Call Charges Applied in Call Accounting
One of a call accounting services primary jobs is to apply tariffs to telephone call records. Call charges should, as far as possible, duplicate the call costs charged by the telephone company.
If costs are inaccurate, the purpose of a Call Accounting service is nullified to the extent of the inaccuracy. A Call Accounting system with 97% accuracy is very useful, one that reports total call costs at 65% of the telco invoice is useless.
Call tariff regimes vary widely from country to country, and even with suppliers within a country. Some tariffs are very straight forward and clear, for example, a national call charged per second of talk time. In this example a national call would be clearly defined by the service provider and understood by the user. But, some providers, normally with a monopoly, or near monopoly position, choose to confuse the user until they have no idea of the cost of certain calls. An example is, calls to premium rate numbers may all start with the same dialed digit but the cost of the call varies from cents per minute to dollars per minute depending on the destination. The call cost information is published on the website, buried in detail and almost impossible for the layman to understand.
To further illustrate the issue, some telephone companies in Europe have as little as 10 different call tariffs dependant on destination and clearly documented, when another, still in Europe has more than 5000 combinations of dialed digits and tariffs. --Hard to believe but true--. In addition, call tariffs can be further complicated by 'package deals' and 'in package' minutes to specific destinations, whilst other destinations are excluded.
You may ask "How does a call accounting service manage to duplicate this, especially those with an international footprint?"
Some Call Accounting packages are offered with no call tariffs at all. The installer or the user must research, document and insert the data. This work should not be underestimated, it is a specialized skill and unless your call tariff structure is very simple it is a mine field. However if your needs are basic and your telco's tariffs are relatively straight forward you should consider such a system as a low cost solution.
Other suppliers offer a full and complete call tariff package with a service level agreement to be within X% of the telco account or will justify the differences. These services are always offered at a premium price as the work and commitment on the suppliers behalf is not trivial.
On closing, I have to mention, an investigation conducted by the Aberdeen Group concluded that more than 12% of all telephone company invoices were incorrect and, this may come as a surprise to some less seasoned professionals, the error were to the benefit of the telephone company. If your call accounting system costs don't not match your telco invoices, perhaps you should investigate why?
About the Author
With 20 years experience as a successful corporate account manager, Mike Guile has vast experience in managing voice communications for companies large and small. He offers you the end user a free trial of the worlds leading call accounting web application, Try it on any size site. See more information here =>http://www.call-accounting.ws
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