What Metrics Are Broadband Marketers Watching?, With Tim Gilford

Data-driven marketer Tim Gilford shares which metrics and data points he’s watching in order to track progress and make strategic decisions.

Special Recording: Live at the NTCA Sales and Marketing Conference

Creators and Guests

Host

Andy Johns

Vice President of Marketing

What is The StoryConnect Podcast?

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.

Andy Johns:
What are the metrics and pieces of data that real live broadband
marketers are looking at?

That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of
StoryConnect: The Podcast. My name is Andy Johns, your host with

Pioneer, and I'm joined on this episode by Tim Gilford of
LightStream.

Tim, thanks so much for joining me.

Tim Gilford:
Hey, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for the invite,
Andy.

Andy Johns:
You may hear some ambiance. If you're watching on YouTube,
you'll know that we are somewhere different than usual.

But we are at the NTCA Marketing and Sales Conference here in New
Orleans,

Louisiana, kind of the epicenter of broadband marketing in the
United States this week.

And as we always say on these live episodes,
if you hear any, any extemporaneous sounds,

it's not background noise, it's ambiance.

So that's what we're going for,
Tim.

Tim Gilford:
And we love the ambiance and our friends in NTCA.

They've done a great job here at the Marketing and Sales
Conference, and New Orleans has been good to us.

Andy Johns:
It's a great spot. S o, Tim, we just got off the stage.

Full disclosure, Tim and I did a presentation on data this
morning.

It was called data or "How to Use Data to Get Stuff Done or Not."
And so we looked at using different pieces of data to decide,

do we want to do this or not. And Tim,
we broke it down into four different categories.

So let's run through what those four categories are,
and then then get into some of the individuals.

So we've got satisfaction, and we're looking at our PowerPoint
slides here. Satisfaction,

billing, engagement and operations.

Let's start with satisfaction. The big one for y'all is the Net
Promoter Score, right?

Tim Gilford:
Yeah. The NPS, the net promoter score.

You know, it's always a question of,
you know, how much would you suggest this service to your friends

or family or colleagues, right? I t's 0-10.

You've got your promoters. You've got detractors.

And, you know, you want a higher score.

You can be a -100 to 100 level with your end score here.

So, you want to track that. Our industry average has always been
a bit low.

It seems to be around 30 as a whole for telecommunications.

Not great. T here's always room for improvement in those,
and you should be tracking your NPS,

though. It's always that first kind of pulse on,
"How are we doing right now?"

Andy Johns:
I think that that number will be kind of shocking for somebody
that the Net Promoter Score average for the broadband industry is

30. From what I've seen before,
that's really pulled down by the satisfaction scores on a couple

of really big providers. A lot of the small ones like LightStream
and others that are here,

that Pioneer works with or here at the NTCA conference,
y'all are the ones bringing it up,

so that's good.

Tim Gilford:
Yeah, we certainly try to. We're very proud.

This year's score was an 80. It's been hanging around there for
the last couple of years. We're pretty proud of that number. H

opefully a reflection that our customers,
our members are pretty happy with our service.

There are some bigger ones out there that may not have as much of
a white glove experience.

Andy Johns:
And let's get into a little bit about the how for that survey.

We didn't get into this on stage,
but how do you guys go about collecting that Net Promoter Score

from, you know, or collecting the data that leads to that score?

Tim Gilford:
Yeah, and there's a bunch of different ways that you can do this.
O ur best version is through our annual meeting.

We are a cooperative. So we get to invite our members each year
to our annual meeting.

And we have an old school paper survey that we hand out.

We've tried a few more technological ways to do that,
and we found our demographic really likes the pen and paper.

S ome folks do, you know, they'll email it,
and there's some suppliers that we've even been introduced to you

here at the conference that have some abilities to do that.

A nd you can really dive into some more specifics of how that NPS
is impacted as well,

and where to go from that. And,
you know, in our session, we talked a lot about,

you know, what this stuff means in the next level of everything.

It's, you know, where have you been? Where are we going?

And monitoring which direction your NPS is going,
it's probably the most important piece of it.

Andy Johns:
The next thing we talked about when we were in satisfaction,
the other surveys you guys do. And I like the one using the

adjectives because I think that's insightful. Reliability was a –
or "reliable" I guess.

Reliability would be a noun. Reliable would be the adjective
version.

So but those adjectives, I thought that was a key factor.

