Create a Billing Statement Sample Letter for Customer Support Effortlessly

Billing statement sample letter for Customer Support

hey what's going on everybody Welcome to our class for call center training and soft skills this is the perfect place to come for call center training in today's class we'll be talking about billing role plays and we'll also be discussing the parts of a billing statements I'll be giving you vocabulary explanations I'll also I'll also be sharing with you uh call handling language that you can use with your customers and at the end of this class you should be able right you will be able to identify uh the parts of a statement of a bill statement why do you need to learn this because 50% or more of your interactions will have to do with billing in customer service imagine that if 50 plus percent of your calls let's say you get 10 calls six to five calls will be about bills about billing questions about billing don't you think you need to prepare yourself with vocabulary it's quite obvious so if these are the concerns that your customers are going to have and the majority of your questions are about about this don't you think you should get ready well you're in the right place to do that if English is not your first language and you're getting started with this type of job then let me tell let me take you to the promised land and I'll show you how it's done let's get started over here we'll talk we'll talk about the the the bill statement first of all this thing over here is called a statement let's put it there that's the name it's another term for an invoice right it's not a receipt I'm not talking about a receipt even though as you might remember from my previous classes they are a proof of purchase both of them are they their function is to to form to be a proof of purchase however the invoice is used legally for tax reports okay so an invoice is a document an official document for tax report so it's very important okay so that's the main difference and this is a bill for a postpaid service which means that we are billing the customer after the customer has used the service so it means post it means after after the customer has used the services so it documents the dates exact dates details amounts of the customer's uh usage during a cycle during a bill cycle okay so we're dealing with postpaid we're going to begin first by talking about the parts of this statement now from my experience dealing with T-Mobile billing and others the most important thing the number one thing that you absolutely must do when dealing with billing is a visual audit you guys I'm sure have heard about auditor and auditor is a professional Finance uh expert right so to audit to conduct a visual audit means to do a study that's what a auditor does an auditor studies the history of financial transactions and reports for an Enterprise for a company so in other words here you have to do an audit of the the statement of the customer you need to study the bill which means you need to read it right that's the first thing you need to do you need to read it and understand it because our customer is confused customer has no clue right customer has no clue so our job is to interpret on understand and explain the the transactions the the movements everything related to the account to the customer and hopefully if there's a mistake make adjustments right perform some adjustments to correct uh mistakes or errors that could happen and eventually this will lead us to a gratifying resolution so Mr customer feels okay now I get it thank you for helping me so that's your job billing is a is is is a is an important aspect of your job and this is how you do it let's start with a visual audit so what is a visual audit like I said it is to study the bill it simply is to read the bill so let's say giving you a context here customer calls in with a question about his statement uh we're going to do that in just just a bit but first I want to start with the with the parts of the of the bill before we get into it so you understand it okay let's go step by step so in this statement we'll use that's the company and our customer here is going to be Emmanuel Shephard the customer's account number uh the number ATT tied to the account is 55371 1237 33751 2 three five 53 so that's the account number associated with this customer could be his credit card could be his account number we'll just put that as the main form and this is what you need to verify for the identity so when you are role playing today you need to verify that you're talking to Emanuel Shephard and you also need to verify the account number before you can answer any question if the customer can't provide you at this information then you cannot answer questions so this is information for verification of course there's going to be other information but here for example we'll just take these two okay other important information this is key this is key I'm doing an audit I'm studying the bill okay now this is very important the next thing you need to verify is the billing period for our customer it's from March 1st uh 2024 to March 31st 2024 this is the period right or it's also called the bill cycle which I is it it it what what it means is basically the period of time in which a series of transactions or movements in the account were made right and usually this is a period depending on the company you work for it could be 30 days it could be 31 days or maybe it's pro-rated okay but for our customer here it looks like he's not prorated it's the full service so the days in the cycle are 31 so it's not prated for our customer it's the full 31 days of the cycle so every 31 days the the new bill is generated for this customer so basically uh that's our billing period or the bill cycle and this is key this is key that you understand this first right because many questions are generated because of lack of understanding the customer doesn't understand from what dates he's getting build here it's easy to to see but you could have other dates that could be confusing right but so it's super