The leading B2B telecoms analyst firm Omnisperience and digital bill communications and analytics specialists Soft-ex have announced recent research, which has found 84% of communications service providers (CSPs) are planning to invest in more effective customer communications in the next 12-24 months.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, CSPs played a vital role in keeping both enterprises and households connected. But as life begins to normalise, they are now focused on what comes next.

“CSPs have spent billions transforming their operations, but the key piece of the puzzle – digital billing communications – has been overlooked despite bills being one of the most important touchpoints with customers,” says Soft-ex’s SVP Marketing & Business Development, Grainne Magfhloinn.  75% of respondents to Omnisperience’s research admitted that customers had to resort to contacting overworked call centres because they didn’t understand their current bills.

Now as we enter the hybrid working era, the good news is that CSPs are committed to doing better -telling Omnisperience that COVID-19 has not slowed down their transformations. In fact, 75% said it has speeded up digitalisation efforts, with 84% revealing they intend to invest in more effective interactive communication of charges.

“When customers call about their bills, it often turns out the bill is correct but the customer doesn’t understand it,” reveals Teresa Cottam of Omnisperience. The result is a negative loop of frustrated customers, higher customer care costs and unhappy customer service staff – which had led to high employee churn rates in call centres. Lack of investment in this area has made it hard for CSPs to provide the type of digital experience and level of customer care they aspire to.

But this situation is set to change, because CSPs are well aware of what’s at stake, meaning that in the next period of adaption:

·       84% will invest in improving digital bill communications

·       92% intend to improve or add analytical and reporting capabilities

·       75% will introduce self-service bills

·       83% will improve the look and feel of their bills.

This is great news for customers, CSPs and their staff, according to Cottam. “Better bill communications is the foundation of successful digital service provision and healthy customer relationships. It creates a virtuous circle of happier customers, lower support costs and more fulfilled staff who spend less time fire-fighting and more time being creative and enhancing the experience,” she says.

Magfhloinn agrees: “CSPs have known they need to fix this for a long time, but they’ve had so much to do that it kept slipping off their to-do list. Now they’re facing huge and continual changes in their commercial relationships and they know they cannot delay improving their digital bill communications any longer”.

“A lean approach to Digital Transformation advocates focusing on where the customer perceives the most value,” adds Cottam. “As CSPs shift from a customer acquisition mindset to one of retention, digital bill communication becomes vital to building a healthy, engaging dialogue with customers. Our research shows that this is driving investment in this area, enabling CSPs to transform customer experiences and deliver the experiences their customers expect.”

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