Customer Care & Billing for Communications Services
A Better Way to Run Your Communications Billing
Connect:SM for Communications Simplifies the billing of Multi-Services over Broadband Networks
Our solutions allow communication service providers to simplify the billing of multiple communications services delivered over broadband networks.
The Service Providers Challenge – Efficiently Deploy and Manage Multiple Broadband Services while Leveraging Existing Staff
Broadband networks enable a service provider to offer multiple communications services like voice, video and data. The rationale for a single, multi-service network is compelling: control costs, bundle services, reduce churn, gain market share, increase profitability. A major obstacle to deploying these services is the ability to effectively manage the billing requirements inherent with each service. The billing requirements for each service greatly vary, creating unique challenges for service fulfillment, customer support, data and inventory management and invoicing. How do you use your existing billing staff to implement and manage multiple broadband services? Implement a flexible Customer Care and Telecom Billing platform that is designed to manage multiple broadband services.
Connect:SM for Communications –The Smart Solution to Simplify Billing Challenges for Multiple Broadband Services
BillWise's Connect:SM for Communications delivers the power to manage billing for broadband services with minimal expense. It allows you to manage the full billing life cycle of voice, video and data services carried over a broadband network without overburdening back-office billing staff. It does this by integrating the key components necessary to support billing for broadband services. Fulfillment, customer support, data management, inventory management and invoicing functions are centrally managed and controlled through a single enterprise wide billing solution.
Focus on solving customer needs without decimating budgets
BillWise's technology empowers the broadband service provider to deploy, manage, and invoice for all broadband
services through a single enterprise wide installation. Because all tasks are managed through a single billing platform,
the billing department see greater efficiencies. This is realized through less training, fewer interfaces, and
centralized management and communications of all customer data. The result is lower cost of ownership.
Integrated Service Fulfillment
Through the seamless integration of Service Order, Workforce, Inventory and Provisioning management
the broadband service providers can efficiently manage the billing life cycle of voice, video and data services.
Cloud-based Customer Service
Connect:SM for Communications provides a web-browser interface for all customer services functions, which translates to
a less significant learning curve and reduced training. In addition, web based electronic billing and customer
self-service saves call center costs.
Multiple Services – One Bill
With Connect:SM for Communications, all services that a customer selects are clearly defined and communicated on a single invoice. Single bill invoicing streamlines back office operations, reduces fulfillment costs and increases customer loyalty.
We’ll help ensure that you’re ready for the future. Today.
If your business is looking for ways to profit and thrive in a very crowded market, look to BillWise, the billing solutions company with more than two decades of experience solving complex billing challenges for communications services. BillWise is fully equipped to help you make a profitable and sensible transformation by providing the billing solutions that will position you for the future and by containing costs with its flexible pricing for small to mid-market service providers.
CUSTOMER CARE & BILLING CAPABILITIES
Convergent Services Customer Self-Care & EBP&P
You have a high volume of monthly invoices that are mailed to your customers. Your mailing costs keep increasing and your DSO is hard to manage. You've explored options such as print vendors, but their solutions are expensive and lack flexibility.
BillWise's Connect:SM for Communications with it's Convergent Services Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBP&P) and Customer Self Service capabilities enables you to automate customer care operations like service ordering, account changes, viewing, downloading, or printing invoices, and accepting online payments. All saving you money, improving collections, and increasing customer satisfaction.
Convergent Services & Bundling
Consumers like bundled packages that combine features together and cost less than those same features would if billed individually. Most CSPs have used this discounting model to attract new customers, increase revenue opportunities, and more importantly with increasing competition, keep their existing customers.
Bundled discounts can push the limits of traditional billing systems because of the endless combinations of services and billing options. For example, discounts may be offered based on the number of services chosen, the selection of premium services and/or usage volumes. CSPs may also want to offer short-term discounts that expire in order to attract new customers, or entice existing customers into trying new services.
To remain competitive, CSPs must make sure that their billing system is capable of dealing with the complexities of the various discounting and bundling options required by their customers.
