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BILLING ISSUES: Caring for the Customer

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VoicenData Bureau
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Indian telecom industry is still a bit conservative and customer care is in its primitive stages. Catering to such a huge customer base has created several dents in customer care efforts and left a large dissatisfied customer base.

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With the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) strictures to open up the telecom industry

completely for private participation by 2002, the Indian telecom industry is due for a range of telecom services with the entry of several global telecom majors. And that puts the Indian telecom industry in the right platform to learn from the deregulated markets to adopt a strategy to implement solutions and systems, which will change the face of customer care solutions in the

industry.

Such has been the impact of the Internet across the deregulated Europe and US markets that telecom has become not only competitive but started focusing on customer care. In their attempt to capture a larger customer base, telecom companies in these regions are turning their focus towards “customer centred” solutions. Thus, come into play the silent back-office tools–advanced customer care and billing systems.

The industry has witnessed sweeping changes in areas such as customer sign-up, billing for multiple services, bill presentation, trouble tracking, and payment among others. Customers are being given preferences in areas such as the billing cycles, payment methods, and even they are facilitated to do analysis of their bills and present it in the format they want.

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However, Government and monopolies in India, often cite the huge population as a major hurdle in order to serve them better. Making matters worse are the primitive and mostly outdated solutions that these companies use. The actual customer care issues, both for businesses as well as residential users, are even more complicated.

Customer Care Issues in Billing



Signing up for the service: Signing up for the telecom service is a cumbersome and lengthy process involving filling up forms of several pages and submitting it to telecom offices. Even after five years of introduction of the Internet in India, telecom companies have used it minimally to the benefit of the customers. Customers run pillar to post before they can even file an application. Often they are not even sure that which of the local telecom office is serving their area.

Tracking the status of the application is another major

issue and the subscribers are often 



left in the dark for years together. Given the number of “wait-listed”
subscribers, automated sign-up and tracking tools assume greater

significance.

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Bill preparation: Tracking payments has always been a major issue. Subscriber’s services are often disconnected since billing systems do not receive the payment information even after the subscriber made the payment. Such scenarios warrant far more efficient billing systems, which can track payments, both at micro as well as macro level.

Bill presentation: Currently, subscribers receive their bills via normal post. Missing bills is a common issue. Customers pay up not only the unpaid fees but also surcharge for such non-



payment before they could restore the services.A strategic marketing tool: The bill reaching the subscriber has valuable space for marketing messages and customer interaction. However, telecom companies fail to utilize it as an effective medium. This is common in the advanced countries. If it is done well, the bill will enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction, increase customer use of services thereby increasing revenue.

Billing cycles: In almost all the cases, only once in two months a bill is generated and sent to customers. Customers do not have very many choices. Keeping track of the telecom

expenses is vital to any segment of subscriber. But the bills sent once in two months do not help them to budget their expenses on telecom where the prices are really high.

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Paying bills: Since May 1999 subscribers have been allowed to pay bills electronically via their banks. However, even now long queues are a common sight. Payments through credit cards, wire transfer are still not accepted.

Trouble tickets: We often find telecom companies conducting customer forums for redress mostly for problems that are similar in nature and these problems essentially end up then and there. The customer’s problem history is a valuable data gold mine that helps the phone companies keep track of the problems that are repetitive and teething in nature. Such data stored could help the phone companies to be pro-active in providing solutions to customers. Without advanced solutions, we often find the phone companies solving the same type of problem, customer after customer, time and again.

Billing analysis and billing audit:

The current billing systems do not facilitate subscriber level billing analysis. Bill audit as well is virtually non-existent except for incidents where subscribers receive strange bills for huge sums. There are plenty of disputes that need efficient and flexible systems.

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Lack of information on bills: Complete transparency and clarity in billing is a major issue. For example, customers might not be sure what charges were applied for their call which started towards the end of peak hour charges, say 6.55 p.m., and ended during half time charges, say 7.20 p.m. Invariably the subscriber is charged for peak hour charges for the entire duration. Such information is a must for any customer who is actually using and paying for the services.

Partial billings: Subscribers of value-added services such as caller identification, call waiting, conference calls, and call forwarding normally pay up for the complete month/billing cycle, since the billing systems cannot handle partial billings. 

Wrong bills: Corporate subscribers often find themselves with large bills which might as well contain an additional phone line (of a next door neighbour). Such serious issues are pretty common and entering in to a dispute on this with the DoT is a nightmare.

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Bills do not recognize faulty phones: Customers often receive telephone bills for periods where the telephone would not have been working at the customer premises. There are no provisions as of today to deduct the rental or additional charges that the billing could reflect. Customers invariably cough up the charges month after month.Tracking fraud: Often we find the CAG of India hitting the headlines of newspapers with the list of pending payments from the ministers, government officials running in to several millions of rupees which are often unpaid. The telecom companies and in turn the ordinary subscribers are at the receiving end. Preventing such misuse with advanced solutions would not only help the respective organizations to protect their valuable revenue, but also help the telecom companies earn valuable revenue as well on time.

Business Specific Requirements



The business consumers despite paying premium charges for using the telecom services often are at the receiving end of the shortcomings of the Indian telecom services. Apart from several common ones above, there are issues unique to this segment. 

