Whether improving the activation process or evaluating customer usage patterns, companies stand ready to help carriers sign up and keep their customers.

The weekend of June 29 last year was one of little sleep for the folks stationed at Synchronoss Technologies’ operations center in Bethlehem, Penn. Talk about being in the eye of the storm. Synchronoss’ task was to manage and provision the activation process for the iPhone.

Soon after stores opened to sell the device, new iPhone owners started sharing their experiences, with some bloggers chronicling their hours-long attempts to get devices activated. Omar Tellez, executive vice president of marketing at Synchronoss, admits complications arose in some areas, such as porting from existing carriers and business users moving to consumer accounts, but he says the majority of those issues were dealt with and Synchronoss is proud of its efforts.

Challenges of today’s billing systems.

It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill activation process. In the traditional method, customers go into a retail store, wait for an agent and go through a tedious process. But for the iPhone, the experience needed to be 3 to 5 minutes, something customers could do online from the comfort of their homes. Synchronoss worked with both AT&T and Apple for six to nine months prior to the launch, trying to minimize the amount of data customers would need to provide, yet making sure all the proper validation was in place.

TO THE FRONT
Improving the end-user experience is what it’s all about, whether the carrier is AT&T or someone else. Of course, there’s no shortage of billing and customer care vendors eager to help out. They’re also quick to point out that they’re now in the business of bringing what’s traditionally a backoffice service to the front office.

Woolf: More demand for converged billing systems.

Howard Woolf, group president of Comverse’s Converged Billing Group, says billing really started moving from the backoffice to the front office years ago with the then-revolutionary MCI Friends & Family campaign, which gave a lower rate for calls made to people in a customer’s calling circle.

Today, Comverse is seeing more demand for converged billing systems, whether they be prepaid/postpaid or the ones that include mobile, wireline, Internet and cable, he says. In the wireless prepaid arena, the company last year extended its relationship with Alltel Wireless with a 5-year managed services contract to operate and support its real-time billing environment.

Usually, U.S. operators treat prepaid customers more akin to an island, but Alltel wanted to link together its systems, enabling it to be more flexible in the market and go after segments other carriers weren’t going after, Woolf says. Marketing features allow Alltel to respond to its customers with the right offer at the right time. “They can spin up a variety of offerings very quickly,” he says.

In a multiservice world, carriers are challenged with having to deal in real-time with increasing volumes and velocity of transactions among multiple partners.

But some smaller companies are challenging the big billing companies – Comverse being among them – in an attempt to turn the billing world upside down. “It’s almost like those big billing systems are jack-of-all trades, master of none,” says Dave McNierney, vice president of market development at pricing and rating provider Highdeal. “The infrastructure the operators run should be oriented toward empowering the front office. We’re talking about one system supporting both the front office function as well as the backoffice function and integrating that into the existing billing infrastructure.”

The challenge for Highdeal is not in the price of its software, he says. Compared to costs associated with existing billing systems, the cost is “nothing. We’re talking not even in that realm.” Rather, the challenge is getting the word out that alternatives are available.

Highdeal has been conducting the annual Highdeal Challenge, where it invites service providers to describe their most complex problems or challenging pricing scenarios, and the company will demonstrate a solution within 24 hours. In four years, there hasn’t been a single scenario where Highdeal couldn’t come up with a solution, he says.

Purks: Carriers really trying to get to know their customers.

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL
Of course, billing is closely tied to customer service, and one of the core areas of focus involves minimizing the pain the customer goes through when they have a problem. “One of the challenges we’re working with now is how do you structure your call centers and customer service systems so you are getting the customer to the person with the right expertise and tools to solve their problems,” says Robert Purks, the senior executive who leads the North American billing practice in Accenture’s Communications Group. “I think we’re seeing an increased focus on carriers trying to get to know their customers.”

Billing and customer care companies also talk about applying better analytics to customer account data. Aperio CI’s Website, for one, proclaims “You know your customers better than you think.” Every service-based business possesses the unique activity records of individual customer accounts, but few companies capitalize on their proprietary resources, Aperio says.

