The present application relates to telephone networks and more specifically to billing for professional services provided over the telephone.
Large and small professional services firms such as accounting, law, and consulting often provide professional services over the telephone line for a time based fee. This time based fee is separate from any toll charges associated with the phone call. The time based fee is also quite substantial, often ranging from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per hour. Thus keeping timely, and exact records of the charges for the client is essential.
Logs of client phone calls and the length of the conversation are often logged by keeping handwritten notes. This is disadvantageous for several reasons. Keeping a handwritten log is both time consuming and requires exceptional organization skills. The time expended maintaining a handwritten log, alone, results in a loss of revenue from the rendering of professional services. Additionally, even the most organized professional is prone to forget, or otherwise lose a record of a phone conversation from time to time. The failure to make a record of any phone conversation results in a loss of revenue, therefrom.
Additionally, some professionals, such as technical support staff, primarily generate revenue assisting customers by answering brief questions. These professionals can generate a large number of bills in short amount of time. The large number of bills results in greater overhead expended for accounting and billing.
Furthermore, precisely recording the length of each phone conversation is difficult, causing most service providers to estimate the time of the call. Where services are rendered at a high hourly billing rate, the discrepancy between the estimated and actual time can result in significant undercharges and overcharges. The discrepancy between the estimated and actual time can also cause honest disputes between the service provider and the client.
Professional services firms often lose revenue because of unpaid accounts. To prevent this, clients are often asked to prepay for the services rendered. However, where services are rendered over the telecommunications network, clients are often unable to verify the reputation of the professional services firm. As a result, customers who prepay are vulnerable to being defrauded by a small number of unscrupulous businesses.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous if there were a scheme for billing professional services which would alleviate these problems.
A system, and methods for billing a client for charges payable to a service provider are presented. An incoming call is received from the calling party at a prepaid calling center and the client is prompted for an identification number. The prepaid calling center then establishes a voice connection between the client and the service provider and debits the client""s prepaid account for the charges payable to the called party.
A prepaid calling system for billing clients is also presented. The prepaid calling system includes a central office for receiving an incoming call from the client, a voice unit for prompting the client for an identification number, a call processor for causing the central office to establish a phone call between the client and the services provider, and a database for storing a prepaid account for the client.
A method is also presented for collecting payments for services rendered by services providers. The method includes receiving prepayments from clients and holding the prepayments in trust in prepaid accounts. Phone conversations between the clients and the services providers are then monitored and charges for services associated with the phone conversations are debited to the prepaid accounts and disbursed to the services providers.