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What You’ll Learn
In what’s become an annual tradition, hosts Megan McKoy-Noe and Andy Johns share the mics to discuss major takeaways from the 2026 Calix ConneXions conference.
Guest Speaker
Andy Johns and Megan McKoy-Noe
Show Notes
Transcripts are lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro: StoryConnect, a Pioneer Podcast, helps you discover ideas to shape your stories and connect with your community. Love this episode? Follow StoryConnect on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube so you don't miss your next great idea.
Andy Johns: What did two intrepid podcast hosts learn this week at Calix ConneXions? That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of StoryConnect. My name is Andy Johns, your host with Pioneer, and I'm joined by –
Megan McKoy-Noe: Megan McKoy-Noe, another one of your hosts from Pioneer.
Andy Johns: We are doing our fourth?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Fourth.
Andy Johns: Fourth annual Calix ConneXions reactions episode. We've been here at the kind of epicenter of rural broadband, independent broadband, here this week at the Wynn in Las Vegas. And Megan, it's been a good week.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It's been fun. Yeah. I always like to say what happens in Vegas doesn't happen in Vegas or doesn't stay in Vegas when StoryConnect is around.
Andy Johns: That's absolutely true. I think when we're talking about this – and there's been a lot of good sessions, obviously the main stage, they do a great job with the production and everything there. The one word to sum it all up for me is proactive.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, it's been said many, many, many, many times. Well, but it's been said because they've been talking about how many silent suffering subscribers, say that five times fast, but how many subscribers are suffering in silence that you don't know about. One of the stats that Juergen Lindner, their chief marketing officer for Calix, shared was that 48.9% of your subscribers are vulnerable, are ready to jump, are ready to to leave you, for one reason or another. They're just not happy. So how can you stop that? Because as you know, the cost to attract a new subscriber is so much more than the cost of just retaining them. And you get that by being –
Andy Johns: Proactive.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Huzzah!
Andy Johns: There you go. I like the to because, and he presented that in there, he said that's the negative way to think about it.
Megan McKoy-Noe: True.
Andy Johns: The other way to think about that is 49% of your competitors' customers are also –
Megan McKoy-Noe: Opportunity.
Andy Johns: Considering. Yeah. Are also –
Megan McKoy-Noe: That's more than being proactive. I mean, it's not just saving your own things. It's going fishing,
Andy Johns: Right.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Andy Johns: Well, so when we're talking about the conference, obviously the big thing, roll out this year, they had a little gumdrop looking guys with the AI agents that were all over the place.
Megan McKoy-Noe: They're like the Pillsbury Doughboy. You just want to you just want to poke them.
Andy Johns: Non-trademarked.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yes, sorry.
Andy Johns: But, so AI has been a huge topic. Obviously, that's something you and I talk about a lot. I feel like at the first, for the first few sessions, there was a lot of talk about kind of the cautious side of things. And again, getting into the proactive piece of it too. You know, Jerry Cederlund who was speaking, he mentioned that if you have a bad process, AI isn't going to turn it into a good process. There was another you know, some of the other folks were talking about how if your data is bad, then AI is just going to give you bad answers.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It's going to repeat it back because it doesn't know. It doesn't have the critical thinking or emotional intelligence to help you out.
Andy Johns: And I really, Vale Galovski was downstairs doing a AI leadership panel that I went to and talking about that change management kind of piece. And he said, the way he phrased it, you know, if you have AI as a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. And he's like, whatever it is, just throw AI at it, and AI will fix it. And he's like, that's not the way to approach it. And I appreciated the caution there.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, the caution there. I also, so I was at the Women in Telecom luncheon, and there was a really great panel afterwards that was talking about AI as well. But it was more talking about how you balance what you can do with AI, with what still needs the human touch. Somebody said, you use it to manage tasks so that you can be more human with your humans. Give yourself bandwidth.
Andy Johns: I like that.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, it was nice. Somebody also said something that was a little strange. They said, you just put a human wrapper on your AI experience. And I don't know how I feel about AI burritos.
