Calling Card Management the Cyber Way

Posted: 04/1999

Calling Card Management the Cyber Way
By Jennifer Knapp

Postpaid calling card providers have begun using online capabilities to streamline business functions such as product management, customer service and billing, while realizing increased profit margins at the same time.

Through cybermanagement, carriers, their resale customers and end users now are able to view and manipulate account information online. In addition, cybercare has opened the door to improved customer service, allowing providers to answer service questions promptly while helping prevent fraud.

Cybermanagement

Rochester, N.Y.-based Frontier Corp.'s Internet bill payment and presentment (IBPP) product, uCommand, which is free to Frontier end-user customers, offers a comprehensive view of an online calling card module's enhanced management capabilities.

The account overview segment in uCommand shows which calling card products are on an account, lists personal identification numbers (PINs) for those accounts and allows customers to add, change or delete PINs in real time. uCommand's invoice management references billing information, call detail records (CDRs), bill history for 12 months prior, balance information and payment status. Usage history and call volume statistics can be requested in graph or chart form as well.

The program's administration segment allows users to change account passwords and modify account user lists. This function is especially useful to Frontier's business customers, who use calling cards more often than residential users, explains Jodi Custer, manager of resale channel for Frontier. A business customer may have several users on one calling card account, so a designated individual can act as a manager to the account, manipulating access through the administrative functions of uCommand.

Account managers also can download information from an online account into financial applications for in-house administrative functions.

Calling card wholesalers also offer Internet-based administrative capabilities for their calling card reseller customers (see story, click here). Frontier, for example, offers resellers an online module, called Remote Data Access (RDA), under its uCommand umbrella.

"The RDA system is an onsite management system for our carrier customers, where they can take care of their own calling card database," says Deb Cady, manager of wholesale channel at Frontier. "[Frontier's] wholesale customers can go into RDA and add, change or delete a calling card, and actually execute the maintenance on that card, which is sent directly to Frontier through its system."

Frontier's wholesale calling card customers are not able, however, to offer access to the uCommand platform for their end users. It would be the reseller's responsibility to provide its own IBPP system to its calling card customers, Cady explains. This responsibility can be filled through billing service bureaus, which now are offering IBPP support.

Cyberbilling

State Communications Inc., a Greenville, S.C.-based integrated communications provider that launched its online billing program Feb. 5, chose to outsource the presentment and payment functions of its IBPP system to Novazen, Boulder, Colo., a developer of software products for Internet-based billing and customer communication, while the bill rating and processing portion is proprietary to the carrier.

Saville, a Burlington, Mass.-based billing service bureau, teamed up in 1998 with BlueGill Technologies Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich., to integrate IBPP into its service bureau product portfolio.

"As far as the actual online bill portion is concerned, Saville's service bureau would clearly be the billing engine that would fold all the billing information into an online module," says Richard Aroian, vice president of marketing and strategic alliances for Saville. BlueGill provides the application software that allows a company to take billing information out of applications such as Saville's convergent billing platform (CBP).

Some calling card providers are finding web-based management goes hand-in-hand with accounts using credit card payment.

GTC Telecom, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based carrier that is preparing for a mid-year launch of its online calling card program, says credit card payment instigated the company's decision to implement IBPP. "Normally, carriers send call details to a bill, but if you are hitting customers' credit cards, then you are not going to put the call detail information on the credit card bill," explains Mark Fleming, executive vice president of GTC. "So, it is necessary to inform customers about their calling details. If we were not going down the credit card line, then it wouldn't be as urgent, but I think it definitely is one of those features you have to have with credit card billing."

This paradigm also lowers billing costs.

"If we can have customers pay their bills by credit card and view their bills online, our cash flow is better," says Shay Houser, CEO at State Communications. In addition, the costs associated with printing and mailing bills are completely eliminated.

Putting credit card and personal account information online, however, poses a significant security threat that carriers must take the time to address.

"Security will be an inhibitor from the network operators' perspective to really rolling out these systems quickly," explains Aroian. "But with diligence, it is possible, and security issues can be addressed."

Security concerns with online account management hit both the end user and network operator sides. End users would be concerned about how much personal account information they want available about them on the web, Aroian explains. Network operators, on the other hand, are concerned about placing valuable end-user statistics online that a competitor likely would enjoy accessing.

There are internal security processes that can be established to combat security breaches, Aroian adds. These include firewalls--hardware and software that limits the exposure of a internal network to an outsider--intrusion protection applications and 24-hour network monitoring. Security functions also can be outsourced to companies such as GTE Internet Solutions, Irving, Texas, or Fairfax, Va.-based UUNET, the Internet service provider (ISP) and Internet communications solutions division of MCI WorldCom Inc.

Cybercare

Frontier's uCommand platform not only acts as a management tool for customers and resellers, but the carrier also utilizes uCommand's marketing potential by making product and services information available on the account for interested users.

Customers with questions about products or account details can e-mail the carrier's service center, to which Frontier promises to respond within 24 hours, says Steve Moore, product analyst for Frontier.

State Communications' online program offers customer service capabilities that allow traveling calling card users to inquire about bill discrepancies by e-mail 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world.

"Customers can reference their bill right on the website and send an e-mail to a customer services representative, who has the exact same image of the bill online at [State Communications'] shop," Houser says. In addition to being a powerful customer service tool, this function also acts as a fraud management tool.

"With calling cards, you are using them when away from the office where you are out and about in the public, which raises concerns about fraud," says Scott Nelson, vice president of marketing at Provo, Utah-based Big Planet Inc., an Internet-based network marketing company that currently is establishing its online bill presentment program for a wide array of communications products. "Our goal is to put up a detailed summary [of an account] so people can analyze their account and ensure that calls are correct," he explains. If a customer does discover fraudulent activity on a calling card account, an inquiry can be e-mailed to customer service, so the problem is addressed before further fraud can occur.

Jennifer Knapp is news editor for PHONE+ magazine.