The WOW! Buzz

With all the technical troubleshooting we do to support our customers, you would think troubleshooting calls would be the most challenging call types for our representatives.  Not always.  You might find it surprising that billing call types are sometimes the trickiest and most challenging of all the calls we take.  

When customers sign up for services, have their services installed, and don’t make any changes to services, the billing is pretty straight forward.  It’s when customers modify services and packages that is the catalyst for the inbound calls asking for help understanding the bill.  Explaining the bill when changes have been made, is one of the most difficult things to convey over the phone.   I thought it might be helpful to try, from a two-thousand foot level, to explain how it works writing.  Here goes my best effort. 

Lets say you signed up for our services on the first day of the month and your monthly rate is $50.  We bill in advance, meaning payments are due in the first month of services, not after the month has passed.  So, once the services are installed, the bill is sent out immediately.  On the 15th day of  the month, you call us to increase internet speeds, add some premium channels, and change phone packages, raising your monthly bill to $100.   The upgrades were added over the phone and you immediately begin to enjoy the additional services, even though we haven’t billed for them yet.   The next day, you receive the bill for $50 and pay it.  Remember, when you pay the $50 bill, that’s for a month’s of services at the $50 rate when in reality, what’s due is 15 days at the $50 rate ($25) and 15 days at the $100 rate ($50) or a total of $75.   So, in order to collect the additional $25 owed, we’ll make the adjustment on the next month’s bill.   Next month’s bill will be for the new rate of $100 plus the $25 not billed in the previous month, or a total of $125.  The following month, the bill will be back to normal, without any adjustments, at the regular rate of $100.

This is the simple explanation of how it works.  Unfortunately, the bill never looks this simple because  there’s a lot of debits and credits that go into the actual adjustment, including line items for all the taxes and fees.  It gets even more complicated if multiple changes, upgrades and downgrades, are made at various times throughout the month.  Or a change, such as a significant upgrade made very early in month, resulting in what seems to be a very large bill the following month, is a common scenario that drives in questions.

The important thing for you to know is that we know it’s complicated, and if you find it confusing, don’t despair, you are not alone.  We get lots of questions about bills and we’ll always do our best to explain the bills, patiently and thoroughly, until it’s understood.  We know how important  it is that bills be accurate an in all honesty, errors are rare.  Transactions can be explained, but it just takes patience and sometimes creativity in explaining it in various ways so that  the explanation is understood.  There’s nothing sweeter to a customer care representative than talking with a customer, explaining the bill in detail, often multiple times, and having the light bulb come on where a customer says  “ah ha…I see, now I get it…I get it.”  When that happens, and if often does, we hope it makes for a great customer experience.  It certainly makes for a great ccr experience, sweeter than any troubleshooting call can ever be!