By embedding Agentic AI across billing and payment domains and integrating it with CRM platforms, telecom operators can shift call centers from investigation-heavy support to AI-assisted, first-call resolution—reducing AHT by up to 50% while improving customer trust and revenue accuracy.
As our telecom services become more real-time, digital, and partner-driven, our traditional billing and revenue systems are struggling to keep up. Agentic AI allows us to move away from reactive, manual revenue operations toward intelligent, self-optimizing revenue platforms. These AI agents continuously monitor network usage, customer behavior, and financial signals so we can proactively prevent revenue leakage, optimize pricing, and resolve billing issues before they impact customer trust. Through practical idea sharing and real-world scenarios, we illustrate how AI agents can work together across charging, invoicing, revenue assurance, and customer support in near real time. The discussion also outlines a roadmap for modernizing legacy billing platforms while ensuring strong governance, transparency, and responsible AI adoption at scale.
1. Usage Mediation & Event Processing:
The Usage mediation(Ex: AT&T’s XACCT) collects raw network events (voice, data, SMS, roaming, IoT), normalizes different formats (CDRs), correlates sessions, and enriches records with customer, product, and pricing context before charging.
Customer Issues:
- My data usage looks wrong: Customers feel their data consumption doesn’t match how they actually used their phone, often seeing sudden spikes they can’t explain or remember.
- I didn’t make these calls: Customers are worried they’re being charged for calls they don’t recognize, which immediately raises concerns about errors, shared devices, or possible fraud.
- Why does roaming usage appear delayed?: Customers are confused when roaming charges show up days later, making it feel like the bill is inaccurate or unexpectedly inflated after the trip is over.
AI Solutions:
- Agentic AI constantly checks usage data for missing, duplicated, or delayed events before the bill is generated. Early detection prevents these issues, thus providing more accurate bills to the customer and reducing the agents’ time used to investigate usage complaints.
- Through CRM, call-center agents will have the capability to instantly view detailed call records, including time, location, and service type for every event. This availability of proof aids agents in explaining charges clearly and resolves customer queries without requiring their investigations.
- The agents no longer need to spend time tracing logs or waiting on back-office groups to analyze problems. All relevant information is available to agents ahead of time to ensure customer inquiries can be addressed rapidly during the first contact.
Benefits:
Precisely, we can identify the root cause of usage issues much faster, reducing investigation time by agents at calls. Thus, customer inquiries regarding usage get resolved a lot faster, with fewer follow-ups.
2. Rating & Real-Time Charging
The Rating applies pricing rules to usage CDR events. The real-time charging reserves and debit balances for prepaid and hybrid customers. However, for the postpaid, rating will be applied and stored in a Rater component.
Customer Issues:
- Unexpected charges: Customers notice charges they weren’t expecting on their bill and feel something went wrong, especially when they don’t remember doing anything different.
- Incorrect plan or promotion application: Customers believe they’re on the right plan or promotion, but the bill doesn’t reflect it, leading to frustration and questions about whether the offer was applied correctly.
- Balance depletion complaints: Customers are surprised to see their balance drop faster than expected and worry they’re being charged incorrectly or unfairly.
AI Solution:
- Agentic AI checks charges are applied according to the right plans, offers, and pricing rules continuously. This greatly reduces the potential for errors being missed, thus ensuring customers are correctly billed, and frustrating issues don’t become support calls.
- The CRM provides agents with a crystal-clear, easy-to-understand breakdown of each charge, directly related to the customer’s actual usage. This way, it will be possible to lead customers through the charges step by step without switching systems or guessing.
- It can quickly recognize if a customer has been mischarged and immediately recommend the appropriate correction. Agentic may even perform the correction automatically in simple situations, enabling the customer service representative to rectify the difficulty without more delays or approvals.
Benefits:
Agents no longer need to dig into complex pricing rules to understand what went wrong. With clear guidance and automated validation, billing issues are resolved faster, leading to noticeably shorter calls and quicker customer resolutions.
3. Billing & Invoicing
Billing and invoicing bring together rated usage, recurring charges, discounts, taxes, and one-time fees into a single customer bill. When any of these elements are misapplied or unclear, customers see unexpected charges or missing discounts, which quickly leads to billing calls. Clear aggregation and explanation of these components are critical to reducing confusion, disputes, and call-center handle time.
Customer Issues:
- My bill is too high: Customers feel their bill suddenly increased without a clear reason and want someone to explain what changed compared to last month.
- Confusing invoices: Customers struggle to understand the bill because charges, fees, and usage details are hard to interpret or not clearly explained.
- Missing discounts or promotions: Customers believe a promised discount or promotion wasn’t applied, which makes them feel overcharged and lose trust in the billing process.
AI Solution:
- AI translates complex billing details into simple, easy-to-understand explanations so customers quickly understand what they’re being charged for.
- AI anticipates billing disputes before customers call and prepares the case with likely causes and recommended actions, saving agents’ investigation time.
- Agents can fix billing issues instantly with a single action, avoiding repeat calls and unnecessary back-and-forth with the customer.
Benefits:
Most issues are resolved in the very first interaction without unnecessary handoffs or escalations. This reduces follow-up calls and allows agents to close cases much faster, improving overall call handling efficiency.
4. Payments & Collections
The payment & collections area manages payment methods, bill presentment, collections, dunning, and refunds.
