PARTNER CHANNEL: Broadwing Centralizing

Posted: 1/2003

Broadwing Centralizing
Agent Program Management

By Tara Seals

AGENT SUPPORT IS MOVING to the center at Broadwing Inc., the company said in late November, and it will spend less time recruiting and more time serving existing partners.

"We have spent the past year aggressively acquiring new partners and agents and would now like to turn our focus towards growing those relationships and ensuring that we are serving our current partners, and their customers, well," says Lisa Brown, vice president of general business markets. "We feel this will give us the best opportunity for mutual growth and profitability.

"Does this mean we won't acquire new partners? No, but our approach to starting new relationships will be different than in the past," she adds.

Broadwing went through a reorganization in the late fall, restructuring its business units and channels of distribution, and the partner program was moved to the general business markets group, Brown says. That ultimately means channel partners' agent managers and regional support contacts will go by the wayside, opening the way for a centralized support model. A team has been established in Austin, Texas, to be the one-stop shop for agents needing help.

"Everything was scattered geographically, and we had some people in Austin on a limited scale and some in Houston," says Brown. "But now they have one team they can go to get help with whatever they need, and that could be commission questions or issues, order processing, questions on their orders or products and services, pricing, working new opportunities, questions on their accounts, etc."

The new support team consists mainly of people that already worked at Broadwing, she says. "So it's not new hires off the street, but it's support folks that can hit the ground running and who can support these agents today -- but with a more effective and customer-focused manner because they can just go to this one place and get whatever they need."

The new team will have its own management chain consisting of a pool of representatives that serve all business partners, a manager and finally a director that reports to Brown herself.

To ease the transition, the phone numbers, Web site links, general e-mail addresses and other points of contact for agents and business partners will remain the same, says the company. But on the back end, everything is routed to Austin instead of being sent to different points across the country. A central number also will be available, featuring IVR options for different areas of service, such as commission questions or sales engineering help. The company has sent its partners a letter notifying them of the changes and it's in the process of calling agents as well.

Even so, she says, "people are expecting the worst. But we're committed to the program and there are no dramatic changes other than the people that will be supporting the agents will be different."

The elimination of specific agent managers in favor of channel managers that support any agent that calls in is perhaps the biggest change.

"The role the agent manager filled probably varied from agent to agent depending on their ability to work an opportunity on their own, but a lot of these agents don't need someone to go on an opportunity to sell something," says Brown. "He needs pricing, he needs somewhere to send his order and a number to call and ask questions. In that environment there's not an issue with not having an agent manager assigned."

For those that need extra help, there will be many tools and resources available, she adds.

The move to centralized support and a focus on existing partnerships is part of the company's larger strategic direction, which is built on service as a differentiator.

"We've really embarked on a strategy where building a customer satisfaction culture within our company is our A No. 1 priority," says Brown. "We wanted to seize this opportunity to see how we could provide a heightened level of service to our partners so they will want to do more business with us."

"I believe Broadwing took a hard look at their business and decided to focus their energies on the existing group of partners and customers," says master agent Ben Humphreys, president and CEO of Comtel Communications. "The transition to this new model is going smoothly and I am looking forward to a very positive relationship."