Category 6: Best Technology Awards
6c - Best Billing or Customer Care Solution
About this category:
Acquiring and retaining customers as well as Customer Relationship Management is a significant requirement for operators as they face increasing competition. With users becoming more 'tariff and feature aware', all operators have to work harder to maintain high customer loyalty levels and reduce churn. A very critical element to doing this is in the way operators interact with their customers and the most common form of this is through regular billing (whatever method is used) and that way customer questions are handled. One example of this would be customer friendly bills. Additionally operators are looking for systems that are flexible enough to cater to the different combinations of service plans that an operator wishes to roll out to meet the needs of specific customer segments. Increasingly important is the different access methods operators offer their customers such as the Web, SMS/MMS, as well as the more conventional call centre methods. The solution need not necessarily apply to the whole customer base, it may be targeted at specific segments such as business users, pre-pay customers or different age groups for example.
The Best Billing or Customer Care Solution award recognises the innovative programmes developed by operators and the products or services developed by CRM or Billing solution providers that will increase profitability, reduce costs and maintain a high standard of customer loyalty in this increasingly competitive environment.
Please Note: The presentation of this award will be made during a special Mobile World Congress conference session in Barcelona (16-19 February 2009). Full details of the presentations will be confirmed nearer the time. Summarised highlights of all category 6 awards will be featured during the GSMA's Awards Night Gala Dinner on the evening of Tuesday 17th February 2009.
Eligibility:
The category is open to users and developers of Billing and CRM solutions. These include:
- Mobile Operators
- Middleware and software providers such as Billing & CRM solution providers - Roaming solution providers
- M-Commerce, Messaging & Content delivery organisations for Value Added Services
- International carriers
- Fraud system, Security and management providers.
Judging criteria
Entries can only be submitted for products that are commercially available. The product, service or CRM programme entered must have been launched after December 1st 2007 or will be launched before November 28th 2008. The judges will be looking for answers to the question, "How does this product or application enhance the (my) customer relationship experience?" They will be looking particularly at the following:
- What evidence is there that your product or service has improved customer acquisition or retention levels?
- How has your product or application improved response times or customer satisfaction levels?
- What makes your programme or product simple to operate or easy for an operator to understand and appreciate its benefits?
- What makes your programme or product simple to operate or easy for a customer to understand and appreciate its benefits?
- How scalable and flexible is your product to cater to new service delivery platforms, rate plans and new service combinations that operators wish to roll out in a speedy and efficient manner to its customers?
In addition, the judges will consider some or all of the following where they are relevant to your entry
- Security
- Innovation i.e. what's new in 2008?
- Fraud Prevention & detection
- Operator training/support
- Churn management (including audited data)
- Service improvements
- Customer Access benefits
Entry Forms
In order to ensure a consistent approach for our judges, entries must be submitted using the Best Billing or Customer Care Solution entry form. Entries not using the web based entry form will not be considered. All entries must be submitted by 5pm (GMT) November 28th 2008.
Specific Entry Form Questions:
On the entry form, in addition to submitting contact and company information, you will be asked to answer the following questions (maximum text/character length for your answers also shown in brackets below):
- What is the name of your product, solution or programme? (100 characters = approx 20 words)
- Entries for your award category must be commercially available. Please provide evidence to support this, specifically launch date of programme or service, regions covered and (if applicable) which operators offer your product or are running the programme or service. (500 characters = approx 80 words)
- What evidence is there that this product or programme has improved customer acquisition or retention levels? (1000 characters = approx 170 words)
- How has your product or programme improved response times or customer satisfaction levels? (1000 characters = approx 170 words)
- What makes your product or programme simple to operate or easy for customers to understand and appreciate its benefits? An extract from a customer testimonial may be given. Please supply customer name and company name. (1000 characters = approx 170 words)
- How scaleable is your solution? (1000 characters = approx 170 words)
Please note: Use URLs when they are specific/ relevant to the category and will help judges further understand your entry, but due to the number of entries received, judges will not have time to surf company websites looking for further information on the entered product/service or initiative.