Traditionally, only call centers or customer care service businesses used to use contact center solutions. However, the times have changed completely. Several businesses in diversified industry verticals have adopted this powerful communication tool to manage their business campaigns. Certainly, this is the reason call center software for small businesses is as popular as enterprise and multi tenant platforms for call centers.
As the popularity of these solutions increases, curiosity and need for them also increase in parallel. However, it is necessary to understand all of these solutions before actually purchasing the one for your business. One easier way to identify the right call center software solution for your business is to understand the different types of solutions available at your disposal. Moreover, you can learn about third party solutions and features available to use with this software. In this blog post, we will discuss one of the most important solutions that are closely associated with this software and empowering it. Yes, we will discuss a call center billing system.
We will cover the following points to understand this subject matter in detail.
At the end of this blog post, you will be able to figure out whether you need a call center billing solution or not. This will help in making an informed decision while buying or upgrading your software for a call center.
So, without any further delays, let’s jump in and discuss this interesting topic.
Modernize your billing with our Call Center Billing Solution
Modernize your billing with our Call Center Billing Solution
1. What is a contact center billing solution?
To understand the billing solution for call centers, you need to first understand call center solutions software.
Understanding software for call centers
It is a software system available with many features to empower a business in managing their different campaigns for customer care, sales, brand or cause awareness and more. Gradually, with an increasing number of adoptions, the call center industry invested in building varied types of solutions to support different demands and needs related to this software. Moreover, there are several business models invented specifically to meet the increasing demand for contact center solutions.
These models help in meeting call center needs, as well as generating revenues. These models include:
SaaS (Software as a Service)
The provider offers software with a hosted or rental model to use the software as a service offering. Simply put, you pay to use features of the call center. Generally, you pay a monthly cost. It is known as the SaaS model.
PaaS (Product as a Service)
In this model, instead of call center services, the provider will offer the complete software solution as a product. The business might not get the license and it is still referring to the rental model. However, you get the whole software.
Elevate your call center’s efficiency with our advanced billing systems.
UCaaS (Unified Communication as a Service)
With the invention and increasing demand for unified communication as a service, one more interesting revenue generating model has emerged and that is UCaaS. The service provider offers a unified communication service with the hosted or rental model.
Understanding the call center billing system
A call center billing system is a VoIP billing software solution that is exclusively developed for VoIP billing software. It will perform the jobs of invoicing, billing, and payment processing. This solution is ideal to use with any type of call center software that is aimed at providing services to clients and billing them for usage, software, or anything else. In short, this software can track the usage of software, call minutes, and more to generate bills.
Indeed, a billing system is crucial for call centers running revenue generating services offering business. Therefore, even call center solutions with inbuilt billing modules are gaining popularity. However, there is a huge difference between an inbuilt billing module and a full fledged call center billing system.
If you are thinking of getting a solution for call centers with an inbuilt billing system, you must read our guide sharing major tips, here. This article shares how to use the best software with billing to run a call center business seamlessly. It will help you choose the right software and precise features.
2. What are the key features of the call center billing software?
You must have got an idea that if you are going to run a revenue generating business using your call center solutions software, then you will need a feature rich billing system. Moreover, this system must be developed to capture call center related services, usage, and more. Certainly, it can help you build a more automated and stress-free billing environment for your business and clients.
To help you choose the right call center software with an inbuilt billing system or a standalone call center billing platform to integrate into your software for call centers, here are the must have features in your billing system:
System level billing and product level billing
The contact center solutions let you create multiple product offerings. For example, if you offer inbound and outbound as two different offerings, these two are your different product offerings. Likewise, you can develop different types of product offerings for your business. For this type of business model, you will need product level billing functionality.
Conversely, you can also create a global rate card or tariff plan. This plan can be applied to all customers using your system.
Both system level and product level billing and invoicing are necessary. Moreover, you cannot decide which one you will need over another. Therefore, your billing software must support both of these types of billing models.
Support for call plan
Call center business is all about managing different calling campaigns. Therefore, you may need to create and manage multiple call plans for your clients. Your software must have the functionality to design and assign different call plans to your clients automatically.
Support for the rate card
Similar to the call plan, you may also want to create rate cards to choose from. In other words, clients will look for your subscription packages and choose anyone that suits most of their business needs. Certainly, you will need multiple rate cards, and each will have a different pricing model and offerings depending on various criteria. Your billing software must include a facility to create and map different rate cards.
