Special delivery – Blackfoot Telecommunications Group looks long-term in a volatile industry

It is simply not enough in these competitive days to be just a telephone company. Offering only hard-line phone service was profitable in times past but in an industry that’s rapidly being pushed forward by technology, telephone companies are looking elsewhere to broaden their competitive opportunities.

“Where things are going, the successful companies are going to want to offer voice, data and video services,” said Rob Ferris, the vice president of sales and marketing for Missoula’s Blackfoot Telecommunications Group.

By Mick Holien Western Montana InBusiness from the Missoulian

http://www.mtinbusiness.com/current/bus18.html

And that’s where Blackfoot wants to go as well.

Established in 1954, the Blackfoot group of companies – Blackfoot Telephone Cooperative, Blackfoot Communications and Blackfoot Telesphere Software Inc.net – has a strong history in voice and is equally versed in data delivery.

The company serves 25,000 customers in eight counties in western Montana. Blackfoot introduced high-speed data service in 2001 and offers DSL service to about 95 percent of its rural customers, while providing digital cellular service in communities from Whitefish to Hamilton.

The next focus for Blackfoot – and a myriad of other regional telephone companies – is on grabbing the video piece of the industry pie.

“What do you do to gain that third piece?” said Ferris, who came to Blackfoot four years ago after more than 20 years with AT&T.

Some of the larger telecommunications companies, such as Qwest and SBC, have decided pairing with satellite giants is the answer.

Qwest already offers DirecTV and EchoStar services in some regions; Sprint plans to add services which include Dish Network; SBC is partnered with EchoStar; and Verizon is paired with DirecTV.

Bresnan Communications, which purchased AT&T Broadband, already offers high speed internet and video.

At Blackfoot, Ferris said, options are being considered but no decision has yet been made.

“We’re analyzing what we do there,” he said.

In the meantime, to serve their customers, smaller communication companies are working to bundle their services – that is, they’re making all their services, cellular, land-line, long distance, Internet and video services, available under an umbrella of coverage.

“What the consumer is telling us is that they want this bundle of services: ‘I’d like to see it from one company and I’d like to see it at a fair price,’ ” he said. “Virtually everybody in this industry is working at how they bundle.”

It’s also a way for companies like Blackfoot to develop customer loyalty and move into growth areas in telecommunications.

For local businesses and residents, Blackfoot currently can bundle a variety of services.

“We’re working toward that with our residential packages. We, like most companies, won’t have everything tomorrow,” said Ferris. “We can’t do the wireless piece because we don’t cover the whole co-op (area) with wireless.”

But while the technology might be available to perform a myriad of tasks, Blackfoot’s plan is to first economically analyze such a move and then move forward if the analysis seems promising.

“Deliver what you can in a method that keeps you profitable so you can keep delivering,” he said about the company’s focus. “It doesn’t do us a whole lot of good to run out and get a whole lot of customers that we’re losing money on. Then we have to start taking money away from the things that we do well to fix that hole.”

Gauging growth and the technological direction of the community also is a prime factor in any decision-making.

“It doesn’t make much sense to put fiber-optic cable someplace where nothing going to happen,” said Ferris. “That’s just an economics thing.”

Blackfoot has 195 employees and is headquartered in Missoula in a six-building campus on North Russell Street. Unlike some of its national competitors, Blackfoot will live and die on its success in western Montana.

“If we don’t succeed in western Montana, we don’t succeed,” Ferris said. “If some major national players don’t succeed here, that probably doesn’t hurt them as much as it hurts us. We have a sense of urgency.”

“The one thing you learn in this business is you can’t do everything extremely well so you need to do the things that you do very well and deliver in a way that exceeds what your customer thought they were going to get,” he said. “We do think we have the employees in place, the technology in place, the right attitude about customer service to move forward in as many of those technological areas that make sense.”

But just because Blackfoot has the capability to perform a technological task doesn’t mean it’s something that makes sense in the long run because profit margins are thin in all sections of the business.

“You have to do it all pretty efficiently and pretty quickly,” he said. “You have to pick and choose. As much as bundling is going to take place and as much as the big three (data, voice and video) will dominate where a lot of traditional telephone companies go, most companies aren’t going to be everything to everybody. What we want to do is those things that we pick, particularly in the data and Internet arena, are things that we do really well.”

While Blackfoot doesn’t believe it’s been doing a poor job at customer service, the company has given that service added emphasis this year.

“We have a whole new company-wide customer service initiative, an actual formal initiative where we’ve brought most of the people through some customer service training,” said Ferris. “We contracted with a company so everybody’s aware of the customer-service responsibilities both externally and internally. … We think we have to take it to the next level.”

“I think the only way that you can build customer loyalty – and this is across all those lines of business – is to provide exceptional customer service,” he said. “We hope we’re delivering customer service that is not only unexpected but when that customer is done dealing with us he says ‘that’s the company I want to deal with. That was a good experience.’ ”

Copyright 2004
Missoulian.com