Indeed, the importance of billing--and customer care, which now goes hand in hand with billing--is growing by leaps and bounds.
As Ken Branson explains in his article on portals, carriers are increasingly looking to offer customers the ability to view, and in some cases pay, their services bills online. That trend may point to a day when we can pay for a variety of services--including telecom, utility, clothing, groceries and more--online at a single site. Of course, that fits nicely into the idea of bundling services (which X-CHANGE also explores within these pages). In fact, in addition to the activities Branson sites in his article, eCHARGE is partnering with MSN and Prodigy to offer users the option of charging their monthly ISP fees to their phone bill.
Offering a single bill for multiple services is clearly an important trend. 2nd Century is just one example of a competitive carrier that delivers integrated voice, data, video and dedicated Internet services on a single bill.
Comparison shopping is another billing-related service some competitive carriers and others in the industry are offering business customers (as I discuss in another article). In addition to vendor DSET Corp. and consulting company NPRG Telecom Ventures, noted in my story, Net2000 Communications, a regional telecommunications provider, is using software from Wisor Telecom to electronically analyze companies' telecom needs, generate a detailed savings statement and facilitate a quick and accurate conversion of their services from their existing telecom service provider.
Other billing and customer care issues explored include carrier enterprise resource management, billing regulations, evolving operations support systems (OSSs) for the new competitive marketplace, and the OSS issues companies face as they merge and converge.
Until next time,
Paula Bernier
Editor-in-Chief
