Carrie Jackson:
You could be running a 50 or a hundred person call center, and we can make it happen.

Andrea:
Good to know.

Carrie Jackson:
Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
Very good.

Curt Barkey:
And even if you're in a... because we've had this happen already too, right, where we've installed something to spec and the business has grown on their side, and we can then add lines as needed. I like to tell folks that we're very much a la carte, right? You get to pick what you want, what works best for you, therefore making it extremely scalable.

Andrea:
Welcome to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. Kosciusko Connect is a subsidiary of Kosciusko REMC. Since 2021, we have been providing lightning-fast, reliable, fiber-to-the-home internet service to rural portions of Northern Indiana.
On Connected Conversations, we talk about fiber internet, technology, community, and how to navigate the digital world in which we live. I'm your host, Andrea Melton. Thank you for connecting with us today.
Thanks for joining us for today's episode of Connected Conversations, the first, actually for the year 2024. We're so excited to be back in the studio for the podcast. Joining me today, I am glad to have Curt Barkey, our Vice President of Technology and Broadband, as well as Carrie Jackson, who is a Telecommunications Support Specialist here at Kosciusko Connect. Curt and Carrie, thank you so much for coming in today.

Curt Barkey:
Good to be here.

Andrea:
We are excited to talk about our business phone service today. That is our topic, and you two are experts and the best folks probably in the building to give us information on our business phone service. So let's get started.
First off, our business phone service is a VoIP phone service, which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, I believe.

Curt Barkey:
Yup.

Andrea:
And Curt, can you tell us more about what exactly that means? What is VoIP?

Curt Barkey:
So VoIP is exactly what you just said, right? We are doing VoIP over an internet protocol, IP address. It is crystal clear. We just put it in here for part of the office, and I'm amazed at how clear those phone calls are. I can hear Carrie loud and clear when she calls me from the office.

Andrea:
That is good. That's good. And what about you, Carrie? Can you hear Curt loud and clear when you're speaking with him?

Carrie Jackson:
Absolutely. Sometimes I don't even need the phone for that.

Andrea:
Love it. Love it. Okay, so let's start with, can you give the listeners an overview of our business phone service and really what sets it apart in our market?

Curt Barkey:
Sure. We have basic stuff all the way up to call center stuff and applications and reporting and analytics and all kinds of things. And I think the biggest thing that maybe sets us apart from our competitors in town, really twofold. One, you're talking to the two folks that are going to take care of you all the time, mostly Carrie and myself. And two, our pricing for our lines is very competitive.
Here, again, we kind of follow that mantra of the REMC, and we're here to ensure that you guys have good service and good reliable phone service, and then that it works. We are hearing around the county that the old existing stuff that's out there with our competition is not very good. So we're here to fix that problem and make it better for you.

Andrea:
Absolutely. And that competition, I don't think they offer the local customer service that you mentioned, either. They're lacking in that element.

Curt Barkey:
Yeah, there's not a lot of people in town anymore. They come from Merrillville or Indianapolis or South Bend, maybe Fort Wayne. I like to say that we're one of the few folks in town that actually are the provider and can set up the service. And you've got the installers here, local. You've got the support here, local. Not many folks can say that.

Andrea:
Wonderful. Carrie, what specific features does our business phone service offer and how do those features benefit the local businesses?

Carrie Jackson:
We have a lot of different options. So whether you need a small office set up with a couple of phones, or you're operating a call center. There's call reporting, call management software. You can scale it and personalize it to whatever your business needs.

Andrea:
Okay. And what about features we're familiar with like all the caller ID and the call forwarding and things like that?

Carrie Jackson:
Yep. It's all included. Long distance, call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, voicemail to email, it's all included.

Andrea:
Cool. And Carrie, because I've recorded some of these, I know that we offer a service to new businesses to record their IVR recording. Is it called auto-attendant? Can you tell us more about that feature?

Carrie Jackson:
Yeah, so an auto-attendant is popular amongst the businesses that we've already connected, and it really gives you, it's a menu. So somebody calls in and, you know, "Thanks for calling Kosciusko Connect. Press one for sales, press two for support," or whatever it may be. That is as customizable as you want it to be.

Andrea:
How scalable would you say our business phone service is? So can it accommodate the needs of a very large business as well as the smaller ones?

Carrie Jackson:
Absolutely. You could be running a 50 or a hundred person call center, and we can make it happen.

Andrea:
Good to know.

Carrie Jackson:
Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
Very good.

Curt Barkey:
And even if you're in a, because we've had this happen already too, where we've installed something to spec and the business has grown on their side, and we can then add lines as needed. I like to tell folks we're very much a la carte. You get to pick what you want, what works best for you, therefore making it extremely scalable.

