Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
StoryConnect features interviews with marketers, communicators, CEOs and other leaders at cooperative and independent broadband companies, electric cooperatives and municipal power providers. The goal of the podcast is to help listeners discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers. It is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources.
Intro:
A production of Pioneer Utility Resources.
StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their
stories and connect with their customers.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
How can you find staff champions for your story?
That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of The
StoryConnect Podcast.
Hi, I'm your host, Megan McKoy-Noe, one of the storytellers at
Pioneer Utility Resources, and I am joined by two folks from
Nemont in Montana.
I've got Gregg Hunter, who's the vice president of public
relations and marketing, and Peter Davies, the network engineer
for the telco. Gregg and Peter, thank you guys so much for
joining us today.
Gregg Hunter:
Thank you, Megan.
Peter Davies:
Good morning.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
And we are recording live at the Calix ConneXions Conference in
beautiful, yet dry, Las Vegas.
And all the background noise isn't just ambiance, it's the sound
of inspiration and ideas connecting for folks everywhere.
And that's why we asked both of y'all to join us.
Gregg, let me start by asking you just to tell folks a little
bit about your telco.
How many folks do you serve, and how big is your service area?
Gregg Hunter:
Sure. We serve a huge service area, and we have kind of a unique
situation because we have three different service areas.
We encompass about 14,000 miles, square miles.
So it's a long ways in between places.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Right.
Gregg Hunter:
Peter and I work, you know, basically 4.5 hours from each other,
driving.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
It makes coffee conversations hard in the morning.
Peter Davies:
Yeah. It does.
Gregg Hunter:
Yeah. We are actually considered in the middle of nowhere.
And we do have approximately 16,000 broadband subs.
And we also do cellular.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
Gregg Hunter:
It's unique, so.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Wow. So that's a huge territory to cover, especially when you
want to build your team and keep your team connected with your
personal, not your personal story, but with your telco story.
Now, Peter, I was getting coffee this morning when I met you,
and we hit it off right away, and you started telling me all the
ways that your telco engages your community.
And then imagine my surprise when I found out you're not on the
marketing team.
You're not on Gregg's team.
You're an engineer.
Peter Davies:
That is correct.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Yeah. So I just wanted to ask, why does your co-op story matter
to you?
Peter Davies:
Just to be clear, you shoved me out of the way.
I was blocking the condiments at coffee, and you're like, excuse
me?
Get out of the way, and whack!
Megan McKoy-Noe:
I thought we hit it off so well.
Peter Davies:
Oh, we did. We were getting along so well.
Anyway, so I've been at a lot of places, and I've done a lot of
things in my career.
And what fascinates me about telcos is that, especially the
co-op type of small telcos,
is the engagement and the involvement in the community.
And everywhere I've worked, I've wanted to be involved, and I've
wanted to work for a company that is engaged, that is involved
with the community. Because so many areas and companies don't.
And the great thing about Nemont and the wonderful part of the
great story about Nemont is that we are
engaged with the community.
We support the community, especially high school football.
We do chili feeds.
We've done engagements, you know, on our fiber to the premises
projects.
We've done customer appreciation barbecues.
I think we still do the Crow Fair at the tribe, at our tribe
agency.
And I love it.
I absolutely love being involved and being engaged because it
makes us feel like part of the community.
It makes us feel that we can trust the community, and the
community can trust us.
And I think that really, really sets us apart from, you know,
the larger ILECs and the larger CLECs, like
Lumen and Centurylink and some of those others that I've worked
for.
It's a better environment.
It's a more low key environment.
And we aren't necessarily so engaged on the business.
We're more interested in doing the right thing and what's
important for our customers.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Well, and I love that you are so focused on the purpose of what
your telco is doing and have such a passion
for that.
Greg, does everyone at your telco have that same passion?
Gregg Hunter:
I wish I could say yes, everybody does, but I believe that most
of us, for the most part, especially the ones that are when we're
onboarding new people and stuff.
You can find those people that actually have that passion, that
actually really want to do what our goals are.
And it's really fun to work with those people starting out.
For the most part, I think that we're, individually, you know, I
think that where we really need to be stronger is,
is synergistically be able to work together.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Right.