important that you guys check out and understand the billing period next the second most important information is the payment due date the payment due date is going to be for this customer April 14th which is basically the last day that the customer can make a payment without incurring into any kind of late fees right so the last day of the grace period is on April 14 we call this just simply the due date the very last day that the customer can make the payment for this customer it's it's like 13 days after the bill is generated so you could say that the customer has a 13 day grace period right grace period if you are lucky enough to speak Castellano it means pero Gracia do you understand 13 days a lot of people don't understand that many customers don't understand that they actually have two weeks or 12 days of grace period they don't understand that and it's your job to explain it to them right so customers think but yeah I have until the 14th to make my payment that's true sir however you must understand that a new bill is generated every on the 31st a new bill is generated and you actually have a grace period of 14 days to make the payment if you go over the 14 days then you will have late fees so gives you 13 days grace period to make your payment and that sir is your due date problem solved oh yeah now I understand much better thank you so much I really appreciate that no worry sir we're here to answer your questions okay so remember billing period please and payment due key key key now let's go to this information this is super important too let's understand this together come on let's see so we've got an opening balance of $2,537 wow this customer likes to use his credit card yeah so what does this mean an opening balance or a beginning balance what is this so from the previous the previous statement right this is the cycle for March so what was what's before March what is it January February March so for February right so from the previous cycle there was a balance due for $2,537 that's the previous month so what is what are we going to do this month of course we're going to include this balance we're going to bring it over to the March statement and this is what it represents from the previous balance okay so that's what the opening balance is questions about confusion about this happens a lot because customers forget that they had a balance from the previous month or there could be a previous balance that could be carried on from another month I'm writing Spanish now hey it's my first language okay so in this case the customer only has one charge from a previous month for January it doesn't exist because the customer paid everything so there's that does not exist okay but just giving you an example we only have a charge from the previous month and that is the opening balance or the beginning balance so now we can understand that Mr customer yeah listen uh yeah look uh as my information shows write it down as my information show so Mr customer as my system information shows you have an opening balance of $2,537 from your previous cycle that's why you have to pay 10,493 sir oh thank you I forgot about that I thought I paid it well sir let me tell you that as the information shows you have a previous balancer okay great let's move on next we have the invoice amount what is that the invoice amount represents the transactions of the period I'll say that again the invoice amount represents the transactions of the period so this is the the the transactions that were invoiced 35,000 857 this customer knows how to spend money uh so that's what it documents here so we've got two actually two instances so this is called an instance this information here is an instance because it documents a transaction a specific transaction it's date its reference or authorization number the description the amount or the payment and how it affects the balance of the statement okay so this is called an instance so there are two instances where the customer made a purchase with his card or whatever so these purchases if we add uh we see two here 33,000 well that was carrying the previous balance but here they are 30,500 and 5,357 whoa this customer knows how to live so here we can see that on the date here which is March 5th uh reference number 5 73 this is just any number or authorization number in the description it says Royal Caribbean wow this customer went on a cruise liner right pretty penny 30,500 this guy knows how to live right you only live once so he put that on the card so that we see that one and the other 5,000 this was on the this was on the March 7th 24 uh 575 is the reference number this was for Amazon purchases made this guy likes to buy so he bought here $535 on Amazon purchases so we add 3,500 plus 53757 how much does that give us well it it gives us a total of 35857 and that's the invoiced amount or we like to say it the build charges another way build okay so the bill charges are $35,840 moving on now to the amount paid okay so you know when you use a credit card you got to pay back so he paid 30,500 that is the amount paid he paid back when was that instance well there's only one instance for payment which is on uh 12th of March right you see the reference here look how much he paid $3,500 probably he received his his paycheck or some pension money or something or probably he made a good sale you know maybe he's a Salesman so on that day he decided to pay oh he's pretty good 30,000 500 that's the amount paid in this cycle there's only one instance one time that he did that okay now let's take a look at how this affects the balance Focus here Focus here so here okay so here we have two purchases but look at the balance we're starting with a balance of 33,37 how is that well it's easy do you remember the opening balance mhm so we're going to add uh the 2537 from the previous month to this first amount here and that gives us the balance of 33,37 okay so it's not just the 30,500 it's the 30,500 plus the opening balance from the previous month that's why we have this starting balance now here we're going to add the transaction