With so many competitors ready and waiting to poach customers, as well as the constant race to reduce prices to attract more new customers, channel organisations need genuinely unique selling points, and a level of customer service that can’t be matched by those same rivals.
The billing experience is often overlooked when organisations explore ways to set themselves apart from their contenders. But with the right feature-set, billing can be used to a reseller’s advantage, enriching the customer experience and differentiating the reseller. Here’s how…
Self-serve functionality
If you’ve been reading our blogs for a while, you’ll know how much value we put on self-service – and for good reason! Offering customers the self-serve functionality they’ve come to expect on their personal phones not only keeps them happy, but it has multiple internal benefits too.
Primarily, allowing customers to check their own usage and set limits on spend and data drastically reduces the number of support calls taken by a reseller’s support team, as all those quick questions can be answered within the platform by the user.
There’s also a positive knock-on effect, as the support team have less calls to take, they can take their time on more complex issues delivering a better level of service and reducing ‘time to resolution’. That time could also be used for further training or other internal projects.
Finally, self-serve functions are no longer a ‘nice to have’, they’re a must! Back in December ’21, Ofcom amended their General Conditions to require resellers to provide end-users with the ability to check their usage, spend and invoices online, protecting businesses of all sizes, even those under 10 employees.
Customer portal
The right customer portal can greatly affect your customers’ perception of your business as well as provide an avenue for self-service. Many of our customers find that the slick user experience and white label branding helps attract new customers, impressed by the platform’s end-user functionality and ease of use. So, not only can it boost brand credibility but help drive sales too! The fact that the user experience is exactly the same for our customers and a reseller’s end-users is another, more nuanced, benefit. For example, a customer calls to ask a complex question where they need to be talked through the process step-by-step. With most billing systems, the portal that the end-user sees is completely different to what the operator may use, leading to incorrect advice, lengthy conversations muddling through possibilities, or time and resource invested into training advisers on navigating the user-facing system. With ZOEY, all the user-available settings sit within the exact same UX as the reseller’s ‘Back-end’ portal. This means operators can literally go step-by-step with them no matter what the question is. Plus, ZOEY’s Training Academy ensures that customer advisers (for example new starters) aren’t familiar with a specific function, word or phrase that the end user is asking about, they can simply search for the term. And thanks to ZOEY’s linked keywords (including industry terms not used within ZOEY) they can quickly find the resolution that keeps the end-user happy.
Book your demo of ZOEY at a time that suits you!
Reporting
Billing accurately requires vigilance. Previously, this would entail scouring spreadsheets for values that ‘seemed wrong’, putting the responsibility for catching missing charges on the billing team. While ZOEY can’t 100% remove that pressure, it can certainly make it more manageable, and automate many of the processes required to ensure a time-efficient bill run that maximises revenue. Any loss-making services need to be resolved before invoices are billed, and ZOEY’s ‘Unallocated Usage’ tab alerts billers to any imported CDRs that cannot be billed. And admins can easily understand the cause with clear reasons and wizard-based functions designed around specific scenarios, for quick resolutions, enabling resellers to be proactive, not reactive! Another way ZOEY helps billers become more proactive is with its range of automated reports, so that admins can keep a vigilant eye on margins, usage, spend and more using whichever metric (percentage, currency value, M-o-M change etc.) is most appropriate. This is an incredibly cost- and time-efficient way to highlight accounts that may be ripe for upselling to a higher bandwidth or data cap. All said, billing can be the make or break of a telecoms company; get your margins and service right and you’ll have happy customers for decades. Get it wrong and churn rates get too high and customer service teams get swamped by angry customers, leading to more discounts and gestures and promotions that further erode profitability.
With ZOEY, you can be confident that your billing platform not only enhances your customers’ perception of your operation, but it helps keep your team on track for each and every bill run, that margins are maximised, and any loss-making services get resolved before it’s too late!