Bill per call
Many businesses prefer using services depending on call rates. Moreover, they look for special discounts on calling services. For example, call center software for small businesses often considers call minutes as one of the major differentiators in choosing a provider. Therefore, your billing system has to support bills per call. This bill is assigned depending on multiple criteria. First, it will show the number of call minutes to bill an account. Secondly, it will consider the total number of concurrent calls per second. Likewise, there are multiple factors that are considered to create invoices and bills for different clients and your billing system must support these varied models.
Invoice generation
Undoubtedly, this is a must have feature in any VoIP billing software. It must generate invoices. Moreover, this process must be automatic. It means your call center billing platform should generate invoices automatically depending on rate cards, call minutes, call plans, and other factors associated with different invoices. Moreover, the system must create detailed invoices and invoice summaries. Additionally, the billing system should have a provision to send invoices automatically to customers via email.
Receipt generation
This is an added and must have feature in the billing system for call center software systems. A majority of billing solutions support online payment processing. Obviously, it is needed to bring complete automation and digitization to the billing process. For example, the billing system will generate and send payment receipts in PDF format once payment is processed successfully.
CDR and other reports
Undoubtedly, reports are a necessary feature in any software, especially software solutions that are related to the call center industry. The billing system must show call detailed reports as it makes the tally of bills and usage easier. Additionally, your billing system can offer some added reports that are useful to your call center or business. For example, it can help you calculate your ROI. Moreover, it can help you make managerial decisions to expand and grow. Likewise, there are several advantages of having a host of reports in your billing software for call centers.
To get complete details of each of the must have call center billing software features, please read our complete coverage on this topic, here.
3. What is the importance of a billing system in a call center?
Surely, a billing system is inevitable in the call center industry due to the increasing trend of hosted and cloud based solutions and service usage. Let’s discuss the major reasons that make it vital to have this system in place with your call center software solution.
Automated billing and invoicing
It automates tracking, billing, and invoicing processes completely. Moreover, it partially automates the payment processing process. As a result, billing and invoicing processes are timely, efficient, and accurate.
Man Made error elimination
As the complete process is automated once call plans and rate cards are created, it eliminates all possibilities of human generated errors.
Faster processing
Certainly, machines are faster in processing tons of data. Therefore, this advantage is available with faster processing of bills, invoices, etc. to keep your cash flow cycle revolving swiftly.
More accurate and digitized finance management
The call center industry deals with multiple intricacies related to call center accounts, varying call minute rates, and more. A billing system can ensure all intricacies are presented in the simplest form. Moreover, it keeps the cash flow cycle circulating automatically. As a result, you get a digital finance management system, which is highly accurate and efficient.
Save manpower
Once the billing system is implemented, there is almost zero involvement of manpower in the billing process. This saves productive time for your agents to use in other talent-intensive jobs.
Improve client satisfaction
Your clients will receive invoicing with accurate details and in a timely manner. This will be reflected in the client satisfaction rate.
Better resource management
As you can save tons of resources that otherwise stay occupied in call center billing processes, you can use them more efficiently.
Reduces expenditures
Automation always reduces expenses, and the billing system also does the same. It will save money otherwise spent on a team of accountants and other resources occupied for bill management.
Boost Returns over Investment (ROI)
Happy clients will keep sending business that continues reflecting in revenue generation. Moreover, you will cut costs. As a result, your ROI charts will grow rapidly.
4. Who should use this system?
Certainly, the general answer is anyone can use this system if he or she wants to use an accurate and automated billing system for call center solutions. However, it is necessary to examine value of money. Possibly, this system is not as general-purpose as the software for the call center itself. Therefore, it is not useful for all users.
The ideal users of a billing system for call centers are call center service providers. This provider can fall under any category. Moreover, this system is perfect to use for businesses that use a multi tenant solution.
5. Concluding notes
In summary, a call center billing solution is an ideal system for a business that would like to run a revenue generating business. Moreover, it is ideal to administer the use of call center resources across branches for a call center that uses multi tenant software.
There are multiple vendors that offer different call center billing solutions. Moreover, you can also find software for call centers with integrated call center billing modules. You must keep all the facts mentioned in this blog post in mind while selecting the right system for your business to automate billing and invoicing.
iCallify is one of the most popular solutions for call centers. It has multiple features and modules, including the billing system. To learn more about our call center software for small businesses and other features, contact us.
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