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What You’ll Learn
Wi-Fi wizards and tour guides are part of how the Jade Communications team powers up the customer experience. Get takaways from the team’s session at Calix ConneXions 2023.
Guest Speaker
Josh Wehe and Jordan WeheShow Notes
Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers.
Andy Johns: What do you need to consider in order to deliver an excellent customer experience? 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 Jordan Wehe, who is the director of marketing at Jade Communications. Jordan, thank you for joining me.
Jordan Wehe: Thank you for having me.
Andy Johns: And I’m also joined by Josh Wehe, who is the director of operations at Jade. Thanks for being here.
Josh Wehe: Always a pleasure, Andy.
Andy Johns: Now, as we always say on these live episodes, what you hear is not background noise, it’s ambiance. So we’re here right at the epicenter of independent broadband and rural broadband here in Las Vegas, at the Calix ConnecXions Conference. And Jordan’s got a session he’ll be talking about here at the conference, titled “Customer Service and Support: Power Up the Subscriber Experience with Calix Cloud.” So, Jordan, tell us a little bit, just give us a short preview of what you’re going to be talking about.
Jordan Wehe: Sure, sure. So it starts with the idea that anybody who talks with a subscriber is the tour guide, is the trail guide of that subscriber’s journey with our brand. So we’re from Colorado. We use a lot of adventuring analogies. And it’s exactly this. If you’re going to hike a fourteener and you’re not from the state of Colorado, you might hire a trail guide.
Andy Johns: A fourteener being a 14,000 foot mountain.
Jordan Wehe: You got it, Andy. Yep. To show you the way, to make sure you have the right resources, to ensure that you’re trained before you begin your journey. That’s exactly what we’re talking about today is, how do we arm our team to be the trail guides on our customer’s internet journey?
Andy Johns: You guys are well known around the industry, I think, as an outside of the box approach. You’ve got Wi-Fi wizards. You’ve got dinosaur heads on people on the website. I love the approach that you guys do. Always take it outside the box. I know when we were on a panel maybe two, three years ago at one of these, and you guys kind of talked about that Donald Miller Storybrand approach with the guide, and that’s where the Wi-Fi wizards come into – your Wi-Fi wizards are those guides you talk about, right?
Jordan Wehe: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Our Wi-Fi Wizards is sort of what I would consider customer service 2.0. It’s beyond just checking boxes for a customer, but really challenging that subscriber about what’s next for them, showing them a better way.
Andy Johns: And I think you’ve got a cool story, and we could get in. When we’ve talked about it before, and Josh may weigh-in with some details here but, so you were not in the telecom space, but you came back, this family business, you came back and kind of shook things up is the way that I would say it. Is that, Josh, is that kind of the way that you would describe it?
Josh Wehe: Absolutely. Neither Jordan – Jordan and I are both misfits here in the telecom space. I have a master’s degree in theology. And I was that guy who got a philosophy degree from college. And my dad was so nervous. Jordan comes from biochemistry, and we just enjoy having fun with our customers. We enjoy having fun with our brand. We think so many times that ISPs is boring megawatts and gigawatts. Nobody identifies like that. People want to do business with a brand that they enjoy having fun with, and that’s something we really believe in. We’ve leaned really heavily into it, and it’s reaped really good results.
Andy Johns: Now, Jordan, talk me through back when you started, because having fun with the brand, I can tell there are going to be some telecom executives that they’re listening, who that’s a scary phrase to them. How do you go about getting by? Where did you start to go from we’re going to be this, you know, traditional telecom provider to we’re going to have “fun” with the brand?
Jordan Wehe: Yeah. Well, it always starts with what problem are we solving for our subscribers. Any new service, anything that we do, we’re always thinking about the subscriber first. And our market where there are nine different broadband competitors. I would even be willing to bet that it’s the most competitive market in North America, perhaps the world.
Andy Johns: I’ve never heard of anybody with that many competitors, so good for y’all.
Jordan Wehe: Nine competitors. It’s pretty gnarly out there. But here’s the thing: nobody wanted to have a regular internet connection because they could get that from eight other people.