Andy Johns: No, I don't like that. I don't. Sometimes by this point in Las Vegas, I do feel a little bit like just a human wrapper of myself. So I get the feeling.
Megan McKoy-Noe: But I think the point they were trying to make outside of the burrito image that I just can't get out of my head. But you want to have human, as the last say, to take ownership of that. I had someone in one session said that you have to hold people accountable for the AI outputs. And some folks get really excited about what you can do with AI, which we know it's exciting, it's bright, it's shiny. And then they give you a 15-20 page report that says the same thing ten times over. So their point is humans at the end, humans at the beginning, right? So you wrap it with love and with that critical thinking and emotional intelligence, that's how you balance the use of it. So for normal tasks that you're doing, great, but you have to be accountable for the output.
Andy Johns: I like it. And that goes back to what, when you and I have presented talked about AI before, that's always something, you know. It's not okay to be like, oh, that's what the AI said, sorry. It's not good enough. Going back to that the proactive piece of things, you know, I heard it multiple times. You were talking about that silent suffering or the silent sufferers. Let's unpack that a little bit more.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Do you want to say it five times fast?
Andy Johns: Nope.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I dare you.
Andy Johns: The folks who are suffering and – the subscribers who are suffering in silence seem to – no, that's all I got.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I was gonna say.
Andy Johns: How long? This would be a long episode if we start doing that. Let's unpack that a little bit. So those, you know, the way that they've talked about that those are the folks that are, I think one of the folks I was talking to at lunch said like they pull up some, you know, customer data, you know, entry like the page on that customer. And they've made no calls, no issues.
Megan McKoy-Noe: No, they don't.
Andy Johns: Years and years. Ten years. No, no calls in.
Megan McKoy-Noe: There was one stat – i'm trying to to find it – of folks that switched, I can't find it right now. But the number of folks that switched without ever calling to tell you there was a problem. Which comes back to being proactive and some of the tools that Calix offers, and I'm sure other folks offer as well, but it was really nice to see that you can turn it on to look for specific issues with service. So now, I am not an engineer. I'm a storyteller, but I was fascinated. One of the nice things about Calix ConneXions is that you are sitting with the texts. You're sitting with folks that are engineers that know all of these technical terms, and they were explaining it to us in terms of storytelling. There is something called PON errors, which I hadn't heard about before. I had to have Jake from Hood River explain it a little bit to me. But a PON is basically what everything. It's a passive optical network, right? And it's kind of your hub. And then you'll have up to 120-128 homes connected to that. But you can see if it's having some issues, if it's been down more than 15 minutes a day, that's a problem. And so it can flag those folks. You have to turn it on, but it can flag those folks. And also sometimes when you have your lines going out, maybe when you first built out your fiber to your community, everything looked great. But the more people are getting added to your lines, I don't know the technical reason for it, but it's called low light. And it just means that they're not getting the speeds that they want to get. The system, that part of it needs an upgrade. It needs some love and care, right? And so those are two technical things that you can search for and get a report on the marketing side and on the customer service side to know they're not having a good experience.
Andy Johns: Yeah. And that ties into what I mean, it was said multiple times. Calix CEO Michael Weening mentioned multiple times. Every support call is a sales call. And that's an opportunity for those check-ins. You know, when somebody calls in for support, you know, asking the questions and a lot of the folks that we work with at Pioneer, a lot of. the independent telcos out there are doing a really good job of asking, you know, like, hey, I see that, you know, whatever may have changed on your account. We know that a lot of those silent sufferers may have been people that had a setup and a connection and the routers back when maybe it was just 1 or 2 people at the house. They've gotten married, had a few kids. Now all of a sudden, there's more demands. You know, somebody gets a new game system or more smart home devices. They never think to really upgrade their internet. And to them, it's like, the internet from this company is no good. Well, actually, you're just, you didn't upgrade your internet at the same rate that you upgraded other other things. So I think that was a big piece of it where those preemptive check ins, the ability to look and see who's having problems, those different pieces can be able to let folks check in preemptively before they just leave. Because I think if there's a secondary word this year, in addition to proactive, it's competition. I mean, there, you know, there's still plenty of places where there's not a ton. But I mean, we talked to seems like every other person we talked to had eight, nine, ten competitors.
