Billing Dispute with a Customer? Try Visual Engagement for Real-time Proof

Visual experiences are gaining traction within customer interactions. Visual engagement has proven especially effective across a wide range of sales, marketing, customer service and support scenarios, providing the quickest route to success and resolution in a high number of cases.

6 Issues You Can Resolve With Visual Proof

One of the most common use cases for visual engagement in customer service is when visual proof is required to solve issues such as:

• billing disputes
• invoice clarification
• contract misalignment
• personal detail updates
• promotions and coupons
• returns and damaged goods.

Case Study: How An Agent Solves A Billing Dispute

Why was the customer billed more than double?

A telecom’s call center received a call from a customer complaining that he’d been billed more than double the contracted amount per month for the last few years. The agent could not find any indication for the double-billing in the CRM system, and requested to see the bill. 

Visual assistance technology to the rescue

The agent established a live video connection with the customer in order to handle the billing dispute. This enabled him to easily review and visually communicate with the customer through augmented reality tools. 

Upon inspection of the bill, the agent identified that the billing came in two cycles, from two separate invoices, twice a month.

Further investigation proved that the customer had only been using a single account with the telecom company and had no knowledge of another account. The telecom was billing for services that were being utilized, but by whom?

Police investigate the billing dispute

The agent passed the details of the suspicious account to corporate security who involved the police in the investigation.

It became clear that the customer’s neighbor had stolen his billing information and used it for two years, without the customer’s knowledge. The case was referred to the police and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

Seeing is critical to successful resolution

This particular case may be unusual in its outcome and circumstances. However, it underlines the importance of the agent seeing the details or a dispute with his own eyes and triggering the right action, allowing him to solve a billing dispute.

Billing disputes = 42% of call center operations

Billing disputes remain the most common types of customer service inquiries, and are often extremely nuanced and especially difficult to resolve. According to Oracle, energy providers worldwide spend about $30 billion dollars every year on customer care. 42% of their call center operations involve handling billing inquiries, disputes and sales.

These calls are complex, with much back-and-forth between the agent and the customer. The customer struggles to explain the details of the issue, which may include references to multiple statements, credit cards, bills and contracts.

Agents are challenged with grasping the problem itself, often hampered by unclear customers, incorrect terminology or sheer scope of the problem. The longer it takes for the agent to understand and resolve the billing dispute, the more frustrated the customer becomes, impacting satisfaction levels. If the agent is unable to resolve the issue in a timely fashion, the call can result in the loss of a customer or even a damaging complaint against the business itself.

In 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau handled approximately 291,400 consumer complaints. 73% of the credit card inquiries they received were related to credit card charges, and one-third of all credit card complaints were related to billing disputes or fraud.

How to handle billing disputes: the traditional way

Enterprises with best practices for resolving billing disputes traditionally follow two primary processes.

Process 1: Proof via email

In cases without any privacy or security issues, for instance where there is no need to disclose sensitive information such as bank statements, the enterprise may request that the customer send an image via email. The request and the customer’s response are handled by different queues, which means different agents will have to review and understand the case, often doubling the handling time. In fact, the average resolution time varies between 3-6 business days.

Process 2: Proof in person

When the matter is related to secure personal documentation, email is not an option, and customers are asked to visit a branch of the company in person. The resolution on these cases can be even longer, and is inconvenient for consumers. This often results in customers abandoning the billing dispute…and ultimately the brand.

Visual Customer Service: The New Way to Solve A Billing Dispute?

Visual proofs are a perfect example of a new technology that requires only a small effort to make a big difference in quality of service. Incorporating visual functionality into billing disputes, or other inquiries that require visual proofs, brings measurable value to the enterprise by:

• speeding up the resolution
• preventing escalations
• increasing customer satisfaction
• improving call center KPIs.

Drive Effective Handling of Billing Inquiries, Disputes and Sales

TechSee’s AR-driven intelligent visual support platform provides contact center agents with highly effective remote visual support tools so they can see the proof they need to guide customers to a resolution on the very first call. In fact, 90% of customer service calls that utilize TechSee’s visual engagement tools are resolved in less than two minutes, resulting in a seamless best-in-class customer service experience and a sharp reduction in customer churn.

To learn more about how TechSee can help improve your customer experience while reducing your costs, click here to schedule a live demo.