Andy Johns: A regular internet connection.
Jordan Wehe: A regular internet. “Give me a hundred meg,” and call it a day. No, they wanted to talk to a brand that they knew people personally, that they could call and trust for things beyond their internet, like where to have dinner tonight. And that happens. People call us for sushi recommendations because we’ve earned their trust over time. You asked about kind of where are we going with the brand and where we’ve been. And it’s been a really fun transformation to see people excited about their work. I remember when I joined Jade about five years ago, we were just a regular telco. Very hard to find talent, not really thinking about our subscribers. All of this massively changed where now our employees are the ones who are the brand ambassadors. They’re the ones who are recruiting new people to join our team, who are excited about work for the first time. Josh, what have you seen?
Josh Wehe: We’ve seen with nine different competitors, you would think we wouldn’t have a fighting chance, Andy. And we’ve seen that because we have a strong brand. We tell a strong story. Customers want to interact with us. They trust us so that we can sell other goods and services. We’ve seen our business continue to thrive. We’ve seen other communities court us to make investment in their communities.
Andy Johns: That makes you feel good.
Josh Wehe: It does make you feel good, but it’s also different. Most times, we’re looking for communities to invest in. And when other communities raise their hand and say, “Please, we’ll clear the barriers. Come do this.” It makes us – that’s the beginning of a great partnership with that community.
Andy Johns: Got it. Going back, where does it start? You talked about the employees getting that bought in. Did that take a lot of work? Or, you know, going from that regular old same we’ve always done, and everybody’s heard that “Oh we’ve always done things this way before.” Where does that start? I mean, most of the times when you see that it kind of has to start internally, right?
Jordan Wehe: Oh, absolutely, it has to come from the top and get fizzled in and baked in within everyone else in the organization. Now, you know, our organization historically has never had to compete. And most telecom is that way too, right? You probably were the only one for a while, or you had 1 or 2 competitors.
Andy Johns: Right.
Jordan Wehe: And so a lot of us are learning how to market in the modern day. And what I like to do is look at other companies, other brands that have avoided commoditization by building a great brand. Nike is one of them. Right? Shoes are a commodity, but we can learn a lot from Nike. Liquid Death, one of them. So many different water brands out there, but now they have more social media followers than all of them combined. A thousand other examples. And it starts with this idea of what can we be for our subscriber?
Andy Johns: And I think once you kind of have that in mind, one of the descriptions I heard about marketing and, you know, they talked about you can do the big, huge campaigns. But a lot of the times, it’s the little bitty subtle, just nice touches that differentiate you guys. And you guys do a really good job of that, whether it’s a Wi-Fi wizard or some of the other things. What are, you know, obviously a rebrand and establishing a brand and all that, you know, that’s an investment. But what are some of the little bitty fun things? And, you know, I’m thinking about the Wi-Fi wizards, the dinosaur heads on the website. What are some of those little bitty fun things that you guys like to interject that you feel like helped differentiate you guys?
Jordan Wehe: So my favorite thing is every year we create a custom patch.
Andy Johns: Patch?
Jordan Wehe: Custom patch. Like the hipster patches, you know, like on backpacks and blazers? Every year we do one custom patch celebrating one of the communities that we did something in that year.
Andy Johns: Oh, I like it.
Jordan Wehe: This year we’re celebrating our friends in La Veta and Cuchara, Colorado. In the beautiful backdrop of their home are the Spanish Peaks. Two peaks, epic, beautiful, snowcapped year round, amazing for hiking and cycling. And we are celebrating them with a patch this year.
Andy Johns: And then how do you, I mean, you have that in the office? They come get it? You mail it out? I mean, what’s the?
Jordan Wehe: They’re limited edition, and so people can people can choose to buy them, or they can stop by. They can find a set of booth. We usually attach it to some type of apparel.
Andy Johns: Sure.
Jordan Wehe: And then they’re proud to wear it because it has their community on it. It’s not a big Jade advertisement. No, no, no. It’s about them and their community and being proud of where they’re from. It’s a sense of place that’s reinvigorated.
