August 2012

Carrier Usage Audits: Why Regular Checkups Are the Key to a CSP’s Bottom-Line Health

by Brian Silvestri

Audits are not rare; they are everyday events. When a waiter hands you the final bill at a restaurant, you scan it, check the addition, and then detect a charge for a margarita you never ordered. The waiter then corrects the bill and you’ve just completed a rudimentary cost-assurance process complete with audit, dispute and reconciliation.

Translate this simple restaurant bill process to the one behind a full-scale carrier audit and there are a lot of similarities when you don’t count things like: a big increase in rating complexity; the addition of millions to billions of line items to check; and the need to synchronize input from multiple data sources and internal organizations.

The money at risk is the big difference, of course. An error on a restaurant bill might cost you an extra $10. Bad intercarrier bills could cost your company tens of millions of dollars in undetected discrepancies each year.

My mission in this column is to change some thinking around carrier audits. Rather than a once-a-year or once-a-quarter audit, I’m going to make the case why carriers need to perform audits on a more regular basis. Carrier invoices are such a major expense for CSPs, it’s well worth the price to conduct monthly audits to ensure the charges are accurate.

What’s more, many telecom executives are wholly unaware of the many risks of not having a solid auditing program. So I’m going to shed some light on this subject and briefly discuss: the different types of audits; the organizations involved; the dangers of not auditing frequently; and the factors you should consider when selecting a cost-management vendor.

By the way, I will focus exclusively on usage (or transaction) audits. Audits on the fixed/circuit facilities side are important too, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.

The Variety of Usage Audits Performed in Cost Management

Many types of audits are performed across the enterprise to ensure contract compliance. And, based on the situation and your company’s objectives, some audits will deliver more value than others. So here is a short list of the most common types of audits a CSP can conduct in the cost management area:

Contractual rates vs. actual rates
Switch vs. invoice volume (records and/or MOUs)
Switch vs. LCR system
Jurisdiction validation (inter/intra state, MTA, LATA etc.)
Termination validation (mobile or landline)
Rated CDRs to invoice totals (expense, volumes, etc.)
Cost to revenue or margin audit

Why Most CSPs Need to Perform Monthly Usage Audits

Regular carrier audits should be an essential component of a CSP’s overall business-assurance plan. In our discussions across the industry many CSPs perform an audit only once a year. But our experience across many North American clients tells us that almost every CSP is better off performing usage or transaction audits once a month

There are two good reasons for auditing monthly. First, depending on the contracts involved, you may not be able to collect anything if you wait too long to dispute. Many contracts set limits on how far back a CSP can dispute a charge. Typically these are set to 30, 90 or 120 days. So, if you’re only checking every 365 days and actually find something, you’re limited on what you can collect in the dispute filing.

The second reason for performing monthly audits is to keep abreast of quickly changing third-party modifications as the following case study shows:

Case Study: Data Enrichment = $800K a Month Billing Error

For the first two months of 2011, our netCLARUS system reported very small discrepancies between the contracted and billed rates at one of our Tier I customers. Then, in mid-March, we observed a major unexplainable spike. Nothing had changed on the vendor side and carrier management confirmed that no new rates or new discounts were applied to the bills.

Following an enterprise-wide investigation, we found that the client’s engineering group had modified its data-enrichment process for routing purposes. While that change was perfectly fine and necessary from a routing perspective, it caused havoc on the vendor’s billing system, i.e. that of the Inter eXchange Carrier (IXC). This seemingly innocent enrichment change caused the nationwide IXC to mis-rate our client’s calls to the tune of $800,000 per month.

After a detailed analysis, WeDo Technologies collaborated with our client to put together a comprehensive and compelling dispute package containing the painful details. In the end, our client recovered 99 percent of the disputed amount. And, because the error existed within our other existing clients, we ended up issuing disputes for those clients that amounted to nearly $10 million dollars over a nine-month period.

The point of the case study is that it emphasizes the importance of constantly refreshing your audit reports so you can catch things before they get out of hand. Fortunately, because our clients were conducting audits as part of a regular business-assurance process, they received 99 percent of what was disputed as a credit.

