Convergence in Telecom billing
With changing consumer lifestyles, continuously evolving in providing new services has become the mantra for Communication service providers (CSPs) to sustain stiff competition. Traditional stovepipe billing systems support either voice, data, mobile or video services at a time. Investing in individual billing systems for each service type is not an optimal proposition from an operational as well as maintenance perspective. Also from a customer’s perspective, they are keen to opt for bundled services which include triple play (voice, data and video) and quadruple play (adding mobility to voice, data and video), instead of buying single individual services.
Broadly speaking, convergent billing is an integration of all service charges onto a single customer invoice, by creating a unified view of all the services provided to the customer and a single-point customer care. Thus Convergence in the billing and Customer care platforms provides two fold benefits to the customers as well as the CSPs as follows:
Customer Gain:
• Eliminates the need of multiple providers for different services.
• Single bill for different services makes payment and other processing simpler and faster.
• Cross-service discounts i.e. eligibility for preferential pricing if multiple services are ordered.
• Single point of contact to resolve the billing problems/queries for any of the subscribed services.
CSP Gain:
• Opportunity to become a one-stop shop for multiple services, by offering triple and quadruple plays.
• Improve CSR’s operational efficiency and flexibility by making unified view of each customer available on a single click.
• Convergent billing enables multi-service packaging and pricing, whereby existing customers are lured to add new services and new customers are attracted by innovative bundled services. It enables CSPs to easily view the big picture by spotting cross-service relationships and buying patterns that spell out new opportunities helping them in adding new services to differentiate in this competitive market.
Thus with convergent services as part of CSP’s marketing strategy, the success of their business model will depend to a great extent on the implementation of cutting edge billing and customer care platforms.