Gregg Hunter:
You know, like Peter and I work so far apart each other, but
that's where we can get our strength.
We can get our strength for the community is working together,
you know, combining our talents, and try to do the best
thing for our customers.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Now, you mentioned onboarding kits.
Do you do that for all of your new employees across all
14,000mi² of service territory?
Gregg Hunter:
Yes, and that's very difficult.
But especially if we have departments that are headed out of one
location more so than the others.
That's very difficult for us to do, but that's something we
also can always improve on.
We can always get better on that.
Peter Davies:
It's challenging. You know, it's really challenging that we live
so far away.
So my office is five hours away from his office across the vast
wastes of Montana.
We serve more cows than we do people.
You know, is the running gag, and remote workers is challenging.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
It is.
Peter Davies:
It is very challenging.
And when there's a new employee, we make an effort, or they make
an effort to come down.
You know, and as difficult as it is for you guys to drive that
extra two miles off the freeway and see the Worden office, you
know, they do make an appearance.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
So, Gregg, tell me, I mean, to to Peter's point, you said you
have an onboarding kit, but what's inside it?
Do you actually drive all over the service territory to meet the
new employees?
Or do you bring everyone together, the staff, to try to connect
with them once a year, twice a year?
Gregg Hunter:
It varies department wise.
You know, in the marketing department, we're a smaller
department.
You know, there's only four of us in that department.
So it's easier for us to get together.
And we do have quarterly like get togethers and stuff.
We have brainstorming sessions and stuff like that.
I can't speak for the other departments and stuff, you know, like
in the network engineering department and stuff.
I don't exactly know how they put that stuff together and how
often they're able to get together.
But for the marketing department, we for the most part, our
farthest, my coworkers, 150 miles away from me.
Another one of them is 100 miles away, and the other one's 130
miles away.
So, I mean, we meet in the middle, basically, we try to meet in
the middle and try to get together as often as we can.
Peter Davies:
Yeah. And for, you know, the since I'm on the network engineering
team, there's four of us, you know.
And everybody is in our home office in Scobey, Montana, but me.
I'm the one who is in Worden in the middle of nowhere.
And so I handle, I'm the network engineer for our southern area.
And our southern area is vast.
You know, it's five hours from one corner of the area to the
other corner of the area, and then another five hours of north.
Remote workers are challenging because I can't be involved in the
hallway discussions, you know, the conference room discussions,
or the impromptu discussions.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
So then I have to ask you, Peter, you keep a pretty good grasp on
everything that's going on at Nemont, because again, this
morning you were telling me all about the high school community
engagement efforts that you all have.
How do you, as a remote worker, like what are the best ways that
Gregg's team has to get the story to you
that's really going to engage you?
Peter Davies:
So I can't necessarily speak for his team, but what I do is,
number one, I am awesome.
And I've done this.
Yeah, it got deep in here real quick didn't it.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Yeah, it did. It did.
Peter Davies:
I've done this for so long I'm pretty efficient, and there's a
lot of prediction that goes on.
And it keeps getting deeper; I'm digging myself into that hole.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
We can't all be Peter, so putting that aside.
Peter Davies:
I know. One of me is enough, believe me.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
But putting that aside.
So how do you find out about this stuff?
Peter Davies:
I muscle my way, and I ask questions.
You know, I do. We have bi-weekly staff meetings and, I'm too old
to care what
people think, so I'm just going to ask the question.
I'm blunt enough. I mean, you've known me for all of two hours
now.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
It's an eternity.
Peter Davies:
Yeah, it seems that way.
And, I'm just going to ask the difficult and blunt questions
because we all hear the rumors, eavesdrop on other people's
conversations and phone calls throughout the office.
It's a small office. And I'm going to ask the question, hey,
what about that?
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Now you're terrifying all the utility communicators out there.
But I want to point out something you haven't said yet.
But it really struck a chord with me this morning.
Peter Davies:
Oh, God, what did I say?
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Oh, it was brilliant.
It was brilliant, Peter, because obviously you're amazing.
No.
Peter Davies:
Thank you. Thank you.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
But I asked you why you cared.
Why does it matter?