Confusing Internal Communication & Source Data

As we just saw, because so many internal and external organizations are involved in the carrier management process, Murphy’s Law applies: Things go wrong when you least expect them.

Unfortunately, most business units speak different languages and have different success KPIs. The result can be miscommunication, a lack of reliable data, poor collaboration, and missed opportunities. For example, engineering and finance both support network operations, but come at the problem from completely different perspectives and objectives.

One of your first steps to ensuring a successful audit process is to establish a common language between the organizations.

This is important when you consider the many data sources involved. For instance, you should not assume that another party or organization interprets a data field of a particular data source in the same way that you do. You might be surprised how many times folks run into errors because poor assumptions were made at the beginning.

To show you how many cooks and are stirring the kettle, at right is a quick list that matches different types of source data with the organizations.

How to Qualify an Audit Firm

Your selection of a third-party firm to conduct that audit is critical. We’ve seen plenty of cases where a service provider hired a firm that could not produce good results because the vendor lacked the requisite experience. Here are some key questions to ask to ensure you select the right audit partner:

Expertise -- How long has the audit firm been performing the specific audit being requested (as opposed to generic usage audits)? Is the vendor conversant with all business units of the enterprise that need to be involved in the audit? Select a vendor who can demonstrate a thorough understanding of the telco engineering, finance, and carrier management sides of the usage analysis audit you need.
Tools -- You should raise a red flag if the audit firm is leveraging Excel or MS Access to audit billions of transactions across complex rating algorithms. Does the firm have the right tools in place to support your company’s volume? Be careful about selecting a vendor that touts its “big data“ platform, but lacks the specific audit expertise in question.
References -- Speak to other companies that have used the audit firm. Did they get the attention to detail they required?
Success Rate -- Not all audits will result in a win, but if disputes are filed, did the vendor deliver enough compelling data to win the dispute? If so, how much did they collect and what were the time frames involved?

Revenue Share or Fixed-Price Contract

Once you select your audit vendor, the other key question you need to address is how to engage with them.

There are two basic engagement models: fixed price contract or revenue share. Both of these models have their pros and cons.

The basic merit of a revenue share model is: If the audit firm finds something, they get a percentage of what is captured and returned. If nothing is found, no money is exchanged. At face value, that sounds like a prudent way to go.

But what happens if the audit firm finds $50 million and the contract is worth 20 percent of the recovered fee? Will the CSP hand over $10 million? It will be tough to convince your CFO or COO to pay an audit firm millions of dollars. Will the CFO want to renegotiate because he thinks $10 million is excessive?

On the other hand, if the audit firm finds nothing, isn’t there some value in the work the audit firm performed? We’re happy to pay a medical doctor for an exam that gives us a clean bill of health. The audit firm found no discrepancies. Assuming the firm did a thorough job, which should be good news to the CSP.

OK, now let’s look at the fixed price option. The beauty of a fixed price contract is that the CSP can clearly forecast the cost of the audit. In turn, the audit firm can use the monies to subsidize the cost of the work involved in performing the audit.

If you want the best of both worlds, why not have a fixed-price contract and offer the audit firm a small percentage upside based on savings recovered. I think that’s a very good model because it encourages collaboration and keeps everyone focused on the real goal. It also minimizes the need for legal wrangling around what is — and what is not — a disputable charge.

After all, the point of an audit is not just to find discrepancies. It’s to change the business process so discrepancies don’t repeat themselves over and over again.

Usage audits will continue to be an essential piece of a carrier’s business-assurance plan, but they need to be conducted regularly and with the right auditing partner to ensure the maximum amount of invoice errors are detected, disputed and collected on.

So, happy hunting — and don’t forget to check that restaurant bill.

This article first appeared in Billing and OSS World.

Brian Silvestri

Brian Silvestri is Founder of SilverEcho Consuliting and provides technical and strategic business advice to companies in the telecom eco-system — including software, service and communications providers.

