CSG International : How ISPs Can Leverage the FCC’s New Broadband Regulations to Improve Billing Transparency
May 16, 2024 at 11:01 am EDT
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Three Strategies to Increase Price Transparency for Customers
In an industry that's notorious for hidden fees and unclear pricing models, price transparency is a competitive edge for ISPs. According to the Harvard Business Review, "transparency may be a major source of competitive advantage since it can help create consumer trust, deepen relationships and ultimately drive revenue growth."
After resolving a service or technical question, customers say "paying a bill" most impacts their level of happiness as a customer. Customers who feel they are overpaying and cannot determine the reason their bills are different than they expected are more inclined to switch to a new ISP for a better deal. Because internet bills often fluctuate from month to month, it's important to clearly explain the reasons for the changes; doing so decreases bill confusion and contact center calls.
Here are three strategies to make your billing statements more transparent:
Re-design your billing statement. Many companies' statements include five common billing mistakes:
Not presenting the amount due as the most prominent information
Not providing a clear due date on the bill
Not linking the amount due and due date
Not explaining changes (or acknowledging no changes) since the previous bill
Hiding mission-critical information
Re-designing your billing statement to eliminate these billing statement sins is the first step toward better transparency. Use a self-service bill design tool (such as CSG Bill Composer) to create, design and personalize your billing statements. Or rely on CSG's Communication Design & Delivery experts to re-design your billing statement to make it clearer and more transparent.
Implement an online bill presentment solution. An online bill presentment and analytics solution (such as CSG Interactive Bill) gives customers an easy way to see what's due and when through a transparent, easy-to-access portal. Changes from the previous month's bill are explained up front. Customers can view and drill down into their billing information online-anytime, anywhere and on any device.
Use a digital bill explanation tool.CSG Bill Explainer provides a digital, interactive summary of the customer's billing statement, explaining monthly charges as well as what changed and why. Bill Explainer breaks down this and other information included in the customer's statement:
Balance due
If/how much the amount changed from the previous bill, and why
Itemized charges (including fees)
Expiration dates for promotions (e.g., introductory rates)
Proration and taxation events
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) compares the customer's billing statement to the previous month's and creates a simple, natural language description of the changes. The system sends a text or email to the customer, indicating that the bill has changed and including a link to the personalized summary. Customers don't need to remember their password to access Bill Explainer.
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16 May 2024 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by
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CSG Systems International, Inc. is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform company. The Company provides revenue management, digital monetization, customer experience, and payments solutions. The Company offers integrated real-time revenue management platforms leveraging public cloud, private cloud, or on-premises deployments to optimize and monetize transactions at every stage of the customer lifecycle. The Companyâs products are used in the areas of 5G/internet of things (IOT) monetization, financial services, technology, telecom, field service management, operations support systems/business support systems (OSS/BSS), journey orchestration, journey analytics, customer experience, and integrated payments. The Company offers operational services encompassing infrastructure management, including hardware, application, and environmental management and application configuration management, including configuration development, release, and deployment.