They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, and that first impression matters now more than ever for communication providers.

“You only have that one chance,” said Darren Farnan, General Manager of United Fiber. “You have to really make sure that you’ve given your customers the easiest opportunity to sign up for service. If they get frustrated in the process, they’re going to go to the next service that’s available.”

United Fiber is quickly approaching 50,000 subscribers, and more than 70 percent of those signing up for service are doing so online, far surpassing national industry averages of 50% . United is leveraging NISC’s SmartHub Order Management (SHOM) to help with their increased online service signups.

“With that growth, you cannot continue to do things manually,” Farnan said. “We have sometimes 800-900 installs per month, so it’s hard to do that with the staff we have if everyone was on the phone. It’s also easier for the customer, so we drive all of our marketing efforts into the SHOM links, whether it’s QR codes, mailers or all of our social media advertising. That helps give us a landing spot for the customer.”

That landing spot is critical for the increasingly important first impression. United Fiber serves northwest Missouri, from Kansas City to the Iowa border, and even in their most rural markets, they are getting overbuilt by competing fiber companies.

“I think the days of having one fiber provider are gone in most areas,” Farnan said. “We’re going to be facing competition between two and sometimes even three fiber providers.”

United Fiber began in 2013 as a subsidiary of United Electric Cooperative and has organically outgrown the electric business. They’re currently in the process of rolling out an XGS-Pon upgrade to allow for multi-gig service. They are now offering outdoor and business-class Wi-Fi and cell phone service.

With the expansion of service and growth in their territory, United can leverage SHOM to provide a great customer experience, allowing staff to focus on other important tasks.

“With a large percentage of our customers coming through SHOM, that gives our teams the time to go ahead and do other things they have to do,” Farnan said. “If our customers want to spend time on the phone, we love it, right? That’s our competitive advantage. Now we know that they’re going to get the right service online, they’re going to be able to get through it quickly, and they’re going to be able to get through it correctly. That’s what we’re all about.”