the 5,357 to the 33,000 and that gives us 38,39 you see how it's it's it's affecting now okay you following me watch this watch this or you're going to miss out so we're here at this point okay now we have a payment money's coming in so we have a payment 30,500 what we're going to do now look at the balance it's 7,800 94 at this particular instance why because we subtract right or we do a tally of 38,39 minus the payment the 30,500 that leaves us with 7,894 which is a lot smaller right look at that from this to the this we're doing good this customer is pretty good however look at the balance du the balance due is $1,493 so here the customer could say well ing to my math ing to my calculations I'm supposed to pay you only 7,800 why are you billing me 10,000 $493 ing to my calculations I should pay you this because I paid you 30,500 on the 12 so can you guys tell me what's going on not a problem Mr customer I do understand that you're a bit uh uh frustrated about this and listen I understand nobody likes to pay more than they should but don't worry I'm here to explain this to you and I'm sure that you can understand this let's go ahead and study your bill let's do a visual audit this time for taxes right taxes let's do a visual audit so let's take a look at the taxes so here we have a thing called the sales tax and that's for $2,599 but how did this tax come to be well we just didn't invent that number we just didn't throw it up there in the air right let's let's explain it here for the customer let's take a look okay thank you very much for holding sir so let me go Ahad and talk to you about the tax detail this is probably on another sheet of the statement right if it's not there on the main one it could be on the other sheet of the state so uh Mr customer since you live in the state of California there is a tax policy for California which says that for any purchase there is going to be a local tax for California of 7.25% so Mr customer for every purchase you make you you have to pay the state of California a tax of 7.25% let me explain that to you Mr customer let me break down the charges right this one this is a gem let me break down the charges which means let me explain it to you step by step so let me explain those charges for you sir so as I said this is a state tax so you took a trip to the Royal Caribbean wow sir did you have a good time yeah okay great I'm so jealous so the purchase was for $30,500 and we applied the 72.5% to that and your taxes for that particular instance of purchase were for $2,211 sir now remember that you're not buying a cruise ship you're buying memories great now let's talk about Amazon you made a purchase on Amazon I'm sure that you are enjoying your new flat TV and it was for 5,357 we applied that to the state tax the local state tax and that is a total of 38 $88 for the Amazon purchases you made on this particular day sir and when we add this up the tax charges our total sales tax tax is going to be a little bit high but don't worry sir here you go your total tax I'm writing K Salis I'm so I'm so used to living here sometimes it's $2,599 sir those are the taxes that your state of California will collect for every purchase that you make but there's more sir there there is also the federal tax which is the tax that the United States government will also include in your purchases sir I can go ahead and explain that to you but as you know federal taxes or federal taxes and nobody can avoid them but anyhow that is why sir you have to pay 10,493 sir because this charge uh you're plus this the taxes including state tax federal charges add up to $2,599 and your total balance due is for $1,493 and sir you are actually a couple of days past due as a matter of fact we expected the payment on the 14th sir I'm afraid to let you know that you have a $5 late fee today you have a late fee of $5 sir because your payment was expected on the 14th your grace period ended on the 14th and we are how many days over six seven eight days eight days past do pass du we're eight days past the last day so sir there is a late fee of $5 that we need to include here so with your late fee charges your total for this month is 10,400 and how much is that $98 and no change that is your balance do now Mr customer in order to avoid any interruptions or fees in order to avoid that sir I can collect your payment today over the phone if you have a credit card or debit card hint would you like to pay with me this moment sir okay great that's just going all right guys so so there you go that's the bill explained and you know sir look at this beautiful credit line that you have wow sir you have a beautiful credit line I am so jealous of you your total credit line for is $150,000 sir you are a gold member here and I'm sure that if authorized a credit line of $150,000 you're a very successful man or probably very rich so I'm sure that $1,493 is just pocket change to you sir so would you like to go ahead and proceed with the payment okay now you're not going to really talk to I'm just giving you an example you know but anyways guys so there you go that is what we call a visual audio what is a visual audit guys just to recap it is simply to study the bill okay so I uh here's some key terms that I also want you to remember when you're talking to the customer breakdown so here you're going to say to the customer let me break down one word let me break down the charges the taxes the fees the payments right Etc so what does breakdown mean breakdown means let me uh let me walk you through let me let me let me take you a step by step that is to break down that's what Americans understand don't worry let me let me don't worry sir I know you're confused let me break down the charges let me break down the taxes let me break down the billing history I'm sure that I can explain to you sir so as a bonus there you go okay guys so there you go that's uh that's a visual audit uh for billing I hope that this has allowed you to better understand uh billing in English and that you're capable now of reading a bill statement generally these are