Andy Johns: That’s cool. What has the response been on something like that?
Josh Wehe: The response has been really good. We’ve seen a lot of people want apparel, which we may have to talk about that in another podcast.
Andy Johns: Okay.
Josh Wehe: But from what we do with the network operations is we purchase little postcards. That are already pre-built. One side says, “I just want to thank you for,” something. And on the back, if we have a good interaction with the customer, we will mail a handwritten letter to you that says “Hey, when we talked, we were so sorry to hear about this happening in your life.” That’s not even related to internet because we’re not in the internet business. We’re in the relationship business.
Andy Johns: Ooh that’s good.
Jordan Wehe: I would drop the mic, but that would ruin the podcast.
Andy Johns: I appreciate you not dropping the mic, yeah.
Josh Wehe: But no, I mean, that’s something that if someone has a birthday, and we’re talking to the customer on the phone. Oh happy birthday. No, let’s just. I will pay for the stamp. Handwritten letter, or we had a customer recently that we went to their house and the technician said, “Guys, we need to give them a little bit of love.” And love’s not a credit on their bill. We all signed a card around the office that said, you know, “We’re sorry for this hard time in your life.” That is a great way to create loyalty.
Andy Johns: Yeah.
Josh Wehe: And that’s something that Jordan started doing with the handwritten notes, and we gave everyone in our office their own deck, no questions asked. If you want to write a note to someone, go do it. And we’ve seen that be very successful.
Jordan Wehe: Yeah. And Andy, you mentioned earlier how do you get the organization behind the brand?
Andy Johns: Yeah.
Jordan Wehe: And I answered it indirectly, but I’ll give you a direct example.
Andy Johns: Sure.
Jordan Wehe: And it’s this find the most ardent detractor of someone who is against the branding and the marketing in your organization.
Andy Johns: Another employee.
Jordan Wehe: Another employee. Target the guy who likes to just, you know, throw all that under the bus and wants to keep it the same, and run after him. Go to him. No, no. Everyone thinks, “Oh, I need to avoid him.” No no no no no no no. Run toward him or her and get their buy-in. Help them understand, because then they’re going to take the other nonbelievers with them. Go after the most ardent detractor. And that’s exactly what happened with us. We had a few people who were like, “I don’t get all this. Why should an internet provider be fun?”
Andy Johns: Change is hard.
Jordan Wehe: Change is hard. We went after them and said, “Here’s the vision. Let me show you what the difference will be for your job, for your customers, for the people you talk to.” And now they are the most ardent supporter of the brand.
Andy Johns: Fantastic. That’s exactly what you want. So you start rolling this out. You get the internal folks on board. People start to notice, you know, changes. What was the reaction like from the community? How have you guys seen now that it’s been a couple of years, how has it changed the perception? How do they see you now compared to how they saw you back before y’all put the emphasis on it?
Josh Wehe: A long time ago, we’d go to communities, and they’d be like, “Where’s your corporate office?” And we’re like, “This is the corporate office.” Like there’s no other. This is it. And they’re like, “You just seem like – you just seem greedy.”
Andy Johns: Oh.
Jordan Wehe: You seem like a corporate company.
Josh Wehe: Yeah, you’re getting this corporate vibe. And we’re like, “We’re not greedy. We live here.” You know, we’re trying to get those, like, nice values.
Andy Johns: Yeah, yeah.
Josh Wehe: They’re like something seems off. And so by rebranding and going to more of this funner aspect of internet and other solutions, we’ve seen again, I’ve said it earlier, communities have started to court us, Andy, to make investments. But also we’re getting more, we’re seeing just people engaging with us in ways they haven’t engaged with us before. I’m not responsible for any of the online material. I run the network and that better work or people will leave.
Andy Johns: Got to. Yeah.
Josh Wehe: Right. So another podcast, but I see all the time people like “I love the social media. I love doing business with you because you’re not boring.” And that’s huge. People like to see what’s next.
