3 Ways Cumberland Connect Makes Network Reliability a Key Differentiator

At Cumberland Connect, we’re proud of—and work hard to maintain—our consistently high Net Promoter Scores® (NPS®), which regularly surpass 90 (far beyond what most in the industry ever achieve!). We’re regularly asked to reveal the secrets of our success, and how we can compete with much larger competitors.

As an electric cooperative, we have served communities across rural Tennessee for almost a century. We recognize that subscriber expectations for our broadband service are the same as they are for our electricity service—they expect it to be always available.

Three Ways to Make Network Reliability A Key Differentiator

But our network isn’t perfect. We occasionally suffer from outages like everyone else. And yet, we have managed to turn network reliability into a key differentiator. Here are three reasons why:

• We build resiliency into the heart of our network. Running our network on the Calix Broadband Platform gives us all the capabilities necessary to build a resilient and reliable network. Our simplified network foundation, based on Intelligent Access, is designed to eradicate any single point of failure. For example, our network rings always have more than one route out to the core network using different data centers in geographically different locations.
  
  
• We have the tools in place to act now. When an outage occurs, time is of the essence. Actionable insights from Calix Operations Cloud enable us to quickly identify the outage's root cause, dispatch the right team, and reduce our mean time to repair (MTTR).
  
  
• We keep our subscribers informed. We believe subscribers need to know three things: Are you aware I have a problem? Do you know how long it will take to fix it? What are you doing about it? If they contact us with these questions, it’s already too late. That’s why we use the latest Calix Cloud® tools to provide outage information to customer support representatives (CSRs) who are working with subscribers throughout the process. We use the data from Calix Cloud to facilitate our outage response.

Subscribers are only as loyal as the last outage, meaning we expect them to look elsewhere if we don’t manage the outage well. With tools such as Operations Cloud, we can proactively control the narrative and reduce customer support calls. This fast resolution and proactive communication help Cumberland continue to build trust and loyalty with our subscribers—and continue to grow our business.

Watch this recent Calix webinar, “Minutes Matter: Architect a Highly Available Network,” to learn more about building resiliency into your network.

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.