Further, customers expect their invoice to contain all their charges regardless if they have an individual service or bundled services. Not all billing systems can provide the flexibility and power needed to consolidate charges from a variety of sources and present them in a single, seamless invoice.
Service Order Processing
Processing complex service orders has always been a workflow and integration challenge for CSPs. What looks like an individual service to the consumer might be a collection of events that all have to be orchestrated to activate, suspend, or deactivate the service from the consumer’s perspective. Interacting with multiple sources complicates the process even more.
A flexible workflow system and provisioning interface are critical components to accurately and fully automate the service order process in today’s advanced networks. Monitoring and alerting processes with associated error correction capabilities are essential features to ensure a smooth customer experience.
On the customer facing front, web-based businesses are built around the principles of customer self-service to register and manage their services and account information so service order processing must be supported as part of this self-service capability.
Less is more in this area. The fewer integration points and multiple systems involved the more reliable and auditable the process can be. This enables a better customer experience, shortens troubleshooting and problem resolution, and minimizes revenue leakage. A billing system that has extensive service provisioning and service activation experience, both with 3rd party service delivery platforms as well as directly with network elements, will provide the CSP with a tremendous return on investment and enhanced customer satisfaction.
Communications Service Taxation
Calculating the taxes for a single service can be simple enough, but gets trickier when multiple services are bundled together, particularly when each service can have unique taxation requirements. When telecom type taxes are factored in (required when offering telephone service) the process is further complicated, and may even create a tax liability situation.
CSPs must pay numerous federal, state and local taxes, depending on the service provided. Cable TV franchise fees, e911, universal service fund (USF), and use tax are some examples of taxes that must be levied.
Adding to the confusion is the complexity of understanding what is taxable and what is not. For example, Intrastate calls do not require USF tax, while Interstate calls do. Once services are bundled, the billing system must be capable of unbundling the service so that it can be accurately taxed, while ensuring that it still appears as a service bundle to the end user.
The CSP needs to have a strong understanding of the taxation capabilities of the billing system in order to be sure all appropriate services are taxed according to local, state, and federal taxation requirements regardless of multi-service bundling.
Managing Customer Premise Equipment
Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) can be managed through the integrated inventory management module. Connect:SM for Communications tracks and manages all serialized equipment assets. This integrated function maintains an electronic accounting of all equipment required to facilitate the delivery of voice, video, or broadband services.
Devices such as set top boxes, handsets, broadband routers, and optical network terminators can be stored and tracked. Manages phone number pools, devices, and electronic identification numbers (EIDs), such as handsets, ESNs, IP addresses, MAC Addresses, SIM cards, a-keys, capcodes, as well as accessories and other serialized inventory. Inventory can be bulk-loaded and numbers can be cooled before being re-issued.
Wholesale Service Reconciliation & Settlement
The days of being a vertically oriented CSP are long gone. Cost and complexity require CSPs to align with 3rd party providers and aggregators to deliver services in today’s communications and entertainment markets.
Often centered around usage-based transactions, these relationships can provide business and technical challenges for all parties involved. When disputes arise, cash flow and service availability can be impaired.
Having a reliable collection, processing, and exception handling capability for 3rd party usage-based transactions is essential for billing systems today. Reconciliation, dispute management, and settlement services are critical capabilities to minimize revenue leakage, measure 3rd party SLAs, and shorten order-to-cash cycles.
Workforce Management and Trouble Ticketing
For CSPs whose workforce management and trouble ticketing needs do not require sophisticated point solutions, Connect:SM for Communications optional Workforce Management and Trouble Ticketing modules provide basic functionality tightly integrated with Connect:SM for Communications' customer care and billing capabilities.
The integrated workforce management service order system enables creating service and change orders, tracking multiple service activities on an order, scheduling customer site visits involving truck rolls and crew dispatch, generating required forms and reports, generating charges where appropriate, and closing out orders.
The integrated trouble ticket module provides trouble call tracking capabilities including capture of problem class and description, generating charges when appropriate, optional scheduling of service crews, and ticket closure. When tickets are resolved, the problems and resolutions are made available in a knowledge base to assist in future situations.
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