“We’re going to build the best road for our members, one they can drive anything on.”
– Dave Gibson, General Manager/CEO, 3 Rivers Communications
The road is one that’s familiar to many of NISC’s communications Members. It’s the road to customer success. Building that road has many requirements, but for 3 Rivers of Fairfield, Montana, and Triangle Communications of Havre, Montana, it starts with simplification.
“We’re trying to empower employees to be critical thinkers,” said Bethany Chinadle, Executive Vice President at Triangle Communications. “We’re really questioning the ‘why’ more. Is this process good for the members? Is this process good for the company?”
The end of the road to simplification is an improved customer experience, complete with streamlined offerings that are easy to understand at price points that fit a variety of membership needs. Simplification also includes making policy and process changes that help the organizations run more efficiently.
“We’re pairing down our offerings for internet and providing a really simple process from the moment the customer calls us through the workflow with our customer service representatives (CSR) and back to our techs,” said Christina Newman, Telecommunications Manager at 3 Rivers Communications.
3 Rivers’ simplification journey began in 2018 following a conversation with their Board of Directors on how the organization could give back to their membership. This jump-started a review of their offerings, which at the time included phone, internet and television.
“We wanted to keep the cooperative mindset of making sure we’re doing right by our members,” Neuman said. “What can we do that someone else cannot do better for our membership?”
3 Rivers has since built out a high-speed fiber network, which has been adopted by 95 percent of their membership. With a multitude of television streaming options available, the organization decided to drop their television offering.
3 Rivers has continually increased speeds since 2019 while minimally raising prices only to remain revenue neutral. The increased speeds came in updated packages that now include Wi-Fi-fi optimization services, mesh units and internet access points.
They have also taken the “cell phone” approach with telephone service, incorporating features like long distance, caller ID and call waiting into the phone package, all which used to require separate additions to the phone service. Phone service can also be added to any internet package to keep things simple for members.
“Not only are our customers happy with the attractive price point and the ability to add a phone, it has simplified their questions to us,” Neuman said. “It’s simplified things for our CSRs, making their workflow a little quicker. It’s simplified things for our outside plant techs, because we’ve empowered them to optimize the Wi-Fi on site.”
Triangle is also working on the simplification journey. With recent retirements, Triangle merged their billing and customer service departments. The newly merged departments were able to look at their service orders with a fresh perspective.
Triangle discovered that across their offerings, they had nearly 200 different service scenarios that a member could potentially fit into, many options only applying to a handful of members or less. Following the review, Triangle is working to reduce to a few offerings.
“We’re trying to make it easier for the members and our employees,” Chinadle said. “We’re 100% fiber-to-the-home now which is allowing us to condense our internet speeds.”
Triangle also identified their payment arrangement and disconnections for non-payment (DNP) process as an area for review. The communications provider had a segment of their membership that was regularly carrying balances.
The new process wasn’t easy for Triangle. After the first month, the DNP list was nearly four or five times larger than a typical month, leading to tough conversations with members. The process, while a big change for members, does benefit the disconnected accounts, as the cost to reconnect is much lower, making it easier for members to resume service.
“The first month was hard,” Chinadle said. “But we really tried to stress that this is for their benefit. Once we educated the Members, within two to three months, we weren’t getting those calls anymore.”
The process, while tough at first, is paying dividends for Triangle. While the total number of accounts that were DNP’d jumped the first month of the new process, it has fallen steadily every following month.
“We’ve seen about a 75% decrease in our uncollectable accounts,” Chinadle said. “We saw a 50% decrease in total accounts disconnected for non-payment and an increase in reconnect rates.”
3 Rivers has also seen their simplification efforts pay off with both their membership and their employees. They’ve seen a continued decline in trouble ticket calls going from nearly 6,300 in 2019 to just shy of 4,000 in 2024.
“We’ve all kind of shifted our mindset from being sales-driven to member-driven and what experience we can give them as a cooperative,” Neuman said.
Simplifying processes internally not only required operational changes and staff buy-in, but also better understanding of how their NISC solutions could support these new initiatives and offerings.
“NISC helped us so much with the whole transition,” Neuman said. “With that great support, that great partnership, any questions we’ve had were answered right away.”
3 Rivers and Triangle were able to leverage NISC’s support teams to assist with the transition, getting questions answered and even helping think through possible new ways to use a solution to meet their needs. True to the cooperative mindset, though, they also rely on each other as well as experience from the entire NISC Membership.
“NISC is invested in our success,” Chinadle said. “If they don’t know the answer, they’re going to put us in touch with another company with that experience. Here in Montana, we talk all the time, but I really appreciate how NISC helps build those relationships that extend outside of your region.”
For 3 Rivers and Triangle, as well as many communications providers, simplification goes beyond current operational improvements. A difficult process now has the potential to make future tasks require less effort.
Along with reducing package offerings and reviewing processes like payment arrangements, Triangle is working to clean up the data that drives their iVUE system. This includes removing duplicate accounts and cleaning up outdated billing codes.
This process, while tedious, makes life easier for CSRs by helping find correct member information quickly. Clean data will also help any NISC Members considering the move to iVUE Connect, as data cleanup is a critical early step in the migration process.
“Bad data in is bad data out,” Chinadle said. “We’ve been doing a ton of data cleanup. It’s not a fun process, but we’re in a much better spot. It’s going to have a ripple effect for years to come.”
The simplification process may not be simple, but it’s one that’s becoming increasingly important for many NISC Members. Where exactly is the best place for other NISC Members to start simplifying?
“It doesn’t matter where you start, just start,” Chinadle said. “Pick your low-hanging fruit and get some early success, and people will see it’s not all that hard. Just keep building on it.”