Y'all are tracking what words they're using to describe the
service.

Tim Gilford:
We are. And we've kept them the same over time.

And there's, you know, there's a there's a positive bucket and
there's a negative bucket, and there's some neutral in any of

that. But, you know, being reliable,
being, you know, arguably unique,

useful, dependable. Y ou know, these are some of the adjectives
that we've had in our survey for the last several years,

and reliable is the one that we put a little bit more weight on.

A gain, we're northwest Indiana.

It's very rural. Y ou know, these folks,
they they depend on a reliable connection to be able to do the

things, whether that's agriculture,
education, telework, telemedicine,

lots of usefulness, and we're happy to provide that.

Andy Johns:
I think the adjectives on some of those folks with more of a Net
Promoter Score of 30 might be different. You know, adjectives we

don't want to use on a family friendly podcast like StoryConnect,
so. I'm glad that y'all are tracking those.

So after we get past the satisfaction,
the billing data is the other one.

And you're looking at churn, and also volatility is one.

And those are a couple of the key ones that you said even at a
board level,

they're looking at on a regular basis.

Tim Gilford:
Yeah, I provide monthly data to my board.

So they've got an idea of what's going on. We're keeping track of
who's coming who's going.

I t's a good one to know. Again,
we talk about trends.

I f we're starting to down tick,
we want to know if we've got folks that are that are leaving.

We want to know why. And more importantly with that,
the second level is,

is it something that we can control? If they move out of our
service area,

that's not something that I can control.

We have a specific footprint that they can be within.

W e've got folks that go on temporary service.

We know those customers are going to have an uptick in November
when they leave for a few months.

They come back in the spring, and we see them again. So there's a
little bit of up and down with it.

A nd knowing what that volatility is and the indicators for it,
those are the pieces that we're trying to keep our finger

on.

Andy Johns:
It's interesting if we move on to the next category,
the engagement data. I think when people think about marketing

data, most of that is what would go under the engagement
category.

We're talking about, you know, your social,
your web stats, your email newsletters, all that kind of stuff.

But it's good to me to see that that's not the only metrics that
folks are looking at here.

There were a lot of folks engaged in that satisfaction data,
some of the network data,

the operational, all of that. But,
of course, the bread and butter for marketing folks is a lot of

that engagement data. And y'all are looking at it,
you know, whether it's social or any of the different pieces,

you're monitoring that social media data pretty closely.

Tim Gilford:
We are social media, specifically how we engage in a different
manner.

You know, it's not necessarily our CSRs talking to one of our
customers.

This is an online presence. We want to know how many followers
we've got,

how many impressions. And again,
we're trying to keep that engagement up.

T rying to stay connected with them,
trying to bring them material.

More importantly, we found the local material.

Everybody loves to see our technicians on there.

They want to – they you know, it's humanizing us.

You know, we are the people and our CSRs,
they want to see that.

They like the service anniversaries,
that local content has become very relevant for us and really

makes us a part of the community.

Andy Johns:
And what we're seeing is Facebook is still the 800 pound gorilla
in the room.

You know, there have been other – the reports of Facebook deaths
have been greatly,

you know, greatly exaggerated. It's still the big one,
and so, you know,

to be able to look at that and see what other platforms.

You know, the example I used in the presentation,
we know at Pioneer,

our content on Friday performs really well if it's on Facebook,
but on LinkedIn,

it's Wednesday. That's the day that we get the most,
you know, the most action on those posts.

So that's the kind of thing to take a look at too,
and see how the different platforms,

people are using them differently.

Tim Gilford:
It is. And you mentioned, you know,
the significance of Facebook.

And they have a nice, built-in insights piece that it's going to
tell you some of those numbers.

And then the scheduling piece as well,
when you go to put a post out,

do you encourage you to work in advance,
schedule those. They're going to tell you some of those heat

maps. You know, 7:04 in the morning may not be as popular as 9:38
in the morning versus,

you know, 4:07 p.m. It's very specific ,
but there's definitely some data there to suggest of how you're

going to peak those posts.

Andy Johns:
The other things we looked at, you know,
and how it all works together, looking at that QR code data,

looking at your web stats, we talked about,
you know, heat mapping on websites to see where folks are

clicking. You know, the email newsletter data.

I know you guys do email newsletters.

You're looking at what folks are clicking on. A lot of that stuff
can really help you decide. Y ou know,

we look at it on our podcast as well to see when folks are
listening and which episodes perform well.

