Sound unusual…unbelievable…shocking? Hardly! For cable and telecommunications operators around the nation, predatory and disingenuous service applications are routine and merely the cost of doing business. And the problem is not going away anytime soon.

“There’s rarely a day that I don’t uncover some kind of predatory behavior at the call center,” said David Howe, SubscriberWise president and 17-year veteran of MCTV (MCTV is the new name for Massillon Cable TV and Clear Picture (http://mctvohio.com).

“Occasionally the situation is particularly astounding, like the woman who apparently was brought back to life after having been dead for two months. The woman was revived and recovering in the nursing home, at least according to the third party claim provided to the customer service agent. The woman - the agent was told - was eager to have her service resumed once she was well enough to return home…following her six-foot sub-earthly sabbatical,” Howe indicated, half-amused. “She wasn’t really ‘gone gone’…don’t you know?”

Audio of the cable-lover’s miraculous resurrection is contained here: http://subscriberwise.com/media/Back_to_Life.wav

“But there is a more serious and cautionary note here,” warned Howe. “This kind of behavior, although seemingly humorous, is impacting the telecommunications industry in profoundly negative ways. It provides an illusion that operators are generating new ‘sales’ when in fact they’re merely creating additional liabilities. It adds up to a very costly proposition that translates into billions in unreturned equipment and unpaid programming for operators everywhere. It strains human resources with excessive burdens on the call center including promise-to-pay, costly disconnects and reconnects, and a host of unnecessary operational inefficiencies and expenses.

“Ultimately, the challenge for operators is to identify the predatory behavior before rendering their expensive service and equipment,” concluded Howe. “Otherwise, the write off is almost certainly going to be substantial. The predators are forever opportunistic and determined. Sometimes they’re even clever. But seldom are they a match for SubscriberWise.”

About SubscriberWise (www.subscriberwise.com)
The nation’s leading provider of risk and decision analytics for the communications industry, SubscriberWise® employs enhanced Subscriber Level Segmentation technology to precisely identify credit-challenged subscribers to ultra-high achievers to maximize sales and boost profits. By incorporating years of communications performance data and proprietary decisioning models, SubscriberWise delivers unprecedented predictive power with a fully compliant, score-driven decision management system. Combined with Red Flag compliance and operator-controlled rules, SubscriberWise analytics empower CSR’s to instantly and accurately respond to payment and credit characteristics with appropriate options for every subscriber.