And I am paraphrasing because I would never want to say that I'm
quoting directly from Peter.
But you said that you wanted to know the big story, the big
picture, so that you could find
how what you do fits.
Peter Davies:
Right. So. Right.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
I thought that was really cool.
Peter Davies:
Yeah. So now I remember lack of coffee conversation is, I said
was I want to know
the bigger picture. Everywhere I go, I have a desire to learn
the economics.
I have a desire to explore.
I have a desire to learn what the business is doing and the
bigger picture, because as network engineering, I
help make the thing work, and the gigga thing.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
You mentioned earlier today.
Peter Davies:
And I help bring that wonderful and that excellent service to our
members,
and I can't build that.
And I can't make that work without knowing the bigger picture.
Because if outside plant decides, oh, we're going to eliminate
this.
We're going to change that. It's going to go this way instead,
it's going to go right, instead of go left.
That changes things, right?
And so then that costs money.
If I don't know that big picture when I go to design at central
office or design at network or, you know, put together the
various layers to make it all come together and work.
If I don't know what their vision is, then I can't align my
vision to meet the company goals.
And it's the same thing with everything else.
If I don't know what marketing is doing, if I don't know what
you know our sales is doing, it's difficult to align my goals to
say, "How can network engineering be a part of marketing?
How can network engineering be a part of sales?
How can we work together better as a team to complement each
other?
To make it work?"
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Gregg, I have to to ask, like hearing this from Peter, like what
do you think about this?
And how does your team try to find people like Peter without
making him feel like he's barging in?
Right, to demand answers.
I need to know the story now.
Not everyone's going to do that.
Peter Davies:
I'm a little more tactful.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Well, sure. Yes.
You seem very tactful, I can tell.
But how does marketing and communications fit into this?
And how can you harness the enthusiasm of people like Peter to
help build Nemont's
story?
Gregg Hunter:
Well, I think Peter is probably more unique in a lot of
situations when it comes to
people that are actually looking to find the whole picture.
Most people are, you know, more focused on their departments and
everything.
I appreciate people like Peter that actually want to reach out
and help us achieve our goals, as well as his own, in
our department. That's something that I think is really, really,
the best thing we need to do for our customers is try to
figure out how to work with them better.
That's the big thing that I really enjoyed about this conference
is actually learning new ways to
actually communicate that to our customers, do the best thing we
can to actually
help them make a decision that's actually best for their
families.
And in turn, it's going to actually, you know, help us evolve
and become better for our customers.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
I love that.
Greg, do you have any last advice to give to utility
communicators or marketing teams
for finding story champions and trying to nurture them and break
down some of those
silos at the telco?
Gregg Hunter:
Well, I really like this.
I'm glad that you got us together here, because that's kind of,
you know, we probably would have never had this conversation had
you not brought us together.
I think that is, it's key that we got to start doing that I
think more in our company.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Yeah.
Gregg Hunter:
We've got to start, you know, breaking down those walls to start
working better because that
communication is all what it's about.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
It's everything, yeah.
Peter Davies:
I know, there's probably another other champions out there
besides Peter, and we just got to work our way through that and
find them. So hopefully, we can do that.
Hopefully, there's more out there that really want to get
involved.
We do have a good crew.
We have a lot of good people at Nemont that really do want to do
the best thing for our customers.
And, I'm just hoping that we can continue to keep going forward.
And, you know, in network engineering, and I'm sure you do the
same thing, you know, when we come up with a new product or new
something, we start a conversation.
Is this in the best interest of our customers?
Because if it's in the best interest of our customers and it's a
positive experience from the technician side all the way through
network engineering side, it'll be a positive experience for the
customers.
It will be a positive experience for our technicians who install
it.
It will be a positive, for us, our reputation, for everything.
And everybody talks about, you know, verticals and business
verticals and silos and don't stay in your own
lane and don't cross pollinate verticals.
But we have to at a certain level, we have to.
I'm not saying, you know, cross the streams continually, but.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Ghostbusters tells us never to do that.
Peter Davies:
Exactly. But there has to be a cross-pollination of some sort.
Gregg Hunter:
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I mean, you know, I sat in through a couple of tech sessions,
why I have no idea yesterday, but I learned a lot of things.
