Creation orientation intensifies impact of customer service

This is the third of a four-week series on how to make customer service your most effective community broadband marketing tool.

Last week I talked about the tech prep needed to get your customer service house in order and increase your odds for community broadband success. This week we should talk about the business communications prep that’s also needed. And as I’ve said repeatedly, this work starts long before the network launches.

To turn customer service into a righteously awesome marketing tool, you need a creation orientation rather than a problem-solving orientation. Much of broadband is driven by the latter. “We have a problem – broadband sucks. We don’t have enough money. The cable guy is always late. Subscribers are on hold for an eternity. Customer service becomes endless exercises in conflict resolution. It’s difficult to be proactive in this type of environment plus you miss many of the marketing benefits customer service could produce.

Conversely, using a creation orientation enables you to make something that bigger, better, more awesome than what has gone before. Applied to customer service, rather than focus on building a faster “problem-solving” operations, how about creating an organization-wide culture of service that’s frequently ahead of customers’ wants and needs. Subscribers look forward to working with you rather than dreading the call.

Customer service technology gives community broadband marketing edge

This is the second of a four-week series on how to make customer service your most effective community broadband marketing tool.

Last week, I explained why customer service is the keystone of community broadband marketing success. Large incumbents throw millions at trying to destroy even small towns’ network business, yet these public entities survive and thrive because great customer service creates insanely strong customer loyalty.

Building market strength through efficient, speedy, reliable service depends heavily on technology. The tech that goes into broadband infrastructure plays a huge role in the quality of your customer service, as does the tech you use to execute and manage customer service tasks. Non-techies as well as tech staff need to understand this 30,000-foot view on the subject. 

In David and Goliath world of community broadband, customer service brings down Goliath.

This is the first of a four-week series on how to make customer service your most effective community broadband marketing tool.

Communities are pursuing various strategies to get faster better broadband. Is yours one of those communities that are issuing RFPs for needs assessment studies? If so, you should devote some of this assessment to studying the secret that’s driving the success that cities such as Chattanooga, TN, Salisbury, NC and Danville, VA are having?

When you look at the dozens of success stories, particularly those such as Lafayette, LA, Reedsburg, WI and Wilson, NC that faced the gazillion-dollar marketing might of huge telcom and cable companies, you find marketing is the key to their success. But not marketing in the form of slick brochures and funny YouTube ads. Effective customer service is the marketing equalizer that’s giving the broadband David’s the upper hand over incumbent Goliaths.

Reedsburg, a town of 10,000 people, faced not one but two industry behemoths, Verizon, whose wireline assets were later bought by Frontier, and Charter Communications. Outsiders probably thought the Reedsburg Utility Commission’s (RUC) fiber network was doomed from the start, but the public utility’s former Marketing and Sales Director Catherine Rice understood early what would be the keystone to their marketing success.

My comments to FCC supporting Chattanooga, TN & Wilson petitions to remove anti-muni net laws

It is way past time the FCC step in and put a stop to state legislative intrusion into the broadband affairs of Chattanooga and other local communities that are best able to make choices that are in their constituents’ best interests.

Over 400 public-owned networks operate in the United States, according to the Institute of Local Self-Reliance, including 89 fiber and 74 cable communitywide networks. Evaluating these networks’ impact on job creation, education and stirring innovation, as well as their financial sustainability, uncover hundreds of success stories that can be replicated once the barriers in Tennessee drop.

Some networks such as those in Cedar Falls, IA, Thomasville, GA, Santa Monica, CA and Bristol, VA have operated successfully for over 10 years. Danville, VA’s public utility’s network that launched in 2004 helped cut their unemployment in half, down from 19%, by directly enticing several large companies to the area, and driving a local technology industry that otherwise likely wouldn’t exist. Santa Monica, CA’s fiber network, launched the same year, reduced government voice and data communication by over $750,000 a year while building a $2.5 million surplus through the city’s savings plus selling fiber services to local businesses. Furthermore, community networks’ ROI often is not about revenue but benefitting the public good.