There was a time when phone revenue accounted for 3 percent of a hotel's total annual revenue and the telephone department ran at about an 80 percent profit margin. Guests made direct dial phone calls from their rooms and only a few used cell phones and credit or calling cards. Hotel telecom revenues have been declining, on average, 3-5% per year for the last several years for a variety of reasons. The number one guest complaint is telephone-billing rates.
Call
accounting is now more valuable than ever. The call accounting system captures
revenue, which pays for the hotel’s telecom infrastructure. It is the most
important piece of your telecom system. It is critical that you invest in a
system that will ensure you do not lose money on your telecom investment. All
too often, call accounting software is purchased based on price rather than
performance. The key is to get a system that captures all the telecom revenue
and is flexible enough to keep up with changing guest needs. Here are some ways
you can use your call accounting system to reverse the trend on dwindling
telecom revenue:
Never
lose a billable call
Ensure that the call accounting system processes every single call record it receives from the PBX. This is critical and you must find a system with a good track record of not losing billable calls. A fancy system with "pretty" reports and graphs is nice but the real reason you are purchasing a system is to bill guest calls and not lose one call record. The InTouch Digital software provides all the call accounting features needed for Hotel and Motel properties. It also accommodates long stay Hotels where individuals of groups register for extended periods. It interfaces to any Hotel/Motel property management system (PMS), which will allow you to properly update the guest bill automatically.
Special
rating table operation enables calls that have been placed to newly created area
and office codes to be billed, even though they have not yet been programmed
into the rate tables. This ensures that all call records are priced and sent to
the property management system (PMS) to be billed to a guest. Capturing and
storing all call records allows management to oversee both guest and employee
phone usage and full trunk usage, thus allowing the best management of long
distance carriers, the number of trunks needed and reconciliation of phone
bills.
Guest
Billing
Use
"Price Class" billing to provide attractive calling packages to your
VIPs, business travelers and loyalty guests and automatically bill these guests
at lower rates based on group affiliation captured at check-in. InTouch Digital
has implemented a 2-way interface with the PMS which automatically assigns
telephone billing rates for your guests based on codes from the PMS. This gives
you the flexibility to offer telephone rates that will encourage your guests
back to using your phones instead of their cell phones.
Audit
& Support
The
InTouch Digital system offers storage of call records beyond the normal 24-hour
audit period, typically a 90 day record of calls. Through the Internet the
InTouch Digital support center has instant access to all the operating
capabilities available in the system. This feature allows for timely updating of
software and rate table information. InTouch Digital technical support can aid
the hotel by accessing their system and allowing both parties to focus on the
users screen while speaking over the telephone.
All
this functionality is performed within the InTouch Digital Voice Server, no
longer do you need separate computer hardware and software and its associated
maintenance costs, to supply a function basic to every hotel property.
Rating
Table Maintenance
The
InTouch Digital System does not require any expensive contracts for rating
updates. The end-use is provided with an intuitive, easy-to-use screen, allowing
any non-technical user to update and modify all call rating elements. The system
is designed to accept call information from the PBX and rate the call dependent
on the number called and the call duration, prior to posting the call record to
the PMS system. The call-rating table comes pre-loaded with all foreign and
domestic area codes, and with a call rating for each entry. The initial rates
can be modified at any time; as well as adding any new dial codes.
Rating
Rules
The
Dialed Digits
column
is used to identify the rating parameters for the number dialed. This can be as
loose or as tight as desired. For example:
Calls
to specific numbers can be defined, such as an Internet ISP access number,
or a central reservations number, that require special billing attention.
The InTouch Digital Call Rating engine is designed to accommodate many different ways of rating calls, and the data in the three columns specifies which rules to apply to each call transaction.
The
Connect Fee
column
defines an amount to be imposed on all calls to that area code, regardless
of call duration. For example a $2.00 access charge may be imposed on all
international calls, or in a similar manner a property may want to charge a
simple 75c fee for calls to local numbers regardless of call duration.
The
First Min
column defines the amount charged for all calls to the
defined area code for one minute or less.
The
Add’l Min
column the data contained here is used as a multiplier by
the system to bill for all calls that exceed one minute in length.
It can be seen from the above matrix that any combination of call charging is configurable. The rating engine can round up call durations to the next highest minute, or bill by the second, in keeping with the methods used by the phone companies.
InTouch
Digital also provides the optional ability to apply a Call Grace period, thus
not charging for any call that has a duration less than six seconds, for
example.