SilverEcho help companies map out business strategies by promoting collaboration across multiple departments with clear objectives, success metrics and timelines.

Based in Washington, DC, Brian is the former head of North American Sales for WeDo Technologies and prior to that was CEO of Connectiv Solutions, a specialist in traffic analytics and cost assurance, a firm that WeDo acquired. Contact Brian via

Black Swan Solution Guides & Papers

Expanding the Scope of Revenue Assurance Beyond Switch-to-Bill’s Vision — Araxxe — How Araxxe’s end-to-end revenue assurance complements switch-to-bill RA through telescope RA (external and partner data) and microscope RA (high-definition analysis of complex services like bundling and digital services).
Lanck Telecom FMS: Voice Fraud Management as a Network Service on Demand — Lanck Telecom — A Guide to a new and unique on-demand network service enabling fraud-risky international voice traffic to be monitored (and either alerted or blocked) as that traffic is routed through a wholesaler on its way to its final destinations.
SHAKEN / STIR Calling Number Verification & Fraud Alerting — iconectiv — SHAKEN/STIR is the telecom industry’s first step toward reviving trust in business telephony — and has recently launched in the U.S. market. This Solution Guide features commentary from technology leaders at iconetiv, a firm heavily involved in the development of SHAKEN.
Getting Accurate, Up-to-the-Minute Phone Number Porting History & Carrier-of-Record Data to Verify Identity & Mitigate Account Takeovers — iconectiv — Learn about a recently approved risk intelligence service to receive authoritative and real-time notices of numbers being ported and changes to the carrier-of-record for specific telephone numbers.
The Value of an Authoritative Database of Global Telephone Numbers — iconectiv — Learn about an authoritative database of allocated numbers and special number ranges in every country of the world. The expert explains how this database adds value to any FMS or fraud analyst team.
The IPRN Database and its Use in IRSF & Wangiri Fraud Control — Yates Fraud Consulting — The IPRN Database is a powerful new tool for helping control IRSF and Wangiri frauds. The pioneer of the category explains the value and use of the IPRN Database in this 14-page Black Swan Solution Guide.
A Real-Time Cloud Service to Protect the Enterprise PBX from IRSF Fraud — Oculeus — Learn how a new cloud-based solution developed by Oculeus, any enterprise can protect its PBX from IRSF fraud for as little as $5 a month.
How Regulators can Lead the Fight Against International Bypass Fraud — LATRO Services — As a regulator in a country infected by SIM box fraud, what can you do to improve the situation? A white paper explains the steps you can and should you take — at the national government level — to better protect your country’s tax revenue, quality of communications, and national infrastructure.
Telecom Identity Fraud 2020: A 36-Expert Analysis Report from TRI — TRI — TRI releases a new research report on telecom identity fraud and security. Black Swan readers can download a free Executive Summary of the Report.
The 2021 State of Communications-Related Fraud, Identity Theft & Consumer Protection in the USA — iconectiv — This 49-page free Report on communications-related fraud analyzes the FTC’s annual Sentinel consumer fraud statistics and provides a sweeping view of trends and problem areas. It also gives a cross-industry view of the practices and systems that enable fraud control, identity verification, and security in our “zero trust” digital world.

