No waiting for PECO

PECO Energy has a new telephone hold option for its customers, whereby the company phones callers back in the same amount of time they would have been placed on hold, explains Trading Markets.

Virtual Hold will dramatically reduce wait times on the telephone for customers who need to speak with a service representative for the more complex billing and credit inquiries.

PECO`s contact centres help customers to start, stop or transfer electric or natural gas services, find a bill payment centre, or apply for budget billing or e-billing.

BeQuick Software announced at the Comptel Plus Expo it has added Carrier Access Billing Services to its hosted QuickTel OSS platform, says Xchange.

The service includes a Web-based portal that gives competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) online access to their billing data 24/7, including the actual bill that is sent to the carrier.

CLECs also have the ability to make adds, changes and deletions to their billing data without relying on BeQuick. Easy access to their billing data also helps CLECs be more prepared for audits.

The United Healthcare Web site is offering a "claims estimator" to aid in reducing paperwork time, explains LV Business Press.

The estimator is designed to provide doctors and patients with coverage, cost and payment information in seconds. A doctor can determine if a procedure is covered and a patient will be able to find out how much is owed for the visit before the visit starts.

"Electronic billing has really been the quantum leap in paperwork processing," said Dr William Zamboni, professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. "In my department of 21 surgeons, 80% of our claims are sent electronically."