Above: Jesse Edwards, TSTT’s Senior Manager, Customer Experience. Photo courtesy TSTT.

bmobile customers now have a new, secure, fast, and hassle-free way to pay their bills.  A recent upgrade to the 824-TSTT Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system provides customers with the additional bill payment option of using their credit card.  The upgraded IVR system allows customers to call 824-TSTT from the convenience of their home, choose from a menu of automated prompts and use their credit card to complete payments in about three minutes.

Jesse Edwards, TSTT’s Senior Manager Customer Experience, explained that the 824-TSTT credit card payment upgrade is part of the company’s Customer Experience Strategy and the aim is to remove the need for a customer to visit a retail store to pay bills.

Edwards indicated that although persons use the b-online website and my bmobile app for bill payment, many customers prefer to use their phones to contact the company with an average of 147,000 calls a month.  Many of these are repeat callers and over 70% of the calls are bill related, especially to check bill balances.

“This is a result of our Voice of the Customer (VOC) Survey which monitors the changing needs of our customers,” Edwards said.

“The VOC results indicated that customers wanted to get an updated bill balance and be able to pay their bill at the same time.  Before the credit card payment upgrade, customers would call 824-TSTT to check their bill balance, and then go to line up in a bmobile retail store to pay their bills.  Now they can go a step further and after checking their bill balance, immediately pay using their credit card.”

“This new credit card payment feature demonstrates that bmobile listens to its customers and responds to what they have indicated using a modular approach.  Debit transactions will be added next.”

“We aim to continuously improve on our customers’ experience and thus increase their satisfaction by implementing short term and long term measures that respond to their needs.”

“With this new feature, our customers can now either pay online or pay via their phone.  The last thing we want is to put our customers at risk during these COVID-19 times or inconvenience them through a visit to a bmobile retail store, especially now when many are working from home while also supervising their children’s online classes. I am absolutely excited about the new feature and I look forward to further delighting our customers.”

Customers have already begun using the credit card payment feature and the company has been getting great reviews about it.

As a security measure, no advance credit card registration or storage of credit card information is required. There is also no human interaction or CSR involved in the credit card payment process.

Using the touch-tone input of a phone’s number pad, a customer calls 824-TSTT and selects Option 1 – Self Service, followed by 1 for Bill Balance.

After confirming the bill amount, the customer then selects 2 for Bill Payment and enters the Account Number she/he is making payment towards.

The customer now enters the Credit Card Number and must re-enter all information, inclusive of card details, every time she or he initiates a payment action.  The customer then enters the amount to be paid, followed by the pound “#” sign, and the IVR’s automated voice will state that the “transaction was completed”.  A reference number is provided as proof of payment and payments are credited to the customer’s account within two working days.