Today’s converged telecoms market is an increasingly challenging environment for operators featuring greater diversity than ever before in services, providers and pricing.

Mobile operators’ portfolios often include 2G GSM, SMS, MMS, GPRS, 3G and HSPA basic services, not to mention a plethora of additional value-added services, content and applications on top. Further, there may be slightly different versions of some services, depending on the user’s handset capabilities, and these, in turn, can mean alternate pricing plans.

To complicate matters even more, there is often also a broad array of legacy services still in use that have to be maintained and billed for. In the fixed communications arena, these will typically include ISDN and X.25 and even telex services for business customers.

However, it is critical that operators hide this complexity of service options from their customers. End-users are looking for straightforward and precise service offerings. In an increasingly crowded market, providing simplicity is becoming ever more important in building customer loyalty and competitive edge.

All in One Place

One important way in which operators build trust with their customers is through the provision of accurate streamlined billing. Bills are invariably the most regular and tangible form of communication they have with clients. There is a growing awareness that, by ensuring that the bills they deliver are not just right first time but consistently clear and precise, carriers can develop bonds of trust and loyalty with both corporate and residential customers.

However, for operators the ability to provide this level of high-quality transparent billing is dependent on having in place a well-coordinated, integrated solution, allowing them to access all the relevant service information in one place, whenever required.

This capability is also critical in supporting other fundamental aspects of good customer service provision, which obviously goes far beyond the generation and delivery of the paper-based or electronic bill. In addition, customers also need efficient service activation and fast and effective support if they encounter problems.

This means access to an efficient single point of contact, with the necessary knowledge and expertise to resolve issues quickly. From the operator’s perspective, the most effective way of delivering this type of simple, effective service is by providing pre-integrated CRM and billing solutions which customer-facing staff can use to support the interaction process.

By implementing such systems and integrating them with their surrounding network infrastructure, operators have all the data they need at their fingertips. And they can use this information to ensure they are able to provide a consistent, responsive and professional service to customers. They also have the reassurance of knowing that no data will be lost between systems, that updated information is available instantly to other users and that systems provide a joined-up integrated 360°view of their customers.

Seeing Both Sides

The best of this new breed of fully-convergent CRM and billing systems also give operators a bi-directional view of their customer management activities. In other words, they are able to manage the dataset from the perspective both of the customer and the business. They can, for example, highlight not only the types of complaints made by one individual customer but also the total number received by the organisation as a whole, over any given period.

To deliver this functionality, it is critical that operators have not only a tightly-integrated component set but also a single unified database which links to these components. This optimised technical infrastructure enables them to examine all of the system data associated with a given customer or service.

It also allows them to escalate events. As part of most corporate service level agreements, they can define exactly how long they have to action certain tasks.

Exceeding this time limit triggers an alarm which notifies operator and end-customer alike of an infringement. Receiving this information in advance of a customer complaint helps the operator to deliver proactive service, by acknowledging a fault on their system while simultaneously reassuring users that the problem is being addressed.

At another level, the technology enables the operator to define its own business rules about how it sells services. In particular, by providing a stable and robust platform, it allows the operator to configure processes and procedures that build on the functionality of the systems infrastructure and ensure that customers receive consistently high-quality service.

Knowledge Gathering

To be successful in building loyalty, operators need to focus clearly and critically on learning more about their customers. There is a multitude of information to be gathered, including details of previous interactions, payment histories, information about average monthly spend, the services previously used and so on. Having access to this kind of intelligence should enable the operator to deliver ‘right first time’ customer service.

Ease-of-use is also important. Any such systems need to be intuitive. When they purchase a bundle of services from an operator, customers need the assurance that the whole package will be activated smoothly and quickly, without them needing to understand the complexity of service dependencies and the different types of underlying network being used. The operator’s customer service representative (CSR) should also be able to view the status of these services at any one time from a single entry point.

In addition, particularly in today’s fast-changing telecoms environment, chosen systems need to be flexible enough to manage a broad spectrum of technologies from PSTN to 3G and from ISDN to ADSL. This is critical for operators who are migrating into new technology sectors through business growth, merger or acquisition.

Focus on the Future

Today, with an ever-growing number of players in the market, it is increasingly easy for users to switch from one operator to another. In order to prevent churn therefore, it is vital that operators provide not only the highest quality service possible but also the most straightforward.

The emergence of pre-integrated CRM and billing solutions is helping to achieve this. Equally, with the onward march of convergence and the consequent desire of many of the larger players to be ‘all things to all people’, these solutions can play a key role in enabling alternate operators to tailor their propositions to specific market segments.

Operators can do very little about the increasing complexity of the telecoms marketplace. However, what they can, and increasingly will need to, do in order to maintain their competitive edge, is to mask this complexity from the customer.

They will need to ensure that, as a first critical step their billing is accurate and transparent, that their multi-play service offerings are straightforward to use, and finally that the latest customer information is available to all service staff. Pre-integrated CRM and billing solutions offer an excellent means of enabling them to deliver the sort of co-ordinated service solutions that their customers are increasingly crying out for.

Dominic Smith is the Marketing Director for Cerillion Technologies, a leading provider of carrier grade CRM & Billing, Interconnect and Mediation solutions to fixed, mobile, IP and convergent operators worldwide. He has twelve years experience in the customer care and billing business, previously as marketing director at LHS, and in a variety of roles in Schlumberger and Sema. Dominic has presented on billing topics at various industry conferences. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Mathematics from Loughborough University, UK. Cerillion Technologies