cSwans of a Feather

TEOCO Brings Bottom Line Savings & Efficiency to Inter-Carrier Billing and Accounting with Machine Learning & Contract Scanning — interview with Jacob Howell — Learn the challenges and benefits of developing of new Machine Learning and Computer Vision system for wholesale billing accounting and inter-carrier contract reading.
Special Report: Wholesale Systems for Advanced Services — by Dan Baker — Plenty of technology and market changes are disrupting the telecom wholesale market: advanced services, new kinds of partners,,and the need to monitor relationships and services more closely than was ever required in the circuit voice world. This article introduces a TRI special report discussing the kind of Wholesale Systems needed in this challenging marketplace.
Data Integrity Issues Go Global in the Telecom Wholesale Exchange — interview with Vic Bozzo — Wholesale systems enable operators to expand their global reach and work efficiently with partners in an increasingly interdependent telco business. In this article, you’ll learn about: how many subsystems work together in support of the global trading exchange, why data integrity has become critical, and how wholesale business trends are affecting wholesale systems at Tier 1 and mobile operators.
Carrier Usage Audits: Why Regular Checkups Are the Key to a CSP’s Bottom-Line Health — by Brian Silvestri — Many telecoms are wholly unaware of the risks of not having a solid usage auditing program for interconnect bills. Rather than a once-a-year or once-a-quarter audit, this article makes the case for regular monthly audits. Also discussed are: the different types of audits and organizations involved; the dangers of not auditing often; and factors to consider when selecting a cost-management vendor.
Invoice Audit Productivity: From 19th Century Textile Mill to SaaS — by Peter Yelle — When it comes to invoice reconciliation, are your processes and tools modern and efficient, or is your company stuck in a 19th century time warp? This article show how operators can vastly reduce their manual audit steps by automating via a SaaS solution. The detailed case study and diagram show which tasks were automated to achieve an 80%+ productivity gain.
An Automated Self-Audit Approach to Telecom Cost Assurance — interview with — What’s the value of an automated approach to invoice validation? This article explains the power of the SaaS model where the vendor supplies the data-processing expertise, relieves the operator of tedious manual work and boosts auditor productivity so more money is saved.
Cost Assurance: Dealing with Rating Variety in Wholesale Bills — by David West — Validation of intercarrier wholesale invoices seems like a fairly straight forward process. But regulatory rules and a variety of bill rating methods have made it very complex. This article details the challenge by walking through a wireless carrier case, then laying out the argument why operators should opt for a custom solution based on a core reporting engine.