So, you know, looking at all that,
going back to the topic of the session,

it can really help you decide. Yes,
this is working.

I'm going to do more of that. And no,
this isn't working.

I'm going to do less. It sounds simple,
but it's important.

Tim Gilford:
It is. And you know, we want to identify some pieces of data so
that we know where we've been,

where we're going, things that we can do.

And sometimes it's really important to know things that we don't
want to do.

In these data buckets, or they've all got some gray area to it.

B ut each one of them gives us an indicator.

And one of the emphasis we made today at the Marketing and Sales
Conference is turning data into information and information into

insights. We've got to be able to take that next step of why is
it important,

what can we do? How is this going to impact our decision making?

Andy Johns:
Last category is operational. A nd there you're talking a lot
about trouble tickets is kind of the key element that y'all are

looking at from an operational standpoint.

Tim Gilford:
It is . Your people are your resources.

And identifying how your front office is spending their time,
whether it's taking on new customers or how many administrative

changes we're making. If you had an acquisition and you're trying
to get new data into there,

it's all relevant. And then in trouble tickets is definitely a
more important topic these days.

Again we're going to use this word resources.

So your truck roles, your NOC department how we're going to
resolve these.

And in the end, it's not as much my – again we've got some
cooperative roots.

It's not always about the dollars,
but the experience the customer gets.

So if you're able to resolve someone's problem within your office
that they're able to maybe

reset a piece of equipment. They're able to,
to correct that, that connectivity is up within a few minutes,

rather than having to deploy a truck and a technician and then
start going down those other avenues.

They do take a little bit longer.

They are another expense that we have to evaluate,
though.

Fortunately, those get resolved a lot quicker when we're able to
do it through tech support in our in-house.

Andy Johns:
Definitely would rather go there and like you said,
important to kind of keep up with the trend lines for sure on

that. Last thing I have for you,
Tim.

Y ou are more of a data inclined person.

Y ou know, we're both baseball guys.

We will spare you, the listeners,
from running through baseball stats and data,

but I know from, you know, life before broadband marketing,
you know,

data was a big part of, you know,
just the way that you think and approach things.

If there's somebody out there who's maybe less data inclined,
somebody who's sitting there and isn't tracking a lot of these

pieces and needs to do more, wants to do more,
what advice would you have for them to to get started and take

those first few steps into paying closer attention to their data?

Tim Gilford:
Yeah. I mean, evaluating this data can be a little bit
overwhelming if you're trying to look at all of these four

buckets.

Andy Johns:
For sure.

Tim Gilford:
If you're starting at ground zero,
there's definitely some places to look.

T ake a couple of them. Get get used to the reports that you're
able to run.

Pull that data. None of this stuff gets built overnight,
so it does take a little bit of time to build it up.

A nd each each organization is going to look a little bit
differently than the other.

So even the the metrics that that we discussed today may not be
for everyone,

but I do encourage people to start with that Net Promoter Score
to get an idea of how their customers and members are perceiving

them. I t's definitely a good internal conversation for people to
have.

A nd because that survey can really identify a lot of either pain
points or,

and let's, you know, focus on the positives too.

You may be doing a lot of things very,
very well.

We definitely want to put some emphasis on our technicians.

They are, you know, customer facing,
our CSRs.

Make sure they've got proper training. But s tart with a couple
data points,

and don't worry so much about pulling every single one of them at
the beginning.

But it does keep you with a pulse on your organization,
on your customers and how they're perceiving your company.

Andy Johns:
And I think it's really smart to focus on that,
whether you do it,

whether Pioneer does it for you. But to get that Net Promoter
Score as a baseline.

Go ahead and get that so that, you know,
if you've got marketing campaigns rolling out over the next

couple of years, you'll be able to chart that not just on your
sales data,

but also on that satisfaction .

Tim Gilford:
It is, and there's so many friendly people within NTCA.

You know, ask questions.

Andy Johns:
Sure.

Tim Gilford:
It's such a beneficial group of people.

A nd at this particular conference,
it's, I don't know, unique. It's like minded people,

right. A nd it's really helpful to be able to talk with people.

S o don't be afraid to ask questions and,
you know, find some of those resources outside of your company as

well.

Andy Johns:
He is Tim Gilford with LightStream in Buffalo,
Indiana.

I am Andy Johns your host with Pioneer.

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.