Simple idea cuts down price change complexities

A simple, but highly effective, calculation tool developed by BT Wholesale has proved to be a major hit with many of the organisation’s customers.

The POLO Calculator has been developed to give BT Wholesale customers the ability to view wholesale call prices and price changes at any time.

BT has to pay other carriers, for example mobile operators, to terminate calls on their networks. This cost, known as the POLO (payment to other licensed operator), is the main cost component of the price BT charges for wholesale calls. But because these costs vary monthly, BT has to correspondingly change the prices it charges its own customers –whether it’s a penny or two more or less for a minute.

“A number of our customers told us they were often very confused when it came to keeping up with frequent fluctuations in the prices we were charging for wholesale calls,” explained Barry Haws, Wholesale calls product manager in BT Wholesale.” They could see how much, and how often, the prices had changed from the original contracted price – but many struggled to keep up.”

More productive

“This meant we as a team were spending time sorting out a wide variety of queries and disputes instead of doing other things.”

Barry and his team began working on building a Microsoft Excel-based tool to come to the assistance of their increasingly perplexed customers.

“The POLO calculator is now available for our customers via their BT Wholesale account manager to download and use. All they need to do is input contract prices as well as start and finish dates. They can then see at-a-glance what they’re being billed at any one time,” said Barry Haws.

“I think it’s fair to say that the POLO Calculator has gone down a storm with many of our customers. It saves them time, cuts out confusion and reduces the risk of them making a mistake,” he continued. “It also saves BT Wholesale time and the associated costs of dealing with queries and disputes. What’s more it’s had a very positive impact on customer satisfaction.”

had major impact on the way customers can view wholesale call prices and prices changes at any time

This project aims to give customers the ability to view their prices and prices changes at any time online. Customers are often unclear on what prices they will pay. And as a result are not able to manage their costs efficiently. As a result we expect to see a reduction in the number of queries and disputes for BT to manage and improved customer perception.