Megan McKoy-Noe: So many competitors.
Andy Johns: It's wild.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It's crazy.
Andy Johns: One of the folks that I knew mentioned about that specifically was Chris from Coast Connect. He was one of the folks on there talked about that. And again, he kept saying over and over again, proactive. Being proactive with the reach outs to fight churn.
Megan McKoy-Noe: What I really liked as well, there was a session on building loyalty or driving loyalty and cutting down churn. And they were trying to outline the levels, like they rank it, and you can get a report kind of ranking where everybody is, who the highest risks accounts are, and you can find those. And then they have a guide for when you should email them, when you should text them, and when you need human intervention. I like that humans still have a role in this AI-driven world that we find ourselves in. But there's some times where you just need to call someone. If they have run 20 different speed tests within the last day, they're not happy.
Andy Johns: That's a good sign. Yep.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Why not call them and say, hey, we noticed, you know, is everything okay with your speed? You know? I also liked the integrations that you can have because again, we're storytellers. A lot of our audience are storytellers. You can now add scripts inside Calix so that if somebody is having a problem, a very specific problem, right? You have already written a script to help the CSR explain what's going on. Yeah. Know what to say and the right message comes up for the conversation that they're having at the time. I don't know about you, but I know that trying to write scripts and get stuff to the member service reps when I was working at my utility, it was always kind of hard. You know, I would walk it over or email it to them, and then the call center manager would distribute it to folks. Those are just extra steps. And then you don't know, you have to go find your script for whatever call is coming up. Now it's all, it recognizes the type of script you need brings it up to the CSR. It's all right there. It's really nice.
Andy Johns: Yeah. And that's those little, Teletubby minion look alike agents at work there. Yeah. The quote that Michael, the CEO put up multiple times, there's no version of the future where AI is optional. And I was like, that makes a lot of sense. If the company's not doing some things there, it's not one of those pieces of technology where you can bury your head in the sand and shoot, maybe I can get to retirement before I have to learn this or anything there. To deliver what folks are needing, it's not an option anymore. What else did you have that struck you in some of the sessions, megan?
Megan McKoy-Noe: I, confession time. Oh, yeah. I wear a Fitbit and –
Andy Johns: There's a lot of talk about wearables.
Megan McKoy-Noe: There was a lot of talk about wearables. I felt very old Fitbit. But a Fitbit, you know, it'll tell me how many steps I've walked and whatnot.
Andy Johns: Which is a lot this week. That's a win, I'm sure.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It's so much. I walked 14,000 steps on Saturday. That's before the conference begins. So it's a lot. But he was talking. I think that was John Durocher was talking from Calix on the main stage about that, and he compared it to the Orua ring. Yeah. And the difference is the Fitbit gives you data. The Orua ring helps you interpret the data and gives you directions for what to do next. And the takeaway for me is that it can't, we can't just have data about folks. We need to understand what that data means.
Andy Johns: What's the story?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. What is the story behind that data and move that forward. And I like the way that Calix is weaving that in to their software. And for me, it was a good lesson overall, I need to think about how I'm using data and how I'm not just telling you what's going well, but why it's going well and what we can do next because of that.
Andy Johns: To being, would you say, being proactive and proactively telling that, looking at what that means.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Proactive was the word of the day?
Andy Johns: Yep.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Just to tie into that, I just found his quote insight amplifies value, and I liked that.
Andy Johns: That's absolutely it.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, I liked it.
Andy Johns: Yep. Today, on the last day of the conference, we had a general session as well. A couple of takeaways for me for that. You know, there was some talk about the importance of having the bigger teams, you know, painted a little bit of a scary picture about being a small independent broadband provider somewhere without having the support from different associations, different groups, different technology partners, and kind of building that scale of having other folks involved. Because when we're talking about some of these AI tools and all that, if folks aren't proactively looking to see what's out there and what's available and what their providers can do, they may get left behind. So I think that was one piece. And then the other piece that I know you enjoyed today, I did too, was the talk with the psychology piece of it all with Melina Palmer. Her session that was, she's got three books out. "What Your Employees Need, But Can't Tell You," "What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You" and "The Truth About Pricing." I thought there was some really interesting takeaways there. What did what did you, what stood out for you, Megan?