Tokopedia, Indonesia’s E-Commerce King, Partners with 11 Million Merchants; Adopts Multi-Cloud to Drive Innovation — interview with Warren Aw & Ryan de Melo — Indonesia’s Tokopedia, founded in 2009, has grown to become one of world’s leading e-commerce players. Read about its success, technology direction, and multi-cloud connectivity adoption.
Bridge Alliance: Knocking Down Regional & Mobile Connectivity Barriers so Connected Car Markets Get Rolling in Asia — interview with Kwee Kchwee — The CEO of an Asian consortium of mobile operators explains how they help simplify and harmonize their members‘ operations in support of multi-national corporations. This integration is enabling two huge industries to come together in Asia: auto manufacturing and telco.
Epsilon’s Infiny NaaS Platform Brings Global Connection, Agility & Fast Provision for IoT, Clouds & Enterprises in Southeast Asia, China & Beyond — interview with Warren Aw — Network as a Service, powered by Software Defined Networks, are a faster, more agile, and more partner-friendly way of making data global connections. A leading NaaS provider explains the benefits for cloud apps, enterprise IT, and IoT.
PCCW Global: On Leveraging Global IoT Connectivity to Create Mission Critical Use Cases for Enterprises — interview with Craig Price — A leading wholesale executive explains the business challenges of the current global IoT scene as it spans many spheres: technical, political, marketing, and enterprise customer value creation.
Senet’s Cloud & Shared Gateways Drive LoRaWAN IoT Adoption for Enterprise Businesses, Smart Cities & Telecoms — interview with Bruce Chatterley — An IoT netowork pioneer explains how LoRaWAN tech fits in the larger IoT ecosystem. He gives use case examples, describes deployment restraints/costs, and shows how partnering, gateway sharing, and flexible deployment options are stimulating growth.
ARM Data Center Software’s Cloud-Based Network Inventory Links Network, Operations, Billing, Sales & CRM to One Database — interview with Joe McDermott & Frank McDermott — A firm offering a cloud-based network inventory system explains the virtues of: a single underlying database, flexible conversions, task-checking workflow, new software business models, views that identify stranded assets, and connecting to Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Pure Play NFV: Lessons Learned from Masergy’s Virtual Deployment for a Global Enterprise — interview with Prayson Pate — NFV is just getting off the ground, but one cloud provider to enterprises making a stir in virtual technology waters is Masergy. Here are lessons learned from Masergy’s recent global deployment using a NFV pure play software approach.
The Digital Enabler: A Charging, Self-Care & Marketing Platform at the Core of the Mobile Business — interview with Jennifer Kyriakakis — The digital enabler is a central platform that ties together charging, self-care, and marketing. The article explains why leading operators consider digital enablers pivotal to their digital strategies.
Delivering Service Assurance Excellence at a Reduced Operating Cost — interview with Gregg Hara — The great diversity and complexity of today’s networks make service assurance a big challenge. But advances in off-the-shelf software now permit the configuring and visualizing of services across multiple technologies on a modest operating budget.
Are Cloud-Based Call Centers the Next Hot Product for the SMB Market? — interview with Doron Dovrat — Quality customer service can improve a company’s corporate identity and drive business growth. But many SMBs are priced out of acquiring modern call center technology. This article explains the benefits of affordable and flexible cloud-based call centers.
Flexing the OSS & Network to Support the Digital Ecosystem — interview with Ken Dilbeck — The need for telecoms to support a broader digital ecosystem requires an enormous change to OSS infrastructures and the way networks are being managed. This interview sheds light on these challenges.
Crossing the Rubicon: Is it Time for Tier Ones to Move to a Real-Time Analytics BSS? — interview with Andy Tiller — Will tier one operators continue to maintain their quilt works of legacy and adjunct platforms — or will they radically transform their BSS architecture into a new system designed to address the new telecom era? An advocate for radical transformation discusses: real-time analytics, billing for enterprises, partnering mashups, and on-going transformation work at Telenor.
Paradigm Shift in OSS Software: Network Topology Views via Enterprise-Search — interview with Benedict Enweani — Enterprise-search is a wildly successful technology on the web, yet its influence has not yet rippled to the IT main stream. But now a large Middle Eastern operator has deployed a major service assurance application using enterprise-search. The interview discusses this multi-dimensional topology solution and compares it to traditional network inventory.
The Multi-Vendor MPLS: Enabling Tier 2 and 3 Telecoms to Offer World-Class Networks to SMBs — interview with Prabhu Ramachandran — MPLS is a networking technology that has caught fire in the last decade. Yet the complexity of MPLS has relegated to being mostly a large carrier solution. Now a developer of a multi-vendor MPLS solutions explains why the next wave of MPLS adoption will come from tier 2/3 carriers supporting SMB customers.
Enabling Telecoms & Utilities to Adapt to the Winds of Business Change — interview with Kirill Rechter — Billing is in the midst of momentous change. Its value is no longer just around delivering multi-play services or sophisticated rating. In this article you’ll learn how a billing/CRM supplier has adapted to the times by offering deeper value around the larger business issues of its telecom and utility clients.
