Rating the carriers

New industry group says it will keep taps on carrier billing, dispute and customer service.

A new industry group called the Telecommunications Expense Management Association (TEMA) says it will monitor and publish report cards on how the carriers perform in terms of billing, dispute resolution and overall customer service.

TEMA, a trade and marketing association for the telecom expense management (TEM) industry, announced its formation in early August. The founding members are Avotus, ICOMM Consulting, INI Global, mindWireless, Teligistics and Vercuity. The group’s executive director, Steve Perkins, says that membership is closer to 16 vendors today, but only six are public as of press time.

The group’s goals include defining TEM, improve awareness and market perception of the value of TEM, customer education and improve customer interaction with carriers by zoning in on billing and dispute issues.

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A new industry group called the Telecommunications Expense Management Association (TEMA) says it will monitor and publish report cards on how the carriers perform in terms of billing, dispute resolution and overall customer service.

TEMA, a trade and marketing association for the telecom expense management (TEM) industry, announced its formation in early August. The founding members are Avotus, ICOMM Consulting, INI Global, mindWireless, Teligistics and Vercuity. The group’s executive director, Steve Perkins, says that membership is closer to 16 vendors today, but only six are public as of press time.

The group’s goals include defining TEM, improve awareness and market perception of the value of TEM, customer education and improve customer interaction with carriers by zoning in on billing and dispute issues.

“One of the things we wanted to do from the start is to figure out how to hold carrier’s accountable to a higher standard,” Perkins says.

The hope is that the industry will come up with a set of standards for turn around times on disputes and deal with billing issues consistently, he says. “It’s a problem everyone faces and we’re trying to use our collective leverage,” to foster change.

TEMA says it will make the carrier scorecards available publicly, but work still has to be done behind the scenes.

The group is primarily focused on its membership drive now, but Perkins says in October he expects TEMA members will be able to agree on how the data will be collected and used to come up with its score card.

The group will come up with a standard “data collecting methodology” of what TEMA wants to measure, he says. But the group has a good idea of what they’re looking for.

“We are asking the vendors to provide us with aggregated data on number of invoices processed, number of errors found by service type and by type of error,” Perkins says. “We would then ask them to provide information on how long the dispute was open, the number of escalations, number of initial denials, number of ultimate denials, and number of agreements.”

All customer information will be anonymous when sent to TEMA. The burden of data collection will be on the vendors. Customers will not have to do anything, other than use the vendor’s TEM software they have already purchased.

“The goal (of the scorecard) is not to ding the carriers as much as it is to move from anecdote to hard fact and then work with the carriers to improve these processes,” Perkins says.

TEMA is also concerned about Verizon Business’ announcement that it is getting into the telecom expense management business and that AT&T has also expressed interest. “Clearly its like the fox guarding the hen house,” Perkins says. But the association also wants to publicly differentiate how TEMA members differ from other offerings like Verizon Business for example.