“…the customer is why we are in business”

Interview by Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog

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Kevin Cantwell is the President of Big River Telephone and has 25 years experience in the information/communications industry.  Kevin spent 11 years at AT&T Communications in a variety of executive positions focusing on sales and marketing. Prior to joining Big River, he was the Vice-President of Emerging Markets at WorldWide Technology where he helped formulate a thriving organization that increased its revenues from $610 million in 2000 to almost $1 billion in 2001.  Kevin also held the position of Vice President of Sales at Convergys and later at Abiliti.

Big River Telephone provides a full spectrum of telecommunications services in in the Midwestern United States.  Services include local, long distance, broadband, and advanced Networking and Data Solutions.  They are also a wholesale provider for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services.  Among its awards and recognition, Big River has received the Customer Relationship Management Excellence Award from the Gartner Group and been honored with Nucleus Research and TechTarget’s CIO Decisions Technology Award.

MO:
You have a great deal of experience in the telecommunications field with some high profile positions, including your current position as President of Big River.  What drew you towards telecommunications, and at what point did you know that this was the right industry for you?

Kevin:
When I left college I had two degrees in hand.  One for education and one for business.  My first four years out of college I was a teacher and athletic coach at St. Charles High School in St. Charles, Missouri.  Being an ex-college basketball player I was still playing on many teams in the St. Louis area.  I was asked to play for a team called Bells Bombers which was made up of AT&T employees.  They were allowed to have two players from outside the company on the team.  At the time that I was playing, AT&T was going through divestiture (the breaking up of the Bell System).  The guys on the team kept asking me if I had an interest in joining the new AT&T.  They said the company was looking for people without the “Bell Head”, and they felt I would be exactly what was needed.

One thing leads to another, and I went for an interview.  They offered me a job and told me that opportunities and my future would be in my control and away I went.  I found the industry fascinating and evolving.  Plus the control and accountability offered to me allowed me to continue to compete.  My positions at AT&T and other organizations allowed me to continue to coach and work with outstanding people with an end goal of winning.

MO:

Telecommunications is much more than it once was even 10 or 15 years ago.  What is the technological future of industry?  What advances do you see in the near and distant future?  How will it impact the way we do business?

Kevin:
Telecommunications is evolving to an information movement and management field.  The traditional “telephone is ringing and answer it” is gone.  The industry basic TDM infrastructure is being replaced by an IP network.  Historically the phone would ring, and we would have to be at the place to answer it.  Now that “place” is everywhere, and we decide how we want to answer or handle the information being delivered to us.  I speak at many conferences and tell people at one time, if I needed to purchase an item, I had to go to that product’s location to acquire it.  Now those locations, and all of their competitors, have to come to me.  It is just a great time to be in this industry.  What is in the future?  I have no idea.  Fifteen years ago did anyone see Google, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter?   That is why this industry is so much fun.  The future is bright, and you can make a difference.

MO:
Big River has grown rapidly from a long distance reseller to a full service telecommunications provider in only 10 years.  How has the company been able to achieve that kind of growth and success?

Kevin:
The customer is why we are in business.  That philosophy is a way of life at Big River.  Our Operating Support Systems are built around the customer and not the vendor of those systems.  Everyone in the company has access to the same tools.  Everyone in the company is trained to be proficient with our systems.  It does not matter if the call from customers comes to me or to someone in our Network Operations Center. Everyone has access to the same information and can meet the customer’s needs.  Now we may not have the answer for that customer but our tools are designed that we know everything about that customer and if they had called in that day and spoke with someone else on the team we have that correspondence at our fingertips.  The ability to address a customer and help them is what makes us a success and allows us to continue to grow.  Our services are not a price play in the market.  Our services are based on meeting customer’s needs with applications that help them grow.

MO:
Big River is a wholesaler of VoIP, which is a powerful and yet very young technology which is quickly being adapted by business and residential users.  Why is it less expensive to administer this service as opposed to traditional land line telephone service, and is there any quality sacrificed?

Kevin:
The backbone network cost to run a VoIP platform versus the traditional TDM (Time-division multiplexing) can be as convoluted as the vendor selling the application can make it.  And they can present cost savings to justify either approach.  Reality is the TDM network is going away.  The driving force behind this is the application that is being delivered over the VoIP network that the traditional TDM network cannot handle.  The VoIP services are running on top of the data networks.  The savings come from not having to manage both a voice and data network.  Merge the two and the savings will come along with it by lowering cost to run and maintain the network.

Applications and the ability to move a call where the end users want it and will use it is driving the VoIP growth.  The VoIP services that Big River delivers are on par with the traditional TDM networks for call quality and reliability.  Some VoIP providers only deliver their platform as a best effort  but at Big River we apply our telephone heritage to our VoIP platform so every call is delivered with five 9’s of reliability.

MO:
The company has an intense focus on customer service.  Examples include hiring only people raised in the communities in which Big River serves in order to stay connected.  How has this impacted the business?  What is your customer retention rate compared to the industry average?

Kevin:
Our retention rate is off the industry charts.  Our customer satisfaction is 98.6% in an industry where 70% is considered tremendous.  Our customer churn in under 2%.  Why? Because the customer is why we are in business.  Every customer gets my home number – 1.800.JumpShot.  They know they can call me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  The only time I don’t answer it is when I am on call or in a meeting.  Customers and employees know we stand behind everything we do.  In the ten years of Big River, I have received 3 calls at home.  One was about service being out at a business, and the other two were customer concerns.  In all three I went to the customer’s location, and we discussed the reason for the call.  That will never, ever happen from a major carrier.

We only hire people born and raised in the communities we serve.  People want to do business with people they know and trust.  That trust is not being developed on the other end of a toll free number being answered by an off shore telemarketing center. That trust is being built by local businesses knowing they see our people in their offices but also in the community – your churches, your little league, your Chamber of Commerce, etc. That builds trust and relationships, and people do business that way, especially in smaller settings.

MO:
There is a Big River YouTube channel with over 30 videos, Twitter accounts for many of the executives, and a Big River Facebook page.  How important is social networking and marketing for business and entrepreneurs?  How has it benefited Big River and perhaps you personally?

Kevin:
Big River is a huge proponent of social networking, and we use it extensively in the company. Here are some examples: YouTube for commercials; Twitter for up to date information on activities, promo’s and current events;  LinkIn and Facebook for contacts and networking; Wikipedia for educational purposes for customers.  Big River works with customers to help them understand the social networking and marketing capabilities  of the new applications.  The entire way we deliver our offerings to our customers has completely changed from the storefront and yellow page ad days of old.  This is the exciting part of the new world.  The use of technology is past the IT department and now being driven by the customer and their needs.  We once had to go to the store to buy a shirt. Now the stores come to me!!