Value Added Billing

All resellers are very aware of the value in cross selling to existing customers. Time and again it is proven that customers who buy more than one product are far less likely to churn and increasingly likely to listen to a greater value offering.

Added to this are mobile substitution and the onset of unified communications all driven by the customer’s desire to receive clear, easy to understand billing from their preferred supply partner. Creating a single convergent bill that is accurate and timely with multiple product streams and increasingly complex tariff bundling is an increasing challenge!

If getting the billing right was as simple as many people think then answer me why it is such a selling point against traditional telco rivals? A good billing partner will help you avoid their mistakes and actively support your growth.

How the reseller interacts with their customer at the point of invoicing is a key touchpoint in terms of user experience; your billing service should enable marketing promotions and activity to be at the centerpiece of your bill template program – your partner can enable this but not do this for you – differentiating your brand proposition is a key factor in how you spend your time, your billing company should help you execute this.

Delivering an online presence is both critical to scale while also important for CSR/green initiatives – let alone reducing the all important time to collect payments linked to electronic bill production, distribution and direct debit collections.

Enabling functionality to support additional products and reducing time to delivery are key requirements for your billing support partner. Introducing mobility, IP hosted services and maintenance all increase the need for inventory or asset management systems, further integration with multiple wholesalers and specialist providers which also culminate in billing reconciliation and quality management reporting tools.

The challenge for all resellers is to expand their service offering without a corresponding increase in people or manual activities. As the complexity of the offering grows so the margin for manual error, reliance on key personnel and need to respond to service problems increases. If your systems are able to take the pain away, the investment will have been worthwhile.

Aurora Kendrick James has a track record in expanding the value added offering from our traditional Affinity billing platform to supporting the customer experience online both in terms of electronic bill presentment including analysis tools, while also identifying the growing need to automate back office functions such as sales ledger, customer management, provisioning and data collection.

Experience almost offers a consulting value from the right partner. If your billing company has already worked with key vendors or dealt with challenges with other customers, the reseller is able to rely on support that will focus on best in class solutions tailored to meet your needs.

The constant need to invest in order to grow means that the right partners can help protect that investment through support and longevity, while tapping into their R&D into LLU, WLR3 and IP services will make an impact on you bottom line.

Some of the challenges that we at AKJ are regularly seeing:

Automate order to bill process while increasing the volume of suppliers & products
Bespoke and branded customer experience at the heart of the billing proposition
Multiple bill cycles
Provision of fraud management monitoring services
Engagement of IP services and mobility

The value added extras from a billing company are rapidly transforming traditional CDR rating into a key operational support partner with the ultimate test being are you growing together?