Driving Customer Care Results & Cost Savings from Big Data Facts — interview with Brian Jurutka — Mobile broadband and today’s dizzying array of app and network technology present a big challenge to customer care. In fact, care agents have a hard time staying one step ahead of customers who call to report problems. But network analytics comes to the rescue with advanced mobile handset troubleshooting and an ability to put greater intelligence at the fingertips of highly trained reps.
Hadoop and M2M Meet Device and Network Management Systems — interview with Eric Wegner — Telecom big-data in networks is more than customer experience managment: it’s also about M2M plus network and element management systems. This interview discusses the explosion in machine-to-machine devices, the virtues and drawbacks of Hadoop, and the network impact of shrink-wrapped search.
The Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Boom: Is Your Sales/Engineering Team Equipped to Win? — by Dan Baker — The build-out of enterprise clouds and data centers is a golden opportunity for systems integrators, carriers, and cloud providers. But the firms who win this business will have sales and engineering teams who can drive an effective and streamlined requirements-to-design-to-order process. This white paper points to a solution — a collaborative solution designs system — and explains 8 key capabilities of an ideal platform.
Big Data: Is it Ready for Prime Time in Customer Experience Management? — interview with Thomas Sutter — Customer experience management is one of the most challenging of OSS domains and some suppliers are touting “big data” solutions as the silver bullet for CEM upgrades and consolidation. This interview challenges the readiness of big data soluions to tackle OSS issues and deliver the cost savings. The article also provides advice on managing technology risks, software vendor partnering, and the strategies of different OSS suppliers.
Calculated Risk: The Race to Deliver the Next Generation of LTE Service Management — interview with Edoardo Rizzi — LTE and the emerging heterogeneous networks are likely to shake up the service management and customer experience management worlds. Learn about the many new network management challenges LTE presents, and how a small OSS software firm aims to beat the big established players to market with a bold new technology and strategy.
Decom Dilemma: Why Tearing Down Networks is Often Harder than Deploying Them — interview with Dan Hays — For every new 4G LTE and IP-based infrastructure deployed, there typically a legacy network that’s been rendered obsolete and needs to be decommissioned. This article takes you through the many complexities of network decom, such as facilities planning, site lease terminations, green-safe equipment disposal, and tax relief programs.
Migration Success or Migraine Headache: Why Upfront Planning is Key to Network Decom — interview with Ron Angner — Shutting down old networks and migrating customers to new ones is among the most challenging activities a network operators does today. This article provides advice on the many network issues surrounding migration and decommissioning. Topics discussed include inventory reconciliation, LEC/CLEC coordination, and protection of customers in the midst of projects that require great program management skills.
Navigating the Telecom Solutions Wilderness: Advice from Some Veteran Mountaineers — interview with Al Brisard — Telecom solutions vendors struggle mightily to position their solutions and figure out what to offer next in a market where there’s considerable product and service crossover. In this article, a veteran order management specialist firm lays out its strategy for mixing deep-bench functional expertise with process consulting, analytics, and custom API development.
Will Telecoms Sink Under the Weight of their Bloated and Out-of-Control Product Stacks? — interview with Simon Muderack — Telecoms pay daily for their lack of product integration as they constantly reinvent product wheels, lose customer intelligence, and waste time/money. This article makes the case of an enterprise product catalog. Drawing on central catalog cases at a few Tier 1 operators, the article explains the benefits: reducing billing and provisioning costs, promoting product reuse, and smoothing operations.
Virtual Operator Life: Enabling Multi-Level Resellers Through an Active Product Catalog — interview with Rob Hill — The value of product distribution via virtual operators is immense. They enable a carrier to sell to markets it cannot profitably serve directly. Yet the need for greater reseller flexibility in the bundling and pricing of increasingly complex IP and cloud services is now a major channel barrier. This article explains what’s behind an innovative product catalog solution that doubles as a service creation environment for resellers in multiple tiers.
Telecom Blocking & Tackling: Executing the Fundamentals of the Order-to-Bill Process — interview with Ron Angner — Just as football teams need to be good at the basics of blocking and tackling, telecoms need to excel at their own fundamental skillset: the order-to-cash process. In this article, a leading consulting firm explains its methodology for taking operators on the path towards order-to-cash excellence. Issues discussed include: provisioning intervals; standardization and simplicity; the transition from legacy to improved process; and the major role that industry metrics play.