Megan McKoy-Noe: She had three cheat codes, Andy. I wrote them down because I like cheat codes. I mean, I'm not a gamer, but I know the value. I know the value. The first one was to speak their language. How you say something matters more than what you say, which I thought was kind of key. And the example she used was megapixels and how, you know, and we have this issue, not issue. We have this opportunity to communicate with folks every year with our calendar contest with Ruralite. Right. Where we're trying to explain the image quality that folks need, but they don't really think of megapixels or whatnot. You know, megabytes, how many? She said, instead of saying that you need to send us a 3.9MB picture or whatnot, instead say that this is what it gets you. It gets you a picture size. It gets you a poster size or 50MB, gets you.
Andy Johns: Billboard size.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Billboard. Right. And she showed that and like showing that instead of trying to get someone to understand the technical jargon, I think is pretty powerful. So how you say something matters more than what you say.
Andy Johns: She also, ironically, she talked about the pricing strategy of getting folks to, you know, the different packages there. And the ironic part about that right after that, I went to lunch and sat down with Matt Daniel, who we had on a couple years ago talking about multi-gig. And they were one of the first at Mountain Telephone. They were one of the first that I was aware of that started offering that multi-gig. And, you know, she brought up a good point. It's the same thing Matt was saying then. Sometimes that big, audacious, expensive five gig, ten gig, 25 gig where I live in Chattanooga. You'll have to have people buy that. But the pricing strategy of having that being the super expensive Cadillac, you know, high dollar one lets people feel better about being in the middle somewhere. And I thought that was insightful.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. That was her cheat code lead high. It's called anchoring an adjustment. So you know what you want to sell what your main bread and butter is, right? But if you have a white glove service, that super nice service above it, then people feel like, well, I can still get this and get a really good deal on that. I'm not going to spend an extra $500 to get 25 gigs.
Andy Johns: Right.
Megan McKoy-Noe: But, you know, so yeah, she said don't have too many bundles, but position one above what you want people to pick. And some folks have been surprised. I know that my friend Greg Mullis from Tri-CoGo, he said they they had a four gig plan that they positioned as like their ultimate home champion level. And they didn't think many folks would get that. And now it's gone up to like 11%.
Andy Johns: It's 11%. Yeah, I remember seeing that number.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Which is nuts. Yeah.
Andy Johns: Four gigs.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. And he was like, I don't, we don't understand, but we're happy.
Andy Johns: Sure.
Megan McKoy-Noe: We'll take it.
Andy Johns: And the other part they showed on the screen there at the same time is I think they said 50% of their subscribers are on gigabit, on the one gig plan, which I guarantee you is related to having that four because if one gig was their highest speed, there's no way they're getting 50% on there. It's because you had that four gig that pulls it up and like, you know, at least, you know, I'm not buying the most expensive, but I'm going to buy it somewhere in the middle. And over and over again, all the sales data says that's what people like is that, you know, not the most expensive, not the cheapest, right in the middle.
Megan McKoy-Noe: So her point at the end of that was when you change the order and you put something really nice right on top that's a little too expensive for most folks, but when you do that, you change their choice. Which I thought was really, really smart.
Andy Johns: What else did you have on your list that you that you wanted to cover that was a takeaway here?
Megan McKoy-Noe: I mean, that's a lot of it. I really, I loved the stats that Juergen, as I already mentioned, was sharing because I didn't know, and I guess this is the second year Calix has done a really big study. They studied, I think it included 2,400 people.
Andy Johns: Yeah. Right around there. 23 and change.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Broadband subscribers. And some of those stats really stuck out to me. He said, you know, as I mentioned, that 48.9% of folks are vulnerable to churn at any given time. I thought it was crazy that 16.1% of subscribers changed providers in the last year. Right? I mean, that's not.
