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ILD: New Site Aims for Transparency, Consumer Self-Help Payment Processor's Service Provider Customers Benefit From Feedback, Too
06/02/09 | Kelly M. Teal - Billing OSS Magazine
Payment processing services firm ILD Teleservices recently rolled out a new Web site for consumers, rather than its LEC customers. The pages tell users more about new capabilities such as bill-to-phone payment, for example. They also provide answers to questions about the charges ILD processes and walks visitors through reporting and resolving billing issues.
And while the site targets typical people, ILD's service provider clients can use the feedback from the site to improve their transparency to subscribers, their methods and, most of all, showcase service capabilities.
B/OSS Business & Regulatory Editor Kelly Teal spoke on May 27, 2009, with Dennis Stoutenburgh, president of ILD and head of the company's payment processing division, to learn more about the new site. Here is the edited transcript of that conversation.
B/OSS: Why did ILD develop this site?
D.S.: We started seeing a rise in end-user complaints generated mostly by services purchased online, like identity theft protection and voice mail services. It became clear we needed to create mechanisms to protect consumers from unauthorized charges, as well as protect our customers from end-users who were serial subscribers doing fraudulent sign-ups.
B/OSS: Describe the fraudulence and serial subscribing.
D.S. They'd sign up for the service to be delivered to their home but billed to their office. So we were getting tons and tons of these complaints. The people actually worked at these companies but were hoping nobody would read the bills. So we set out on a multiphase plan, [eventually] requiring all customers signing up clients via the Internet to provide the electronic LOA before we would bill an end user.
When we got all those on file, we realized the serial subscriber is a real issue, where an end-user would sign up for the same service from multiple providers. I assume that was because there was an upfront incentive –a gift card or whatever – to do it. So we put out a service – for each category, there's only one service allowed for each BTN [billing telephone number]. Whoever was the first one to sign up from that number, that's it.
We then came to the realization that those consumer products were ending up on business bills. So we then scrubbed the entire database to identify the businesses. It's not likely the local Dairy Queen is going to sign up for an identify theft product, for example. We would take the BTN and find out who the account owner is, take every LOA and if it's not logical, kick that out and say you have a bad LOA and allow no charge on the bill. We now have a full authentication process.
B/OSS: How does this fit into the new Web site for consumers?
D.S.: We've always given end-users the opportunity to log complaints 24/7 and then we would respond. But we realized our existing site really wasn't giving end-users enough information. A lot of times customers didn't understand ILD's role in the process. And since our name and our customer's name are on the bill, it became important to help everybody in the process.
So now what you'll see is a site that tells you not only who ILD is and how the LEC billing process works, you can enter your BTN to inquire about a charge, you can find out which person put the charge on and get their contact information. The process is really full transparency and education as well as problem-solving. In the end, it's the culmination of putting in back-end protections for our customers so they don't get scammed, and to educate end-user customers.
B/OSS: What other functions does the site let users perform?
D.S.: It's not only a place to log a complaint but you can cancel your service too. If you want to put a block on your bill so you don't receive a third-party charge from ILD, you can do that. The empowering, the consumer part, is very important.
B/OSS: How might this site serve as a trendsetter?
D.S.: I don't know of anything like it out there. But that wasn't necessarily what our initial objective was. But I think the trendsetting element is going to be transparency – that's something that's absolutely critical in this process, as well as end-user empowerment.
B/OSS: What's the reception been from your service provider customers?
D.S.: A lot of them had input in putting this thing together. I think anything that can lower the anxiety level of their clients excites them.
B/OSS: How much might this site help providers prevent churn?
D.S: The site's only been up for two weeks so we don't have good statistics yet on that.
B/OSS: What best practices would you recommend to service providers about their billing methods?
D.S.: We actually had an expert in the area of Internet subscription put together a best practices marketing white paper for us.
B/OSS: What's next?
D.S.: I think a lot of what we know on that is going to come from the feedback we see from the site – it's so early in its launch, it's hard to tell at this stage what's next. But we already have clients who want to link their sites to ours, and we've had two or three people say they'd like to white-label the self-help center and put it on their sites directly. From a tech standpoint, that's probably our next step.