Billing Still Matters: Driving Premium Customer Experiences through Intelligent Digital Services
For instance, beyond recommending a second movie featuring the same leading actor as the one the user has just downloaded, the billing system also knows (1) how many movies the user has downloaded in the past month, and (2) the average consumption of the user’s data quota over the past several months. From these, the system can recommend not just another movie title, but include the suggestion as part of an appropriate movie download service coupled with a data plan that provides the necessary bandwidth. The secret sauce is the billing system’s ability to synthesize a complete recommendation that accounts for all relevant factors, all at the moment of opportunity. Finally, since the invention of the telephone, there is an upside from billing. This real-time awareness delivers a win-win: the opportunity to please subscribers by enriching their digital life while capturing incremental revenues from the up-sell.
While this new up-sell capability alone brings immense value, ambitious DSPs will certainly want to advance to the next level made possible through intelligent billing. Rather than just seeking to up-sell customers one-by-one at checkout, new intelligent billing systems have the potential to guide the identification of new offers that should appeal to whole segments of existing subscribers and even new customers. Everyone has conceded that there isn’t one, single killer app.
It’s often said that humans use less than 10% of their brains; it must be even more true that smartphone owners use much less than 1% of the endless possibilities available through their smart devices, combined with fast broadband networks and exploding stores of content and apps. So the clever marketer of digital services will be constantly experimenting to refine the customer experience for discrete segments by mashing up distinct content and services and combining them with the appropriate amount of bandwidth (and even including a strict quality of service guarantee when applicable). The new generation of billers will serve as the marketer’s laboratory, accelerating the pace of the offer creation stream by making the process intuitive and providing the structure for controlled testing. Marketing at leading-edge DSPs will be agile and resourceful, constantly adding the necessary new offers and promotions to feed the up-sell and customer acquisition engines.
Already most service providers are adding intelligent billing to identify relevant up-sells and accelerate time-to-market for new offers. They also recognize that only through customer intimacy can they clearly demonstrate this value to their customers. The device makers will continually introduce ever-greater features; app developers will aggressively extend the new technologies into every facet of our lives; and content owners are looking for the best ways to open new channels. DSPs need to leverage intelligent billing to bring value in the form of more tailored offers to customers, and change the conversation.
In the past, more than 50% of customer interactions were related to billing. Unfortunately, these billing-related conversations most often centered around misunderstandings about what was billed. And both parties, the customer and the service provider, almost always came away disappointed by the interaction. Very seldom was it a win-win. DSPs now have an opportunity to turn customer interactions into meaningful conversations about how to best leverage technology, enhancing the customer’s experience and gaining status (and profits). Advanced billing offers these DSP gurus a unique opportunity to cement positive customer relationships and build longtime loyalty.
Intelligent billing allows service providers the opportunity to transform into DSPs. It allows real-time identification of relevant up-sell offers, taking advantage of critical opportunities to impact the customer experience and maximize customer value. Furthermore, DSPs can leverage intelligent billing to better tailor offers to unique segments. Marketers, empowered with the right data, easy-to-use analytics tools, and an intuitive interface for offer creation, are better able to rapidly introduce and repackage digital services as innovative and compelling offers. Given these advantages, DSPs can now transform their relationship with their customers. Such DSPs will deliver a premium customer experience powered by intelligent billing, and their prize will be the right to monetize that premium.
