Billing statement customer acquistion 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

[0012] The amount owed by the customer may determine whether the customer receives an acquisition offer. For example, based on stored rules or other predefined criteria, the acquisition offers can be targeted to customers whose minimum monthly payment is less than, equal to, or even greater than the per-acquisition budget of the offeror service provider. In a further variation, acquisition offers can be targeted to customers based on geographic information, such as zip codes, or historical data, such as credit reports or purchase histories. In this manner, the customer acquisition system allows service providers to target localized markets by using the customer databases of other geographically-oriented service providers, such as utility companies. Thus, the present invention allows an offeror service provider to make an acquisition offer to a billing statement issuer's existing customers, such that the offeror service provider will agree to credit the customer's account with the billing statement issuer, provided that the billing statement issuer's customer becomes a customer of the offeror service provider.

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.

Images