Update on Charter Spectrum Time Warner Cable Bright House Networks billing systems integration for enterprise customers.
Back in May 2016 when Charter officially closed the deal to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, they took on a monumental task of merging many different systems to make one cohesive customer experience. (As a disclaimer, my company does sell and manage Spectrum Enterprise services.)
This deal was worth over $60 billion and effects over 90,000 employees and 25 million customers with significant coverage in 48 states. Among old school telecom pros, the move to snag Tom Rutledge from Cablevision in late 2012 and relocating the headquarters to Tom’s backyard in Connecticut was a sign of big things to come.
As it stands today, Spectrum does not have an online payment option for enterprise services that allows you to view your bill or even your bill amount. Bright House did have a platform but it was recently taken down after performing some maintenance, pointing customers to the Spectrum Business billing log in.
Though this a great inconvenience, management is doing a great job within customer service. Calls are answered quickly and the customer service reps are professional, knowledgeable and friendly. The same can be said about the Bright House Networks side of the house. More importantly, their call center routing works well making it easy. In fact, I can see how some may like the human touch. In fact, they’ve been very big on asking customers for feedback during surveys after a call.
Rumor has it that the full billing system merger is being road mapped for August of 2017 but Charter’s VP of External Communications has yet to respond with confirmation but got. To their credit, a response to the question would really hold a lot of people’s feet to the flame.
For those that don’t know, telecommunications billing systems are extremely complex with various permutations of product sets, it’s usually easiest and most common to keep systems separate for example residential from small business from enterprise. Netcracker is a common platform but the old rule of garbage in garbage out applies. A lot of the info is old and from previous regimes requiring a highly manual process. In fact, the recent fraud issues impacting CenturyLink is an example of the inefficiencies plaguing many telecoms and ISPs.
