This morning I attempted to pay my electricity bill online, however upon accessing the Synergy website to make the payment I discovered that the page that was cached in Firefox now diverts to a generic payments page giving you information on what type of payment options are available.
Failure 1 – The page talks about payments online but has no further link to it.
I’m proficient enough with web technologies to work out, after scanning the page, that the site has been upgraded and now they are requiring a membership login to complete an online payment. This fact should be described within the online payment blurb for people who aren’t as savvy with current Internet design trends.
Furthermore, there is no immediate link to register anyway. You have to click on the “why register” link to actually find the link to register.
Failure 2 – I shouldn’t have to create a user account just to pay my power bill.
This is the point when the marketing department steps in and decides that they want to give people newsletters and hey, if we get people to create member accounts we can send them that way.. How about if we link it to payments…
Great idea as far as marketing people are concerned but from an end user perspective I do not want to have to remember usernames and passwords for a dozen utilities. All I want to do is pay my bill, and for that all I should need to do is have a secure form where I can enter my account number and the amount I wish to pay.
Failure 3 – The registration system is flawed and didn’t let me register anyway.
After attempting to register I was presented with an error message saying that some of my details were wrong although everything looked correct. After a few times I gave up.
This is a critical failure, impacting on both the service provider, who is failing to achieve the outcome (ie smoother cash flow and additional support staff hours) and the end user who is generally left feeling irritated by the whole process.
Footnote – I was able to register in the end but…
Originally I tried a few times and gave up but during the process of writing this article I was able to work out that the missing element that was creating the problem in registration was my name suffix appears on the bill and they expect you to add it in on the form as well. Mr, Mrs or Ms is generally not expected in a name field.
Despite this process the payment page is not even integrated into the member page. I was able to see my current bills but, upon clicking the button to make payment I then had to copy all the information off my bill anyway.