And the things that were key to those, to me, is that I hear a
lot of things on the street from the customer.
I'm front facing to the customer a lot of times.
A lot of times they come to me first and everyone asks, why are
they going to you first?
You know, why aren't they talking to somebody else?
And it's like, well, I just happened to be everywhere.
And it seems like I get, you know, but I learned a lot of
things through going through those tech sessions that it's like,
you know, this is a problem that we could solve.
And it's like, I don't know where the disconnect is.
I don't know where we're running into these issues, but it's
like, man, you know, we should not be putting those modems in the
basement like we have been doing.
You know, we got to put them on that. We got to put them on the
main level, you know, just little things like that.
And it's like that's where we're learning all this stuff.
It all comes together. Yeah, full circle comes around all helps
us all out.
Peter Davies:
And you know, I mentioned to you this morning that, you know, we
bring Calix in once or twice a year to our shops, you know, to
do, hey, this is what we're doing for the next year.
And then after lunch, I invite the technicians, what technicians
are available, to come in and sit down with our Calix reps.
Discuss the technology, discuss placement, discuss best practices
because I want the Calix team to hear the pain points.
And most importantly, all people want is to be heard and
listened to.
We don't have to take their suggestions as gospel.
We don't have to act on their suggestions.
But as long as we listen, you know, to our people and say, "I
acknowledge your thing.
Noted. Thank you." And as long as they believe that they have a
voice, that they can come in and say, "Hey, I was involved in
this. Calix listened to my idea." And you know what?
Calix may go, "Hey, that's a great idea, Kenny.
I may take that.
You know, I'm going to push that back up the product team and
make an adjustment." And so they love that.
They love the interaction.
And it's part of building that trust.
You know, in the organization.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Well it's building that trust with your vendors.
And then also, Gregg, I've got to be honest, you were sharing
what you were saying.
And I get so focused on the utility communicator and the
marketing team getting messages down to, not down, but out
to other teams.
But I love the idea of it being a circle and making sure that
folks like Peter, although he is 1 in 1,000,000, I will
say, but so that Peter knows that if he is noticing pain points
and issues and has suggestions, there's a clear path for getting
them to your team or you know, your team being able to spend
time with the techs.
You know, we always used to sit in with customer service reps
and listen to the calls because that strengthened us as
communicators to know what people are calling in and having
challenges with so that we can communicate more effectively.
So I love finding ways to build those communication circles
within your own team at Nemont.
Even though you're spread far apart, you all share the same
purpose.
You all share the same vision.
It's bringing that together.
I love it. I think it's a wonderful example.
So, Gregg, do you have anything else you want to share before I
let you all go?
Gregg Hunter:
Great conference.
A lot of information.
You know, you always think of those 1 or 2 things you want to
bring back, and it's like, man alive.
I got like a dozen, and I don't.
Yeah.
I mean, Bark is fantastic.
I looked at that product, and it's like, man, I've been wanting
to do that a long time.
We're really starting to reach out.
Schools have been reaching out to us about cybersecurity.
That's something that's passionate to me.
I worked a lot with the schools during Covid, and I really think
that that's a piece that we really need to do.
Peter Davies:
And we should talk further on that.
Gregg Hunter:
Yeah, we will. We'll talk.
Peter and I will talk about that later.
Peter Davies:
Very much so, because cybersecurity is also a passion of mine
that I've been doing for 15 years in other capacities.
So.
Gregg Hunter:
Okay.
Peter Davies:
We should talk.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
This is beautiful.
Gregg Hunter:
We're talking. You heard it here first.
Peter Davies:
We're talking. Breaking news.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
You know what? And that's all we can hope to do is just keep
talking.
Well, Gregg, I know you are running off to another session
because there's so many great things to do here at Calix.
I want to thank both of you for sharing your story with utility
pioneers.
They are Gregg Hunter and Peter Davies from Nemont, and I'm your
host, Megan McKoy-Noe at Pioneer Utility Resources.
And until we talk again, keep telling your story.
Outro:
StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a
communications cooperative that is built to share your story.
StoryConnect is engineered by Lucas Smith of Lucky Sound Studio.