Better communication through bills

Most people are satisfied with long interludes between conversations with their telephone company-mainly because it means they haven't had any problems. But the lack of personal contact with customers means telcos must make a good impression through the one definite mode of communication that they have each month: billing.

Ameritech recently unveiled a simplified bill, designed by customers through 100,000 hours of research and testing. Around the same time, Cavalier Telephone, a new competitive local exchange carrier that will soon serve the greater Richmond and Hampton Road, Va., areas, and New England Voice and Data, a New Hampshire-based CLEC, both signed with Dallas-based CHA Systems Inc. for billing service.

"Customers consider the bill a very important part of our communication tools," said Kent Lebherz, president of Ameritech Indiana.

Lauding the company's new bill as "the phone bill of the future," Joan Walker, senior vice president of corporate communications for Ameritech, said the format is more concise and considerably easier to read and understand. Printed on larger paper, the bill has fewer pages. Included is a bill-at-a-glance section that allows customers to see a summary of charges. Customers are also given the option of combining their local phone bills with charges for other various Ameritech services, including cellular, paging or cable.

The bill was unveiled in Indiana last month and will be expanded to patrons in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin by the middle of this year.

"Customers have told us they view the bill as a very fundamental and important part of our relationship with them," said Walker.

Another new feature is a billing summary that quickly lets clients see a list of all companies that service their account, Lebherz added. This section gives customers "an immediate, easy-to-see red flag" if a carrier or charges are not familiar, reducing the likelihood of slamming and cramming, he said.

A company's bill should be a "strategic asset," said Linda Lancaster, CEO of CHA Systems. "The bill is your monthly contact with your customer. It's representative of your company and your service," she said. Flexibility is a key feature in billing, as every customer has diverse preferences, she said.

For the past three years, CHA has been revising various portions of its billing software. To enhance customer options, company officials conferred with 11 different customer sites, five additional non-customer sites, network engineers and consultants. The overhauled system is expected to be complete in October, at a cost of $15 million, Lancaster said.

"As companies begin to offer bundled services, the [critical element] of billing becomes much more intense," said Pete Daley, a partner with Frost and Sullivan. If a company has a customer subscribing to paging, cellular and long-distance services, an error in any single department can cause an unhappy user to terminate the entire account, he explained. Daley recommends that companies back up unified billing by integrating the ability to handle a bundled platform throughout their entire customer service system.

Customers are looking for added value in a bill, according to Debra McMahon, vice president of Mercer Management. "At minimum companies should make bills attractive and easy-to-read, but that's simply eliminating a negative. If they're truly doing something that adds value, it can add to the perception that the company is more helpful, more friendly and easy to do business with."

INTERNET BILLING ON WAY billserv.com Inc., an electronic bill presentation and payment service bureau, will roll out www.bills.com later this year. The Web site will enable consumers to pay all their bills on-line at no charge and also enable companies to present electronic bills at little or no cost.

VISUAL VOICE MAIL NetPhone Inc., a provider of open communications servers and IP telephony solutions, has introduced the NetPhone IPBXmail visual voice mail system. Users can access and administer voice mail messages from a Web browser and view messages integrated with their e-mail inboxes, among other capabilities.