Customer Issues:
- Failed payments: Customers are confused or frustrated when a payment doesn’t go through and want to know what went wrong and how to fix it quickly.
- Double charges: Customers see the same charge more than once and worry they’ve been billed incorrectly or charged twice by mistake.
- Refund status inquiries: Customers call to check why a promised refund hasn’t arrived yet and when they can expect the money back.
AI Solution:
- The Agentic AI can notice early warnings of a non-payment issue and alert customers before it even happens, hence giving them a chance to correct it before it leads to a non-payment incident.
- Agents can view complete payment history and refund status in real time while speaking with the customer. That makes it easy to explain what’s going on and handle questions about payments or refunds without putting the customer on hold.
- Refunds or retries for payments are also done automatically, thus eliminating the necessity for representatives to intervene in such situations. This reduces the support team’s workload while at the same time enabling customers to access their payments as quickly as possible.
Benefits and impact:
Financial issues are resolved quickly with clear payment and refund visibility, reducing back-and-forth during calls and we can achieve an average handle time by 20–25%.
5. Revenue Assurance & Leakage Management:
This function makes sure every bit of network usage is correctly captured, billed, and matched across internal systems and partner networks. By catching issues early, it prevents billing corrections later and reduces customer disputes and long support calls.
Customer Issues:
- Billing corrections after invoice disputes: Customers call back after receiving corrected bills and want to understand what changed and whether more adjustments are coming.
- Partner/roaming charge mismatches: Customers question roaming charges when they don’t match what they expected, often due to delays or differences between partner networks.
AI Solution:
- AI catches missing or incorrect charges early, so problems are fixed before the bill ever reaches the customer.
- Agents can quickly see whether a charge is accurate and verified, reducing doubt and investigation time during calls.
- Fewer errors make it to the invoice, which means fewer corrections, fewer follow-up calls, and faster resolutions overall.
Benefits:
There is fewer complex billing disputes issues, agents can spend less time investigating issues, which can lead to a 15–20% reduction in average handle time.
6. Dispute Management & Adjustments:
This function manages customer complaints and billing disputes by reviewing charges, applying credits, and offering goodwill adjustments when appropriate. When handled quickly and consistently, it helps resolve issues in a single interaction. This reduces repeat calls and builds customer trust.
Customer Issues:
- Long investigation times: Agents often spend too much time gathering data and checking multiple systems before they can explain or resolve the issue.
- Supervisor approvals: Many billing adjustments require supervisor sign-off, which slows resolution and keeps customers on hold or waiting for callbacks.
- Multiple customer callbacks: When issues aren’t resolved in the first interaction, customers have to call back multiple times, increasing frustration and handle time.
AI Solution:
- AI auto-classifies dispute type and root cause: AI quickly identifies why the customer is disputing the charge, eliminating manual investigation and guesswork for agents.
- Policy-compliant credits recommended instantly: Agents receive immediate, rule-based credit recommendations, allowing them to resolve issues confidently without waiting for approvals.
- Auto-closure of low-risk cases: Simple, low-risk disputes are resolved and closed automatically, reducing follow-ups and freeing agents to focus on complex cases.
Benefits:
More issues are resolved during the first customer interaction with fewer handoffs or approvals, leading to significantly shorter calls and a 35–50% reduction in average handle time.
7. Fraud Management & Risk Controls:
This function identifies suspicious activities such as SIM swaps, unauthorized subscriptions, and abnormal roaming usage before they escalate. Early detection allows agents to secure the account quickly and explain charges with confidence. This reduces lengthy investigations and repeat customer calls.
Customer Issues:
- Unauthorized usage complaints: Customers report charges or activity they don’t recognize and want immediate reassurance that their account hasn’t been misused.
- Account takeovers: Customers suspect someone else accessed their account, creating urgency for fast verification and protection to prevent further impact.
AI Solution:
- AI pre-flags suspicious activity before calls: AI identifies potential fraud early so agents already know there’s a risk before the customer explains the issue.
- Guided verification steps shown to agents: Agents are walked through the right security checks, helping them resolve the issue quickly and safely.
- Reduced investigation and handoffs: Clear signals and guided steps cut down on back-and-forth and unnecessary transfers, speeding up resolution.
Benefits:
Faster, guided verification allows agents to confirm customer identity and secure accounts quickly without lengthy investigations or escalations, reducing overall call time.
8. Partner Billing & Settlements
This function handles how charges are exchanged and settled with roaming and wholesale partners, including usage reconciliation and revenue sharing. Delays or mismatches in partner data often lead to customer confusion about roaming charges. Accurate and timely settlements reduce billing disputes and long support calls.
Customer Issues:
- Roaming disputes: Customers question high or unexpected roaming charges and want a clear explanation of when and where the usage occurred.
- Delayed partner charges: Customers are confused when charges appear days later due to delays in partner networks reporting usage.
AI Solution:
- AI reconciles partner records early: AI matches roaming and partner usage records ahead of billing, catching mismatches before they turn into customer issues.
- Disputes resolved before customer contact: Many potential roaming disputes are fixed proactively, so customers never need to call support.
- Transparent partner charge explanations in CRM: Agents see clear, partner-level charge details in CRM, making it easier to explain roaming charges quickly and confidently.
Benefits:
Complex roaming-related calls take much less time to resolve because agents have clear partner charge details, ading to noticeably shorter handle times.
