Billing Blues

Confusion about your billing statement may call for a makeover.

When wireless-service providers send bills to their customers, they have two automatic disadvantages. No one likes receiving bills, and no one likes paying them.

When the bill is hard to understand or, even worse, inaccurate, the wireless-service provider suffers. It may not call for churn, but it definitely has a negative effect on the provider.

Because wireless communications is evolving constantly, so must customers' bills. Nothing can hurt the success of a new, enticing service like not being able to bill customers properly for it. If a new service is marketed well, and customers sign on because of it, it's essential that the customers then be billed properly for it — or they won't be customers for long. That means the department responsible for billing must be involved in marketing's plans well before a service is offered to customers.

Bob Baker, executive vice president of customer operations and marketing for Output Technology Solutions (OTS), a provider of paper and electronic billing statements, said, "Poorly designed statements are not just an aesthetic problem. They confuse customers, and this confusion results in increased calls to CSRs, decreased revenue and customer dissatisfaction."

Service providers aren't out of the woods yet, even when they accurately depict a customer's usage and charges in a format that is easy to follow. Each month, the service provider must offer an easily understood bill because confusion is bad news in the competitive game of wireless communications. Each attempt is important in winning customer satisfaction and loyalty, and that means always watching what the customers are saying and trying to provide what they want.

When It's Time to Change
GTE Wireless uses continual customer-satisfaction surveys, reports for the CSRs and customer focus groups to help plan any changes that need to be made on its bills. Mary McCoy, GTE Wireless National Billing Operations manager of billing support and services, said changes in the industry and marketing of services come about continuously, and her department always is looking at ways to improve customers' understanding of the bills.

Beyond listening to customers, McCoy said GTE also looks at the bills of its competitors to gather ideas of what to do, and what not to do.

The service provider already this year has undertaken two changes of the format of its bill and has two more in the works for later in the year.

Paul Clifton, president of UniBill, which provides billing services for US Unwired, a Sprint PCS affiliate, said another participant that has been involved in making changes to bills is the government. The FCC's Truth-in-Billing Act has meant more detail in portions of bills to reflect the agency's requirements.

UniBill regularly has scheduled releases of the billing format for its clients and uses the comments received from the customer-service department to help determine what changes to make.

Working With Marketing
Billing departments cannot play the game alone. Clifton said his company works with its service-provider companies when they are developing possible features.

"They send us a data request so that we can review it and see how presentment should be done," he said.

The two parties then go back and forth with suggestions before a final format is determined. Clifton said capabilities of the billing system and the time in which the new feature must be made available determine how the end presentment appears.

GTE's McCoy said her department meets with the marketing department when a new strategy is being developed to determine how to go about representing the offering on the bill.

"We try to foster those (marketing) relationships so they tell us, 'Here is what's coming,'" she said.

Was That Last Minute Really Free?
When PCS was introduced into the wireless game, along with it came the phenomenon of providing customers the first minute of an incoming call at no charge. That feature has been credited with revolutionizing how customers use their wireless phones — but it also has caused much confusion with customer bills. US Unwired has changes in the works for how it represents that free minute on customers' bills.

Clifton said a common question new US Unwired customers call in after they receive their first bills is to find out if they really got the incoming minute at no charge.

"We are working on changing the complete format for representing the first incoming minute free," he said.

GTE Wireless already has changed its format for representing the feature. Initially, bills showed the call duration minus the free minute, but the call charge did not subtract that minute. It appeared customers were charged for the minute even though they were not. Now, each call record depicts the duration and the call charge minus the free minute. Also, calls that fall under the "included" minutes of a call plan are listed with a zero charge, further lessening confusion of which calls customers are being charged for.

Another service offering that already has been implemented has put GTE Wireless in change mode as well. GTE Wireless allows customers to have more than one wireless phone sharing the same rate plan and included minutes. Therefore, McCoy said the service provider is adding an account-level-charges section to the bills of customers participating in that program to further explain the charges for the entire account and separate them from the charges for each separate line. That feature is scheduled for implementation in October.

Another way to simplify a bill is to provide only the explanatory information necessary for a particular customer. McCoy said GTE Wireless plans to make changes to its call legend to help customers better understand the types of calls they are being billed for. First, the service provider will only put call types that the customer has made in the legend. If a customer does not make a mobile-to-mobile discount call, the abbreviation and explanation for it no longer will appear in the call legend. The service provider also is moving the legend next to the call detail to help customers find the explanations they need.

In the same vein of providing more pertinent information for customers, GTE has changed the focus of a section it had named Frequently Asked Questions. Many of the questions and answers had to do with the cellular industry in general, but now the information is specifically about the bill, McCoy said.

Using Technology
For some customers, paper, envelopes and stamps are being removed from the billing process. Presenting bills on the Internet, a high-growth segment of billing, provides different challenge.

"What works on paper doesn't necessarily work online," said GTE's McCoy.

Service providers cannot just copy the paper format electronically, she said. The unique capabilities of the Internet allow for more ways to access the information, such as clicking to get more details.

One possibility electronic billing provides, said Rich Aroian, ADC Software System Division vice president of marketing, is allowing customers to access information in the middle of the month, before a statement has been generated.

He said more real-time information will be expected by customers as the use of IP-based technology increases.

Will the online revolution end paper's reign in billing? It doesn't look like it any time soon.

GTE Wireless customers who choose to have Internet-billing access still receive a paper bill, McCoy said.

US Unwired customers have the option of discontinuing paper bills, but Clifton said most customers still want a paper bill in addition to access on the Internet. He said the company is developing e-mail-message reminders to let customers know when their bills are available for viewing on the company's Web site and that may increase the number of those who do not want to receive paper bills.

Aroian said migrating to online billing could someday mean most billing is done that way, and paper bills will become obsolete. He said the industry could go the way of making the issuing of paper bills an additional cost. However, he said it is more likely that electronic billing would be used as an incentive. He said service providers could offer a discount of some sort if customers do not get a paper bill and solely access their bills via the Internet.

Don't Forget the Marketing
Although bills have a negative connotation with consumers, they are typically wireless-service providers' only regular communications with their customers. Beyond communicating charges, providers also can use the bill for communicating about new services or options.

"We urge wireless clients to view their statements as their best and most credible marketing tool," OTS' Baker said. "Effective statement design can increase sales and enhance company image among customers already familiar with an organization's products, services and reputation."

McCoy said GTE has a section set aside on its bills to market new services or to let customers in a particular region know about network improvements such as the addition of a cell site.

"We see our bill as our customer touch-point each and every month," she said.

And through that touch-point, providers must strive for a customer-satisfaction makeover, but keep their eye on the bill to make sure they do not confuse instead.

Blasco (heather_blasco@yahoo.com) is a freelance writer bsed in Evansville, IN.