One way to boost customer loyalty is to track usage patterns and offer to put customers on a plan better suited to their voice and data needs, whether it be a higher-end plan or lower-end plan. But those kinds of offers should not be based on just one month’s service, says Aperio CI CEO Duffy Mich. Aperio recommends using six months worth of data. “We’re really talking about analyzing one customer at a time,” he says.

A few years ago, before Rogers Wireless bought the Fido brand, Microcell in Canada was charging by the second while competitors charged by the minute. The carrier didn’t tout that fact until after it worked with Aperio and introduced a savings challenge on its Website. Through analytics on the back end, Aperio was able to show how consumers could save considerably by going with Fido, Mich says.

Chaturvedi: Even though they have lots of data, it is difficult for carriers to act on that information.

But considering how much data is in carriers’ hands, why aren’t more of them using it more effectively? Every carrier has immense data on an individual’s dropped calls, device and customer care history. However, it’s not all in one central location. “Knowing a lot is different from doing something about it,” notes Perry Chaturvedi, wireless industry director at Convergys.

Aperio and others warn that U.S. operators will need to pay better attention to billing and customer care as the industry moves away from an emphasis on net additions and focuses more on keeping existing customers. In Western Europe, where some countries have more than 100% penetration, carriers recognize that losing a customer is crucial, says Frost & Sullivan Analyst Daniel Longfield. But in the U.S. market, the pool of lucrative new customers is narrowing, and carriers probably consider the consumers who haven’t yet signed up for service as ones who aren’t going to use their phones enough to really pay off, he says.

Eventually, carriers will turn to solutions like Aperio’s, he adds. “I know from experience than nothing frustrates a customer more than getting a $400 bill because they were not on the right plan.”

Sprint Forges Ahead On Initiatives

The wireless industry as a whole takes its share of knocks for customer service. Out-of-control phone bills that go on for hundreds of pages or the $700 text messaging bills are extraordinary examples that have been fodder for numerous wireless lore stories. But the one U.S. carrier that consistently gets the most ink for bad moves is Sprint Nextel. In the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study, T-Mobile USA once again ranked highest among the five largest wireless carriers. AT&T and Verizon Wireless were next highest in the rankings, but Sprint ranked a score of 92 compared to the industry average of 100. Alltel Wireless scored 99. It’s no wonder that Sprint is trying to change that. A number of initiatives are under way, some of which are only a few months old. “What we’re really trying to share with our customers is the fact that we are really, really working hard,” says spokeswoman Roni Singleton. After its merger with Nextel Communications, Sprint had two different billing platforms, one from Amdocs tied to the Nextel side and one from Convergys that was associated with the Sprint side. The company chose to go with Amdocs and started moving customers off the other system. That process is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter. After that, Sprint will be able to reveal more details about its plan to offer pro-rated Early Termination Fees (ETF), an industry trend kicked off by Verizon Wireless. Meanwhile, Sprint is trying to offer more options for its customers. For example, it implemented a chat service for people who don’t care to talk to a live representative. “We’ve been pretty aggressive about launching self-service tools online,” Singleton says, including a program to show consumers what kind of coverage is available in their area or along their commuting routes. The company hired more customer care reps and expanded care centers last year, as well as simplified its IVR process. Sprint isn’t revealing its average hold times, but Singleton says they have improved. Pro-active customer care calling programs are designed to follow up with new customers to make sure they understand the services they’ve chosen and their needs are met. Customer care reps are given the go-ahead to allocate a 1-time courtesy credit if someone erroneously goes over their text messaging plan. For the “green” minded, the carrier also offers e-bills. Instead of a paper invoice, consumer customers get an e-mail notification each month alerting them that their monthly statement is ready to be viewed and paid. If Sprint succeeds in improving its practices, it will take time for consumer perception to catch up to those efforts. But in the long run, the carrier will see a lot more green in its coffers and a lot less red in the faces of its customers.