Monthly utility bills have never landed harder on household budgets, and the statements delivering them matter more than ever to the customer relationship. Average residential electricity bills reached $189 a month in 2025, with gas at $122 and water at $101, and 22% of customers say they cannot pay their bill in full or currently carry a balance with their utility, according to JD Power’s 2026 Utilities Outlook.
Every bill, notice and payment reminder now has a greater impact on both collections and customer experience. That’s prompting utility businesses to take a closer look at their utility bill printing and mailing services. Print and mail outsourcing can keep those communications accurate, compliant and on time, while allowing business users to update content quickly as needs change.
John Hazen, managing director of utilities intelligence at JD Power, said, “When utilities acknowledge customer pressures, explain charges in plain language and give customers more control over how and when they pay their bills, satisfaction improves.” Delivering on that depends as much on the partner producing the bill as on the utility writing it.
Paper still anchors the customer experience
Digital billing keeps expanding, but paper has not lost its place in how customers manage payments. In Two Sides North America’s 2025 Trend Tracker survey, 80% of U.S. consumers said they should have the right to choose between paper and digital communications and 74% said they should not pay more for choosing paper bills.
ACI Worldwide’s Utility Payments Report found 56% of consumers prefer to receive their billing statements digitally but 27.5% opt for both digital and paper. This choice is about accessibility as well as preference, and helps ensure customers who may have limited access to digital services can continue to receive important billing communications. For utility businesses, that means print and mail outsourcing works best in step with a utility’s other channels.
What utility companies should look for in a print and mail outsourcing partner
The right provider should be evaluated on more than print quality or postage rates. Utilities should look for a partner that can protect sensitive billing data, maintain production and delivery continuity, provide visibility into individual mail pieces and support the same communications workflow across print and digital channels.
These capabilities can help reduce operational risk while giving utility teams greater control over customer communications. Utilities that outsource printing and mailing successfully evaluate providers against a consistent set of criteria. A qualified partner should demonstrate:
- Documented compliance and security practices built for regulated financial and transactional communications rather than general commercial print. Ask how the provider protects customer information throughout the production process, including within its data environment. Relevant controls can include secure data transfers, access controls, audit trails, documented procedures and the ability to demonstrate compliance during reviews. For utility bill printing and mailing services, these safeguards should extend across data preparation, printing, finishing and mailing so that security does not end when a file enters production.
- Up-to-date print and communications technology, including high-speed roll-fed presses, variable-data printing and modern document composition, with automated workflows that can handle high-volume production while supporting coordinated print and digital communications.
- Job-level and piece-level tracking through printing, finishing and mailing, plus IMb tracking (inbound and outbound) and automated return mail service. Visibility becomes particularly important when a customer says a bill was never received. A provider should be able to show where a job is in production and through the mailing process. Return-mail data can also help utilities identify address problems and keep customer records current. The goal is to give utility teams actionable information rather than simply confirming that a batch was produced.
- Multiple production facilities and enough redundancy to absorb volume spikes from rate increases or annual budget-billing true-ups, without missing delivery windows. Ensure there is a documented way to maintain service when production requirements change.
- The ability to output a single job as a printed statement, an email-ready file or text-alert data, so channels stay in sync without separate production runs. Ask whether print and digital communications can be managed from the same underlying customer and billing data. A coordinated workflow can help reduce discrepancies between channels and simplify updates when bill content, payment information or customer messaging changes. It also gives utility teams a more consistent way to manage communications as customers move between paper, digital and hybrid delivery preferences.
- Strong quality-control processes for variable billing data, document composition and production. Ask how the provider validates files before production, reconciles output against source data and identifies potential errors before statements enter the mailstream. For transactional communications, quality control should be built into the workflow rather than treated as a final visual check.
Move toward one orchestrated platform
Utilities can outsource print production without giving up control over what’s on the bill or when it goes out. Best practice points toward a partner that operates as an extension of the business, and that provides advanced customer communications management software to manage content, print and digital delivery from a single platform.
Choosing an experienced and reputable utility bill printing and mailing partner can shape how well a utility protects the customer relationship.
Key takeaways:
- Paper still matters in utility billing. Per Two Sides’ 2025 survey, 80% of U.S. consumers want the right to choose between paper and digital, and ACI Worldwide found 27.5% opt for both. Utility bill printing and mailing services work best as one channel within a broader mix, not a replacement for digital.
- Judge print and mail outsourcing partners on more than price and print quality. Look for documented compliance and security practices, piece-level and IMb tracking, multiple production facilities for volume spikes, and strong quality control for variable billing data.
- The best partner runs print and digital from one platform. When utilities outsource printing and mailing, a customer communications management platform can output a single job as a printed statement, email-ready file or text-alert data, keeping every channel in sync without separate production runs.
Contact us to learn more about how to build stronger customer relationships and protect security through our utility bill printing and mailing services.
