Avance

Resolving customer disputes for a global telecoms partner

The challenge

One of the world’s leading business communication providers, serving businesses in virtually every country and territory in the world, found itself with a highly complex and highly valuable business customer network. It faced enormous complexity, managing millions of customers with individual expectations and needs. With a focus on delivering a world-class telecoms infrastructure, maintaining a reputation for excellence in customer service was becoming increasingly difficult in the area of dispute resolution. In 2003, it began work with Avance to develop a high-performance global dispute management system to ensure customers receive world-class service when they need it most.

The solution

Avance’s multiple language customer relationship process gives its global partners a one-stop-shop capability, ensuring its business customers around the world benefit from the service level excellence for which it is renowned. Invoice disputes arise for a vast number of reasons, and handling them quickly not only enhances customer service levels, but also improves overall invoice settlement performance. Avance worked with the customer relationship team to develop a proprietary technology to route customer disputes to the point in the global organisation best equipped to deliver a resolution. Avance manages the language interface and routes disputes direct to the solution provider, before referring the solution back to the originating customer.

The result

From the customer perspective, invoice disputes are resolved more quickly and more simply, requiring only a single registration of the dispute. Complaints that used to take more than 6 weeks to resolve can now be handed back within 15 days. End customers benefit from an improved level of service, and meanwhile payment performance is significantly improved, improving financial performance and reducing trading risk.