West River Telecom (WRT)
Dare to be different: North Dakota telco reimagines its processes to put people first
Today’s customers are used to same-day delivery and instant gratification—so delivering anything less than speedy service can easily cost you their business. That’s exactly what was happening with some of West River Telecom’s member-customers, until WRT decided to take a people-first approach to one of their key customer touchpoints.
CX Insights
- Values. As part of their CX retainer, Pivot helped WRT define their cultural values—one of them being “dare to be different.” It’s a value that would later help them refine a process that caused frustration for their member-customers.
- Journey mapping. Typically, a new customer gets two visits from WRT crews: first, a construction crew connects their home to the fiber line, then an installation tech gets their internet up and running. To retain more customers, this inefficient process would need to change.
- Reimagining industry standards. Based on these findings from the journey mapping process, WRT decided to live out their value of daring to be different. They abandoned the industry’s standard installation process in favor of putting the needs of their customer first.
- Reduced wait time. By improving their operational efficiency, WRT successfully reduced the wait time required for new service, resulting in lower churn in customers who had previously abandoned them for a shorter wait with competitors.
A cooperative established in 1952 by local farmers going door-to-door to bring phone service to rural North Dakota, West River Telecom has a long history of putting people first. It’s what drove them to take a deeper look into the experiences of their member-customers during a two-year Customer Experience project in partnership with Pivot.
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