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Why segmentation makes it easier for your enterprise customers to process their bills

23 February 2022 | Laura Broers

In the telecoms market, traditional B2B segmentations are based on the company's size, product range and complexity. However, within the enterprise, there are multiple users of the bill who all need something a little bit different. Laura explains why understanding these roles and addressing the needs of different users is an alternative way of segmenting bills and essential to getting them paid faster.

Enterprises are traditionally segmented based on their size, spending, and the products they are consuming. CSPs put a lot of effort into tailoring product propositions, prices, and discounts for this market but while this results in an offer that meets the company’s needs fairly precisely, the same level of tailoring is usually not reflected in the bills these companies later receive.

There is no generic bill processing journey within large enterprises. Rather, each enterprise has a unique internal structure and hierarchy of approvals and responsibilities. CSPs need to tailor their bills to this process’s requirements just as they tailor their products, prices and offers to enterprises’ expectations. Doing so promises to increase end-user satisfaction and means bills are likely to be processed and paid more quickly. A win-win.

Why should we create a more tailored approach to enterprise billing?

The large enterprise sector is a potentially lucrative albeit demanding part of the telecoms market. Such companies are digitalizing rapidly, and each represents a large chunk of revenue for the CSPs that serve them. Whereas consumers each generate hundreds of euros per year, and SMEs generate thousands, the biggest enterprise customers can be worth tens of millions of euros per year to CSPs.

However, large enterprises use their spending power to good effect - demanding steep discounts, high levels of tailoring, customized and personalized support, and will monitor their charges and dispute them if necessary. A more fluid and decentralized workforce means that individual employees now have more influence over ICT spending. With more decision points and more users influencing these decision, CSPs have to work harder than ever before to keep enterprise customers satisfied and retain as much of their business as possible.

The impact of billing on the large enterprise relationship

Negative billing experiences (BX) have a huge impact on all customer relationships. But in the large enterprise market a sub-optimal BX slows down payment cycles for two reasons:

  • it takes longer for end-users and cost center managers to check and approve payments
  • if staff do not understand charges they will dispute them – leading to partial payment or non-payment of bills.

In fact, we’ve interviewed several large enterprises to discover how they feel about their bills and what could increase their bill processing speed. During this research, we found that, on average, around 6 to 7 people per company are involved in telecom bill processing, indicating the lack of trust in their CSP. Bill processing is a huge headache for them, and they’d very much appreciate having bills tailored to the needs of different staff involved in processing and paying their bills.

Since processing the bill within a large enterprise involves several stages, a delay at any stage adds several extra days to the overall process. Offering tailored, stage-specific bill information, so that staff can quickly perform the necessary checks, significantly improves employees’ experience of bills and makes  them more likely to get paid on time.

Tailored bills impact your KPIs

Producing bills tailored to the needs of individual roles not only boosts net promotor score (NPS) or customer satisfaction rating (CSAT), and lowers customer effort score (CES), but also greatly reduce Days of Outstanding Debt, reduces the number of bill-related disputes, and gets bills paid faster and in full.

To get paid faster with higher customer satisfaction, take a more tailored approach to how you bill your large enterprise customers. Ensuring bills meet the needs of individual roles within the bill processing chain not only reduces the burden on your customers but increases the likelihood of getting paid on time.

 

Implementing a role-based approach to segmentation will greatly increase the profitability of large enterprise customers.  If you want to find out more about role-based segmentation, contact us to discuss the issue with one of our smart billing consultants.

Contact

Laura Broers - Marketing Specialist - Calvi - low

Laura Broers, Marketing & Communications Specialist

Laura Broers is Calvi’s Marketing and Communications Specialist, joining Calvi after completing a degree in communications. With her passion for improving the billing experience, Laura is great at putting herself in the customers’ shoes to help CSPs think about how they can improve their billing communications.

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