Member Focused Mentality Drives Process Improvements

Marcie Boerner, COO of Webster-Calhoun Cooperative, discusses their partnership with Innovative Systems for OSS/BSS, Video, and Voice. Webster-Calhoun is located in Gowrie, Iowa and serves 3,700 internet customers, 2,500 voice customers, and 1,500 video customers. Webster-Calhoun converted to Innovative Systems in 2008 and they have leveraged software to better serve their members.

“What I think that we’re doing really well at Webster Calhoun is being local in being in the community and being present as a cooperative.” Part of serving their members and community is providing efficient service. “elation, allows us to go to a customer’s account, and see all of their services. Because it’s account based, it’s not based on a phone number, it’s not based on an internet. [eLation] is billing it all together. We can find all the information we need for that customer.”

The conversion was an opportunity to streamline processes and improve customer record accuracy. “When we made our conversion to Innovative Systems, it really was a huge change for us internally. At that time, we were still utilizing a lot of paper processes, our trouble tickets or service orders were all paper. The ability to go through the conversion and get things onto one account, so that you didn’t have to dig through paperwork to find your information.”

Boerner discusses the importance of clear communication for internal employees on customer accounts. When a customer calls in, “I can go to the activity log, and I can see who’s viewed that account. If somebody talked to them on a previous day, I know where that comment came from, or who I can reach out to to ask more questions. Any documents that they may have signed previously via eSign are all under the documents on that account so we can organize it so much better.”

Boerner is always thinking long-term. She wants to ensure Webster-Calhoun has the best communication possible and will continue to put their members first in the future. “The fact that we can use descriptions within the service order so we can explain, in our words, what the customer wants, so that if I go back to that order, a year from now, I’ll know exactly what happened within that account just by the description or the summary that we put.”