Andy Johns: That's a lot. It's a hassle to change your internet provider.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It's a hassle. But still, and of those folks, they're happy.
Andy Johns: Right?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right. He said 93% of the folks that they surveyed, they're happy. They were satisfied. So that's not what is driving them to leave. It's not only about satisfaction or loyalty anymore, especially for Gen Z. And he said, as Gen Z starts to get into more of a powerful position in the marketplace, we're going to have to really focus on that because they don't have any loyalty. And Gen Z subscribers are 25% more likely to be poached, and they're just going for the price.
Andy Johns: Yeah. And that's interesting. He, you know, he brought that up. Was that Juergen that?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, yeah.
Andy Johns: Yeah. He brought that up with kind of a, are there Gen Z people in the room? Am I going to offend you or whatever here? I wonder how much of that is particular to Gen Z, and how much of that is just anybody who's at that beginning part of the career early 20s. You know, I wonder if you went back. I know the study is relatively new, but I wondered if there are some things particular about Gen Z, or if it's just that that group of folks that typically is lower on the pay scale and newer in their jobs anyway, if that group always does that or not. That would be interesting to see. And I'm excited they're doing that study, so we can see kind of as things change.
Megan McKoy-Noe: They're going to be doing it for at least another three years. So we'll have this really nice chunk of data to review. I think we need to get them on the podcast.
Andy Johns: I think we do. Yeah, I think we need to plan on that.
Megan McKoy-Noe: But my favorite thing too that he said on stage is essentially, it's not you, it's me. The line no one in a relationship ever wants to hear, but he encouraged folks not to take it personally. We can't. And I think sometimes we think like, what's wrong? What are we doing wrong? They're happy. They're happy. We're local. We're in the community. Why aren't they staying? Sometimes it's just, you know, they found a different price, and they want to go, and then they'll be back. I think we should have like a welcome back campaign for folks that, you know, went out there, tried a couple of different things, and then realized how good they had it.
Andy Johns: Right? Yeah, that is definitely a real thing. Yeah, we've got some great episodes coming up. Sounds like we've got a plan for next year already to have Juergen on at some point. We'd be glad to have him on the podcast. One person I'm glad to have on the podcast is you, Megan, of course. Happy to be on here at our fourth annual ConneXions reactions podcast. And looking forward to sharing all the episodes we've recorded, what about 10, 11, 12? 9? Somewhere around there?
Megan McKoy-Noe: We recorded a lot of stories.
Andy Johns: Cast a of pods.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I mean, it's always fun just to talk to folks about what they're doing. And it kind of runs the gamut. I mean, you were talking to folks, as you mentioned, about routers and self-installs in one case. And then I'm talking about teacher totes in Minnesota, right. And really cool ways to engage your community and provide support. And it's just fun. It's fun.
Andy Johns: Absolutely. This has been fun too. Let's do it again sometime. How do we end these? You can, you want to end it? You can end it.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Do you want me to?
Andy Johns: Yeah, go ahead.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Say your name? He is Andy Johns at Pioneer Utility Resources. And I am Megan McKoy-Noe.
Andy Johns: Do you want me to do that part?
Megan McKoy-Noe: No, no. I'll do it.
Andy Johns: Okay. You do that part. You're on a roll.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I'm Megan at Pioneer as well. And until we talk again, keep telling your story. You're not going to do it with me?
Andy Johns: Oh, we're doing it. All right. Try one more time. All right. I'm with you now.
Megan McKoy-Noe: He is Andy Johns. I'm Megan McKoy-Noe at Pioneer. And until we talk again,
Andy Johns: See, I didn't know we were going to start the whole part of it over again. I thought you were just going to do the names again. What? Until we talk again,
Megan & Andy: Keep telling your story.
Outro: StoryConnect is a production of Pioneer Utility Resources. Send questions to hello@pioneer.com and learn more about our member-owned marketing agency at pioneer.coop.