by circling or marking a checkbox on the billing statement and returning it to the issuer. The offeror service provider is notified to transfer funds to the issuer upon receiving confirmation of the offer being accepted. The system can target customers based on their minimum payment, geographic information, or historical data. Overall, the invention allows service providers to make offers to customers of other businesses and acquire new customers through billing statements.

Problems solved by technology

For many such service-based businesses, fixed costs are high and variable costs are low, resulting in high profit margins for incremental customers (each additional customer after a threshold number of customers that are required to pay for fixed cost).

While a number of service providers have been successful in obtaining valuable new customers with such direct marketing approaches, it has been found that the vast majority of customers ignore such promotions in view of the overwhelming number of promotions received and the failure of service providers to differentiate their service products and various direct marketing promotions.

In other words, a direct-mail marketing campaign may be a success even when ninety-seven percent (97%) of mail pieces are inefficiently and wastefully discarded by recipients.

The problems and costs associated with current methods for acquiring new customers, however, are not limited to service providers.

Even from the customer's point of view, conventional service provider acquisition techniques are unsatisfactory.

Many customers are confused, discouraged and annoyed by the repeated attempts of service providers to solicit the customer's business through direct marketing efforts.

Billing-dependent businesses are also concerned with the inability to collect full payment owed by account holders.

Such uncollected payments, also called “uncollectable debt”, are considered a cost of doing business and consequently decrease the profits of the billing-dependent businesses.

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