Jordan Wehe: It’s really living out your value set, right? And one of our core values is “fun.” And we’re going to be the fun internet provider. Now, every day may not always be fun, especially when you work at Jade, right? But that fun has been seeping through everything we do. We’re going to have really friendly installers. We’re going to do really quirky images on our website, have fun and kind of be sarcastic in social media and letting that value breathe, letting others interact with it. In terms of an analytical results of this, Andy, is we have our highest NPS ever in the history of our company. And we started measuring NPS about two years ago. We started at a 55, and now we’ve raised it to a 75 in a market where there’s nine competitors.
Andy Johns: Right.
Jordan Wehe: I can understand having a 91, 92 NPS if you’re the only guy in town.
Andy Johns: Right.
Jordan Wehe: But when you have nine other choices, and you are delighting your subscribers so much, they’re willing to share your brand with friends and family, that’s what it’s about.
Andy Johns: That’s awesome. Good for y’all. That’s remarkable to do it again with that kind of competition. Let’s stay there Jordan, for just a minute if we can. Because I think when – I’ve been doing this about 12 years, and Net Promoter Score that “NPS” you mentioned was not really a thing people talked about in this industry maybe 10-12 years ago. Almost every session this year at this conference, people are talking about it. What do you think the emphasis is, or just kind of, you know, putting on your philosophy hat, if you can borrow that from your brother, just, you know, philosophically, what do you think is attributable to that shift to where Net Promoter Score has become such a critical metric for so many folks in the broadband space now?
Jordan Wehe: I think a few things. First is competition. For the first time ever, a lot of broadband providers have to compete not just against the big guys, but perhaps some other local savvy companies as well. Number two is Covid. A lot of people suffered through Covid either with no or poor internet connection.
Andy Johns: Right.
Jordan Wehe: And now they know the difference between a bad and a good connection. The focus on NPS is really the focus of the modern market, which is it doesn’t matter how many home passes you have. It doesn’t matter how many customers you could potentially serve. What matters is how many customers choose you. And that’s the measure.
Josh Wehe: And to put on to that from the business side, I didn’t know what Net Promoter Score was. Most operators don’t care, right?
Andy Johns: Right.
Josh Wehe: But I care because that’s the only metric that is a good forward leaning indicator of revenue. Because if you know, like people like to interact with us, “Oh, I’m okay green lighting a $1 million investment.” If I have a bad NPS, why should I make the investment? So we see Net Promoter Score as not only how much do our customers love us, but as it general trend, how is the business going? And as a forward looking indicator of revenue.
Andy Johns: Because it speaks to so many different facets of it. I like that, and I think that’s a really important point. Just a couple more questions for you guys. But where are you going next? Because once you make these changes, once you become that fun brand, your work is not done. You got to keep going. What’s next? What do you guys see coming up for you, either short term or mid-term in the future?
Jordan Wehe: We’ve had a lot of requests, as Josh mentioned earlier, to get into retail. A lot of people love our brand. They want to wear it okay. Every time we go to events, they’re like, “Do you have any Jade shirts? Do you have any Jade backpacks? Do you have any Jade hats that we can have?” And we’ve done some limited edition things, but never mass scale. So we’re looking at how do we build the brand beyond the pipe? If somebody has heard of us in Southern California and say, “Wow, that’s a cool Colorado brand, how can I get a piece of that? How can I become part of that?” Now there’s an opportunity. So we’re really looking at how do we make our brand more available outside of our region.
Josh Wehe: And we’re going to be offering, in the winter, we’re going to be offering Servify Care, and we’re going to be one of the first internet providers in the nation to do this. Because we really believe that – it’s a further extension, right? The internet should be fun, and it is not fun when your screen gets cracked.
Andy Johns: That is true.
Josh Wehe: And you have to like go to one of the big box stores. And we think that is a way for a customer to interact with us and for us to issue a new tablet. And we see that as a way to not only offer a ton of value and protect a lot of homes and have additional relationships with customers and people who are maybe not in the footprint. But we also see this as lowering the economic burden. I think a lot of times when people make purchases, they check the box for so and so, and they stow their money away. And so we see this as a way of strengthening our economic status in our county. So we’re excited to do that. We’re going to continue doing of course we’re specialists in Wi-Fi, and that’s not going away.
