Attacking Billing Disputes with Jurisdictional Data

With permission from one of Tele-Tech’s valued clients, CDG (www.cdg.ws), we thought it might prove interesting to share a recent case study of Tele-Tech’s Localizer capabilities in this issue. The purpose of this study was to review the implementation of the CDG CABS jurisdictional functionality at a specific CLEC and show how it enhanced billing accuracy, minimized disputes, and subsequently optimized CABS collections success for Tele-Tech’s customers.

Many CLECs experience the frustration of dealing with costly billing disputes, the time-consuming task of resolving them, and often, the lack of results achieved through the process. And, many CLECs are short on available staff time to manage the arduous process, so money has to be allocated to consultants brought in to work towards resolution.

In fact, in 2007, one of CDG’s CLEC customers spent over $200,000 for consultants in this area. And, they estimate that about 25% of accounts were disputing invoices, with a major cause of the disputes attributable to jurisdictional issues. In many cases, interconnect partners were claiming that local traffic was being billed access charges, and while the CLEC disagreed, the company lacked the ability to prove the accuracy of its access bills.

Recognizing that the process of resolving disputes after bills were issued is costly and inefficient, the company shifted the focus to finding a front-end solution to the problem. Making their invoices more accurate would lead to fewer disputes, and fewer disputes would lead to savings in time and energy, as well as higher collection rates. It was time to mount an offensive strategy to put an end to costly disputes.

Searching for a solution, CDG’s customer turned to them, as their CABS provider, for help. For many years, CDG has teamed with Tele-Tech Services to properly jurisdictionalize traffic, making billing more accurate and disputes less frequent. Using Tele-Tech’s Localizer database, which gives highly accurate details on local calling areas nationwide, CDG was able to assess the jurisdiction of the traffic terminating on the customer’s network, separating local from long distance, before access invoices were generated.

Specific and positive results were soon obvious to CDG’s client. After adding to the process, the CLEC continued billing about the same amount in access charges. But, their ability to collect improved because they could "see the local traffic, account for it, and show it on the invoice." And when disputes do arise, the company has the data needed to resolve them quickly and accurately thanks to the Localizer data and the reporting capabilities CDG has built into its software. "We can visually see (the Localizer’s) impact on the flow of traffic, and CDG’s jurisdictional report has become a key tool for us in working disputes," explains a senior member of the billing team. "The biggest benefit is that we’ve gained visibility into truly local traffic. The ILEC doesn’t always jurisdictionalize calls properly. With Localizer, we’re able to confirm factors from other providers."

An added benefit is that the CLEC is now able to validate the factors set by their interconnect partners using CDG’s software with the Localizer data. Running their own jurisdictional analysis against call records enables them to determine the accuracy of those factors received from other providers and gives independent third-party documentation to support their findings.
By partnering with CDG and Tele-Tech, this CLEC was able to eliminate disputes and increase their collection percentage. "We’ve gained more confidence in the accuracy of our billing because of the detail provided by CDG and Localizer," says a senior vice president.