We found it interesting that Comcast was singled out by six senators in Washington for billing customers the rental fee for their modem after the modem had been returned. Comcast acknowledged issues in their customer service and called out a focus on their billing systems to avoid such mistakes in the future.
 
We often find our cable and telecom clients knee deep in a layered and complex billing system that does them no favors on the customer service front. This complexity significantly increases the probability of a business process breakdown or a programming error with ramifications like Comcast is experiencing via bad press and increased Federal scrutiny.
 
Billing isn’t sexy. In fact, it’s often monolithic, causing investment in billing improvements to be deferred by the the industry as a whole. This is actually the mistake. Modern architectures, implementation techniques and service provider engagement models can create an opportunity for new service offerings, monetization options and improved customer experience.