Multiple services billing: It is pretty common these days for business subscribers to use

multiple services such as phone, cellular, toll free, and Internet apart from a range of others.

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They are forced to keep track of the basic minimum information such as bill receipts,

payments, etc. Currently, the industry is not equipped to provide one bill for multiple services.



Multiple lines: Apart from a range of services, the corporate segment which owns several lines would be receiving multiple phone bills, one each for their phone line. That really becomes a major trouble for the company administration, if they own something like 30-40 lines.

Relevance of Advanced Billing Systems



The presence of global telecom players such as the British Telecom, AT&T, etc., has increased the awareness among the local industry players who are lurking for opportunities in various sectors. Globally, the telecom services started growing from all directions. Internet today can provide every kind of telephony service just the way electricity can be applied to any range of appliances. 

The services for billing: On the one hand, the telephone industry is witnessing a growth with Internet faxing, telephony, and mobile phones. On the other, the scientists and researchers are working on appliances, gadgets, and machines that will possibly touch every sphere of our lives. For example, Internet refrigerator will keep track of its contents and place orders

automatically to the near by grocery store as and when the contents hit a low. Recently the ring-sized chip has enabled travellers to be identified automatically for fare deduction using automated network systems.

Billing systems for advanced services: Such customer orientation of services, today, demands highly capable support systems, which could meet expectations of the company and its customers. Sewed with several customer care concepts, today’s custom-tailored billing systems are valid examples of such principles.

Focussing on such issues has been given a major thrust among the telecom companies around US, Canada, Asia, and Europe. Bills in local languages, bills through e-mail or over the Internet, payments through credit card over Internet or wire transfer, and customer-trouble history are some of the major areas. Let us have a look at some of them and their potential relevance to Indian telecom industry.Automated Sign-up Process: Telecom companies have automated the entire sign-up process that will allow subscribers to remotely sign-up for their services. For example, currently in the US, IMT Global Inc., a value-added telephone service provider, is allowing customers to fill-up forms from their Internet site. Sonic Network, another service provider, allows customers to track the status of the application on the Web. Such facility would ease the tedious process of standing in long queues and filling up pages and pages of forms.

Billing Cycles: Today’s billing cycles allow flexible billing cycles for each of the customers depending on their requirement. For example, should a company prefer to receive bills every five days, instead of every month, telecom companies could do so by setting an option in the billing solution. Such facilities could be offered for single or group of customers. Flexible billing cycles help customers track expenses and optimize use of telephone services.

Bill Presentation: Today’s billing systems have capabilities to present bills via e-mails, over the Web, on paper, and fax to customers. Such facilities would allow the subscribers to receive bills promptly on time. And the phone companies could possibly reduce the incremental cost involved while catering to very large customer base such as India.

With very high penetration of Internet among telephone subscribers, such facilities would be a blessing in disguise for them.

Paying for the services: Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) is the most sought after solution today. Such has been its success that customers prefer companies that offer such flexible solutions, not just in the telecom industry but in others too. There are still apprehensions in customer’s mind about sending credit card numbers via Internet though companies claim security features. However, sending credit card numbers via fax has also been a popular method, to pay for the services. Credit cards accepted by billing systems provide great flexibility to telecom users.

Most billing systems today are capable of accepting and verifying the credit card payments. Clearing house solutions such as IC verify are popular among the solutions to accept credit card payments.

Technology Hurdles



Telecom technology is still growing and facing technology hurdles as it is growing by sections. This has resulted in corresponding problems with the billing industry too. With companies conjuring up different telecom services every now and then, it is using a system and software that is entirely different from the rest of the industry, the major requirement for the billing system, the Call Detail Record (CDR) becomes entirely different for each of the company. The result is lack of interoperable billing solutions that can bill any services.

Sensing the need for such data exchange between network elements, operational support systems and business supporting billing systems, the telecom companies and billing companies have come together to work on an Internet Protocol-based Call Detail Record

(IPDR).

IP-based call detail formats: IPDR, an organization of telecom operators and billing vendors (http://www.ipdr.org) defines the essential parameters for any IP transaction. It is also working on to provide a repository for defined IPDR formats. Work is underway to define prototype IPDR formats for common services, and represent the usage in state-of-the-art encapsulation techniques such as XML. After the preliminary work is complete, the IPDR formats will be taken public in an industry-wide effort to reach consensus on IP service definitions, core usage metrics, and optional usage metrics. The IPDR formats will be published in a repository and evolved over time as needed.Billing systems in the past two decades have grown to become “Strategic Business Analysis” tools that add a competitive edge to the company over its competitors, from being a plain and simple paper bill producing systems. “Billing is no longer back-office–it is customer facing! What many people forget is that without billing, the telecom industry has no revenues” quoted Julie Reitman, a senior billing analyst at

IDC.

Billing industry is highly matured after decades of evolving. According to the August reports of IDC, the billing industry is projected to corner $9.6 billion revenue in the US alone by 2003.



Billing vendors currently offer a variety of billing solutions that may provide speed-to-market as well as higher compatibility instead of telcos building such functionalities in-house. With the huge growth possibilities round the corner, the Indian telecom industry should wake up to the possibilities of advanced customer care solutions to overcome the shortcomings of the existing providers. This will not only give them a bigger share of the customer base that is kept happy but would stop the telecom service from being a charity.

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