Salesforce Introduces AI-Powered Billing Support for Communications Service Providers
Today, Salesforce unveiled Billing Inquiry Manager, a new innovation for Communications Cloud. It brings the power of generative AI to communications service providers (CSPs), helping service agents provide personalized, proactive customer support and resolve billing issues faster.
Significance: Billing, pricing, and payment issues top the list of customer complaints in an industry struggling with low customer satisfaction and high customer churn, and where billing discussions are one of the most common customer touchpoints.
What’s new: Salesforce’s Billing Inquiry Manager gives CSP service agents an enhanced view of a customer’s data, including billing information and payment history, along with AI-powered insights that help them resolve customer issues fast and improve customer satisfaction.
Billing Inquiry Manager is built on the Einstein 1 Platform: Salesforce’s trusted customer platform helps organizations safely take advantage of their data to create better customer experiences and enhance employee productivity with AI.
Innovation in action: Service agents can access Billing Inquiry Manager right from the Communications Cloud Service Console, where they can use AI insights from Einstein to reveal key anomalies on a customer’s account, including new charges, changes in network usage, or a declined payment.
Service agents can then tap generative AI to create succinct billing summaries and an analysis of billing trends. With this information, agents can then quickly determine the best next step to take to resolve the customer’s issue, including how they might be able to reduce their bill in the future.
Salesforce perspective: David Fan, VP and GM of Communications, shared his insights on Salesforce’s AI innovation for the communications industry:
- “The extremely competitive nature of the communications industry makes great customer experiences uniquely important. AI innovations like Billing Inquiry Manager make it possible for service agents to do their jobs better and faster. By enhancing agent productivity and providing better customer experiences with AI, CSPs can gain an edge in the market.”
- “We are focused on arming CSPs with AI innovations that will provide tangible, immediate benefits in high-priority areas like increasing efficiency, improving customer satisfaction, and reducing time to serve. And trust is really what makes AI deployable and scalable, making Salesforce uniquely positioned to help CSPs revolutionize their businesses.”
The extremely competitive nature of the communications industry makes great customer experiences uniquely important. AI innovations like Billing Inquiry Manager make it possible for service agents to do their jobs better and faster.
David Fan, VP and GM of Communications
What the industry is saying:
- “AI represents an incredible opportunity for the communications industry to automate everything from network management to customer support, improving efficiency and customer experiences. We are collaborating with industry leaders like Salesforce to further enhance our AI innovations, ensuring a connected and intelligent ecosystem that continues to redefine consumer experiences.” – Gustavo Duarte, VP of Global Sales, Nokia
- “Partnering with Salesforce, we use automation and real-time data to provide our business customers with seamless, timely, high quality experiences that are tailored to their needs. We’re excited to see the new AI innovations from Salesforce that will further enhance the experience we offer to our business customers, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our teams.” – Jon Ryan, Director of Digital, Enablement and Operations, Three Business
Availability:
- Billing Inquiry Manager is available in pilot, and will be generally available this summer.
More information:
- Learn more about Billing Inquiry Manager
- Check out Salesforce for Communications
- Hear why Salesforce President & Chief Product Officer David Schmaier is excited about the future of AI in the communications industry here