Wireline Act IV, Scene II: Packaging Network & SaaS Services Together to Serve SMBs — by John Frame — As revenue from telephony services has steadily declined, fixed network operators have scrambled to support VoIP, enhanced IP services, and now cloud applications. This shift has also brought challenges to the provisioning software vendors who support the operators. In this interview, a leading supplier explains how it’s transforming from plain ol‘ OSS software provider to packager of on-net and SaaS solutions from an array of third party cloud providers.
Telecom Merger Juggling Act: How to Convert the Back Office and Keep Customers and Investors Happy at the Same Time — interview with Curtis Mills — Billing and OSS conversions as the result of a merger are a risky activity as evidenced by famous cases at Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom. This article offers advice on how to head off problems by monitoring key operations checkpoints, asking the right questions, and leading with a proven conversion methodology.
Is Order Management a Provisioning System or Your Best Salesperson? — by John Konczal — Order management as a differentiator is a very new concept to many CSP people, but it’s become a very real sales booster in many industries. Using electronics retailer BestBuy as an example, the article points to several innovations that can — and are — being applied by CSPs today. The article concludes with 8 key questions an operator should ask to measure advanced order management progress.
NEC Takes the Telecom Cloud from PowerPoint to Live Customers — interview with Shinya Kukita — In the cloud computing world, it’s a long road from technology success to telecom busness opportunity. But this story about how NEC and Telefonica are partnering to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises shows the experience of early cloud adoption. Issues discussed in the article include: customer types, cloud application varieties, geographic region acceptance, and selling challenges.
Billing As Enabler for the Next Killer Business Model — interview with Scott Swartz — Facebook, cloud services, and Google Ads are examples of innovative business models that demand unique or non-standard billing techniques. The article shows how flexible, change-on-the-fly, and metadata-driven billing architectures are enabling CSPs to offer truly ground breaking services.
Real-Time Provisioning of SIM Cards: A Boon to GSM Operators — interview with Simo Isomaki — Software-controlled SIM card configuration is revolutionizing the activation of GSM phones. The article explains how dynamic SIM management decouples the selection of numbers/services and delivers new opportunities to market during the customer acquisition and intial provisoining phase.
A Cynic Converted: IN/Prepaid Platforms Are Now Pretty Cool — interview with Grant Lenahan — Service delivery platforms born in the IN era are often painted as inflexible and expensive to maintain. Learn how modern SDPs with protocol mediation, high availability, and flexible Service Creation Environments are delivering value for operators such as Brazil’s Oi.
Achieving Revenue Maximization in the Telecom Contact Center — interview with Robert Lamb — Optimizing the contact center offers one of the greatest returns on investment for a CSP. The director of AT&T’s contact center services business explains how telecoms can strike an “artful balance” between contact center investment and cost savings. The discussion draws from AT&T’s consulting with world class customers like Ford, Dell, Discover Financial, DISH Network, and General Motors.
Mobile Broadband: The Customer Service Assurance Challenge — interview with Michele Campriani — iPhone and Android traffic is surging but operators struggle with network congestion and dropping ARPUs. The answer? Direct resources and service quality measures to ensure VIPs are indeed getting the quality they expect. Using real-life examples that cut to the chase of technical complexities, this article explains the chief causes of service quality degradation and describes efficient ways to deal with the problem.
Telco-in-a-Box: Are Telecoms Back in the B/OSS Business? — interview with Jim Dunlap — Most telecoms have long since folded their merchant B/OSS software/services businesses. But now Cycle30, a subsidiary of Alaskan operator GCI, is offering a order-to-cash managed service for other operators and utilities. The article discusses the company’s unique business model and contrasts it with billing service bureau and licensed software approaches.
Bricks, Mortar & Well-Trained Reps Make a Comeback in Customer Management — interview with Scott Kohlman — Greater industry competition, service complexity, and employee turnover have raised the bar in the customer support. Indeed, complex services are putting an emphasis on quality care interactions in the store, on the web, and through the call center. In this article you’ll learn about innovations in CRM, multi-tabbed agent portals, call center agent training, customer treatment philosophies, and the impact of self-service.
21st Century Order Management: The Cross-Channel Sales Conversation — by John Konczal — Selling a mobile service is generally not a one-and-done transaction. It often involves several interactions — across the web, call center, store, and even kiosks. This article explains the power of a “cross-channel hub” which sits above all sales channels, interacts with them all, and allows a CSP to keep the sales conversation moving forward seamlessly.
Building a B/OSS Business Through Common Sense Customer Service — by David West — Delivering customer service excellence doesn‘t require mastering some secret technique. The premise of this article is that plain dealing with customers and employees is all that’s needed for a winning formula. The argument is spelling out in a simple 4 step methodology along with some practical examples.