For years, we’ve heard the call: Go paperless. While the message is clear, adoption rates tell a different story. Despite decades of digital transformation, too many organizations still rely on a single digital channel and print for essential communications. So what’s holding us back?
As consultants who’ve helped organizations across industries navigate the complexities of digital adoption, we’ve seen the common pitfalls and the breakthroughs. Cracking the code to paperless communication isn’t about mandating change. It’s about making it make sense for your customers. That starts with rethinking your strategy from the ground up.
It’s Not Just About the Channel. It’s Also About the Value.
Most paperless initiatives focus on internal cost savings: reducing print, postage, and processing expenses. But that narrative does little to motivate the end customer. Why would someone give up a tangible, reliable document unless there’s something clearly better in return?
What we’ve found is that successful paperless programs start with value. Customers will make the switch when digital communication is more convenient, more timely, or better designed to help them take action. That means organizations must elevate digital beyond simply replicating print.
Sending a statement-ready notification to view a PDF on a portal and calling it transformation? That’s not paperless. That’s digital paper, with a few hoops to jump through to retrieve. True digital communication is designed for the channel and the customer. Designed to be responsive, actionable and personalized.
Defaulting Everyone to Digital Or Else, Doesn’t Work
Many organizations attempt to boost paperless adoption by automatically enrolling customers to digital and sometimes even penalizing them by charging them if they prefer print. It’s a tempting tactic, but one that often backfires. Customers who feel forced into digital channels are more likely to opt out, call for help, disengage entirely, or worse, leave for a competitor.
Choice matters. Customers should opt into a paperless experience on their terms. The job of the organization is to make that experience so compelling that the choice feels obvious. This means having more than one digital channel, communicating the benefits and making it easy. That’s how you build trust and long-term digital adoption.
A Moment of Action Is a Moment of Opportunity
Timing is everything. One of the most effective ways to encourage paperless adoption is to prompt customers when they’re already engaged digitally; right after they pay a bill, check a balance, or update their contact details.
These are natural decision points, and when you pair them with relevant, well-crafted prompts, conversion rates go up. The shift to digital becomes an extension of the customer’s current action and engagement and not an interruption.
Paperless Isn’t a One-Time Push. It’s a Journey.
We often say that effective communication isn’t a series of isolated touchpoints, it’s a journey. And that’s never more true than with digital conversion.
Customers may not say yes the first time. But with the right data and orchestration, you can segment and retarget them better. Look at the behavior of your customers:
- Who is mobile-first?
- Who opens emails regularly?
- Who has shown signs of digital readiness?
- Who pays online?
Paperless opt-in should be treated like a customer lifecycle initiative, not a one-and-done campaign. When you map it as a journey, your strategy becomes more agile and your results more sustainable.
Measuring Success Beyond Enrollment
Getting customers to opt into paperless is just the first step. The real measure of success is retention and engagement. Are customers staying paperless because the experience is better?
Too often, we see digital experiences fail due to email deliverability issues, poor mobile rendering, or complex portal logins. These are silent CX killers. If the digital experience doesn’t match or exceed the reliability of paper, customers will disengage or revert to paper.
Sustainable adoption happens when digital is frictionless, accessible, and designed for the way people live and work today. That means continual optimization, testing, and feedback loops, not just a checkbox on a campaign report.
Final Thoughts: The Paperless Equation
Cracking the paperless code is about more than reducing print volume. It’s about delivering value, creating communications and documents that customers prefer and making paperless the path of least resistance.
So if you’re asking how to get more customers to go paperless, maybe it’s time to reframe the question: How can we design a digital communication experience that customers genuinely want to opt into?
When you get that right, paperless adoption becomes inevitable.