Andy Johns: Sure.
Josh Wehe: So we think, you know, we’re really excited about some of the outdoor deployments. We’re doing our first outdoor Wi-Fi deployment for a campground next week.
Andy Johns: Nice.
Josh Wehe: Last weekend in this new community we built with a dedicated patch we talked about, we offered free Wi-Fi for their entire Oktoberfest. I’ll have a beer to post that. So like just stuff like that. Having more fun interacting, meeting people where they’re at.
Andy Johns: Yeah. Now just in case folks either didn’t hear it, or if they’re not familiar, talk us through that the care program you talked about before. That’s like a device repair or device replacement program?
Josh Wehe: Yeah. Go ahead. So it’s Servify Care. We’re going to have one price, and for that one price, Servify and Jade will protect all of your devices, except for your cell phone and your appliances from accidental and mechanical damage.
Andy Johns: Okay.
Josh Wehe: And so if a customer has a policy with us, it sounds like insurance. I don’t mean to, but if they have the program –.
Andy Johns: There’s got to be a more fun word than policy you guys can come up with.
Josh Wehe: We’ll work on that. But if they have a subscription with us and one of their home CPE devices fails, Arlo camera, thermostat, the kid throws a baseball at the TV. The customer can log on to the Servify app and report a claim. And Servify will write the customer a check for the device.
Andy Johns: Nice. Yeah, I can see why that would certainly be a nice benefit add on there. Last question I have for you guys. And we’ll go Jordan first and then Josh, what advice do you have for somebody who’s listening to this podcast, and maybe any time they bring up an idea they always hear that, “Oh, we’ve always done it this way.” And you know, “No, we can’t have fun with the brand.” What advice do you have for somebody who’s sitting in that spot that you guys were a few years ago?
Jordan Wehe: That’s a really great question, Andy. And I think it comes down to the specific organizations and market dynamics. But what I would say is be authentic to yourself. And that sounds kind of cheesy. Yes, everyone says it. But, you know, if you’re going on a first date with somebody and you’re quoting Adam Sandler lyrics or Adam Sandler quotes from movies, that’s not you. That’s Adam Sandler. You know what I’m saying? Hey, I’m going to go to this interview and try to be Ryan Gosling. No, no, no. There’s only one Ryan Gosling. Be yourself. Own it, and just let that go out into the world to help people.
Andy Johns: Do you think this approach, the fun brand approach, do you think it can work anywhere? Everywhere?
Jordan Wehe: You know, I think only certain brands can pull it off. But there are other ways to position your brand that might be beneficial. If we look at other industries that have been commoditized. Take shoes, for example. Nike, Puma, Adidas, Reebok, there’s millions of others. They all have different ways of letting their brand breathe in the marketplace.
Andy Johns: Right.
Jordan Wehe: If they’re all the same, there’s no differentiation.
Andy Johns: I like it. I like it. Josh, what do you think? What advice would you have for folks who are trying to maybe shake things up with a brand a little bit?
Josh Wehe: With the brand and with the network, there are always a thousand reasons to say no to something. And don’t be scared. We live by the philosophy is like, why not us? They can do it, so can we. There’s so much opportunity in this industry right now, not only for like funding, but there’s so many ways that our customers want to interact with us. Why not you? Go for it. Have fun doing it. You’re going to – it’s going to hurt a little bit, but it’s an adventure, and why not you?
Andy Johns: Excellent. Well, I’m excited to see what you guys roll out next. It’s always fun to see what you guys are doing, and, you know, congratulations on having flipped the brand and really an industry leader. So congratulations to you all.
Josh Wehe: Thanks for having us.
Andy Johns: That was Jordan Wehe and Josh Wehe of Jade Communications in Colorado. Thank y’all for joining me. I am your host, Andy Johns. 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.