Billing & customer care
The New Differentiator

As convergence plays the leveler, customized billing will give SPs an edge.

Highlights

l Converged networks will be a mix of packet and circuit switching

l Customers will appreciate a single bill for fixed, mobile, and Internet services

Billing and customer care (B&CC) has evolved into a mission-critical operation on which depends the profitability of an operator. A good B&CC system not only serves to consistently bring in revenues and satisfy customers, but also acts as a vehicle to attract new customers. It can be used to offer innovative services, which can generate incremental earnings from the existing subscriber base. Accurate billing is very important, since any under-billing leads to a loss of revenue, while any over-billing leads to customer dissatisfaction and increased customer service costs.

Convergence Paradigm

Convergence–both in the network as well as applications—has thrown in new challenges for the B&CC system. The next-generation converged networks will be a mix of circuit switching and packet switching. This means that the B&CC system will have to support multiple billing paradigms and manage multi-data feeds across several switches/gateways, providing the services. We now need convergent billing and customer-care solutions to meet these new needs. Billing will occur not just for the duration of access to the network, but for packets transferred, and the type and level of services offered.

The goal of such convergent solution should be to make the bill customer-centric or provide the customer with a single view of multiple instances of the same service, say multiple phone lines. Customers are going to need, if not demand, a single bill for all services, viz fixed phone, mobile, Internet, cable TV, online services, etc.

A convergent B&CC solution will also help increase revenues for the operator, by offering a choice of services (or re-billing for others’ services), and provide him the ability to offer cross discounting besides introducing new services to existing customers. From a customer relationship management (CRM) perspective, it is very important to understand customers’ usage patterns across a single as well as multiple services, and find out which new services can be potentially sold to the customer.

The next step in convergent provisioning will be ‘Web self-care’, where a customer can go to the website and subscribe to the service or modify it, based on his need. This will empower the customer and reduce customer service costs.

Corporate Needs

Corporate users will like to take advantage of the competition in the telecom sector, as there are more providers to choose from and telecom management is becoming increasingly complex.

Typically, organizations may receive, on an average, 30 to 50 bills a month. Not only the cost to process these bills is high, the time needed to manage different carriers and equipment suppliers is also significant. Customers also need the ability to break telecom billing information down in meaningful ways and receive it in a user-friendly format to deliver real benefits.

Users are no longer willing to accept a ‘one size fits all’ approach. New technologies are prompting smart telecom companies to tailor their billing solutions to individual needs of customers. The way a provider bills its customers can play a determining role in his future success.

Future Edge

In addition to fixed broadband networks, the launch of ‘3G content-based’ mobile networks is bringing in unprecedented complexities and challenges for billing solutions. The commercial success of these networks will depend on how far the billing solutions can deliver the desired ‘customer experience’. A billing system can become a competitive tool to augment operators’ service offering, and also serve as a customer communication medium. As the level of coverage and quality-of-service become almost the same, billing will become a differentiating factor.

By Niraj K. Gupta, "from my cell", Voice & Data, April 2002