BARCELONA, Spain — Feb. 15, 2011 — Billing and customer care systems are a hidden but critical foundation technology that telecom operators rely on every day to serve their customers and manage their businesses. Customer relationship management (CRM) and other business support systems enable operators to attract new subscribers and to increase the satisfaction and profitability of the customers they already serve. With operators under pressure as never before to deliver greater efficiencies and to be able to capitalise on rapidly emerging market opportunities, the customer experience can give that much-desired competitive edge.
Ericsson is the global leader in providing such solutions to mobile operators, and has announced it will be partnering with Microsoft Corp. to incorporate Microsoft Dynamics CRM to deliver an integrated billing and CRM solution for service providers.
This alliance will bring to market a converged billing and customer care solution that makes it much easier for operator call centre representatives to immediately access customer information of all kinds to enable them to rapidly resolve issues, address queries and offer new services. Specifically, the solution allows customer service representatives within call centres to manage subscriber accounts, billing, up-selling, escalations, and more, with the benefit of a familiar, intuitive user interface that is fully integrated with Microsoft Office, helping reduce the amount of time spent training each customer service agent.
At Ericsson we’re committed to operators and service providers with world-class, innovative convergent solutions that can help overcome a diverse set of customer challenges. Combining the capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with our heritage in customer care, we expect this solution to provide a best-in-class experience, set new industry standards for lower total cost of ownership, slash the amount of time it takes to launch new services to weeks, instead of months, and provide that all important customer experience.
Look for future updates from Ericsson on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and on the Ericsson Broadcast Room and from Microsoft here on the Communications Sector Newsroom.
By Christoffer Andersson, head of Solution Area Billing and Customer Care at Ericsson
