The Billing Journal - Amdocs

for many years have been predicting the end of voice
as a major revenue stream, and the rise of content.
JJ: Voice is not dead, but the way we charge for it will
change. For many customers it will become part of a
wider bundle of services, charged for on a subscription
basis. But still a key part of the overall customer
experience.
AL: And the bill will be a major tool to make that
happen
JJ: I believe so, if we can move away from this barrier
that the bill is a demand for payment. If we can
remove that, then the bill becomes about information
management. And we can move from the ‘one size fits
all’ model, to a model where the customer can tailor it
to meet his own requirements if he wants to.
Subscription billing takes away a lot of the uncertainty
around ‘what will my bill be this month’ and that
question becomes a greater issue as more products
appear on the same bill.
Ultimately the bill may become a value statement –
and obviously it will increasingly be online, although
BT will of course continue to support paper bills for
customers that prefer them.
And once you have achieved that separation then the
potential to use the bill as a marketing tool is greatly
increased.
AL: Thank you, Jonathan, that is an excellent insight
into where things are going.
Editor’s note: the result of the recent GBA survey ‘event
based or subscription’ came down slightly in favour
of ‘event based’ (58 percent), but it must be said that
100 percent of vendors who took part voted ‘event
based’. One has to wonder whether this is a new
dividing line between operators and vendors.
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