CTI Group, Mass-Tel Deliver Agents Auditing Service

By Paula Bernier

CTI Group (Booth 213) and Mass-Tel Communications have joined forces to provide the agent channel with a new auditing program targeting end user customers.

The new SmartSpend service can drive new revenue streams for agents and help them more easily address their customers billing questions, making agents more full service, says Missy Sue Mastel, CEO of Mass-Tel Communications. Here is a brand new market for them, says Mastel, referring to agents, who she says dont need to put up any money for the bureau-based service upfront. Agent margins for the service are comparable to the revenue share agents get through traditional service relationships with carriers, she adds.

Mass-Tel, a 10-year-old audit and recovery firm, has done a lot of work with agents over the years in the areas of tax work, network optimization, inventory and more, says Mastel. Mass-Tel is acting as the distributor of the SmartSpend solution and offers integration and implementation services related to SmartSpend.

CTI Group, which is known for its SmartBill electronic billing service bureau, also will offer SmartSpend on a service bureau basis. Were constantly looking at ways to do product extensions of SmartBill and to allow customers to go a little deeper, says CTI Group CEO Brad Houlberg. He adds CTI Group wants to build a bridge between PBX telemanagement an area in which it is already a leader in the United Kingdom and now is bringing to the United States and pre- and post-paid billing, and the end switch with the goal of allowing end users to better manage their communications costs.

In other recent news from CTI Group, the company in early August announced a browser-based application that allows service providers to put customer bills directly on their portals.