Andrea:
Wonderful. So we probably offer a lot more options, then, for customization than some of our competitors, I imagine. We're able to offer different levels of customization based upon what the businesses need with that system?

Curt Barkey:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think in our price book we have something like over 200 lines of items that we can sell and configure for customers.

Andrea:
Wow, that's a lot.

Curt Barkey:
Yeah, there's probably not much that we can't do. If you've got an idea and want to be able to do it, reach out to us, there's a good chance we can probably take care of it.

Andrea:
Very cool. So businesses, of course, rely very heavily on uninterrupted communication. How does Kosciusko Connect ensure the reliability and the uptime of our business phone service?

Curt Barkey:
Sure. So here, it's kind of twofold, right? So here at the office, we've got our redundant connections to ensure that all of our customers, whether you're internet or phone, there's enough bandwidth to handle that. If there's an issue with one provider, the other provider will pick up that slack. Our network operations folks are ensuring that that happens on a daily basis.
And then with our provider, they've got two different data centers as well. So if there's, let's say their one data centers in Atlanta and another one's in Colorado, if one goes down, the other one's going to be able to pick up those calls. So essentially what you're seeing with our services, not only is Kosciusko Connect redundant, but our wholesaler is also redundant as well. And so we're not really tracking metrics of uptime per se, but those two things put together is going to make your uptime really pretty, pretty reliable.

Andrea:
So we've got the bases covered?

Curt Barkey:
We do.

Andrea:
For local businesses on a budget, and I don't know what local business wouldn't be on a budget, how does the cost of our business phone service compare to the other options that folks have?

Curt Barkey:
Well, I would say we're pretty cost-effective without... Everything is different. So it depends on what you want as a customer. But I would say, just to give folks listening an idea, if you want one phone line with all the features that Carrie was talking about before, that's around $35 a month. So that gets you everything that Carrie was talking about.
Of course, you've got your taxes and your fees on that. As you add lines, obviously there's some more there. But we're working with a customer now that their monthly bill for internet and phone is roughly $1,000 a month. And I would say once we're all said and done, we could very easily save them 600 to $800 a month depending on what we set up for them.

Andrea:
Wow. That is significant.

Curt Barkey:
Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea:
Huge savings for sure.

Curt Barkey:
Yeah, Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
How do we provide support to businesses who are using our phone service? If they have issues or inquiries, what channels are we providing to them?

Curt Barkey:
Sure. Well, you can always call into the office, and when you do call in for a phone, specifically for a phone service, depending on what's going on, you're going to get Jaden, who I know has been on the podcast before. He's going to help you out. If he can't get you your questions answered, then that's going to go to Carrie. So she's kind of acting as that tier two support in that instance.
And then if it's larger than what we can do usually, then it's at a provider level and Carrie is reaching out to our provider and basically tell them they need to get their stuff together and get the problem fixed.
And she had to do that a couple times, and they've been very responsive and have gotten the problems resolved pretty quickly. So yeah, you start off with Jaden on the tier one, you move to Carrie on the tier two, and then we move that up to our provider if it's something that we can't handle. And then of course, we've got our techs in the field that live here also and can take care of any fiber related issues. So, yeah.

Andrea:
Very good.

Curt Barkey:
Yep. Here to take care of you.

Andrea:
Any upcoming developments or features in the pipeline for the business phone service that local businesses can look forward to?

Carrie Jackson:
Yeah, so we are currently reviewing the plans and the pricing that we have, and we are looking to make some changes, really trying to incorporate a business phone service with just about every business internet connection that we make.

Andrea:
Okay. When a business adopts our business phone service, so for our new business customers, what kind of training and onboarding processes do we have in place to ensure that they have a smooth transition to our phone service?

Carrie Jackson:
You will discuss all of that with me. I can even come on site to show you the hardware, if you're purchasing phones through us, show you how to use the call management software, whatever it is that we're doing for you, I will be there onsite to help you through that.

Andrea:
Awesome. Well, I think we've talked about what I had in mind to talk about when we came in today. Guys, is there anything else that our listeners should know about our business phone service that we haven't covered yet?

Curt Barkey:
Yeah, I think it's important to know, too, that we're also have partnered with one of the premier telecommunications hardware providers out there, which is Poly. Some people would know it as Polycom. They've just recently been bought out by HP. So we are a Poly partner. We can get the Poly phones. We support those phones. You work directly with us, we would then work directly with HP and Poly if there's any issues with those.
I mean, anything to your heart's content from really, really awesome headsets that tie into desk phones, to cell phones, to desk phones that are wifi enabled. So if you want to take it with you and work from home, you can, just hook it up into your wifi. To huddle rooms with cameras and TVs to all kinds of cool stuff.
So not so much just the phones and the phone service. We've got the internet, we've got the phones, we've got phone service, we've got meeting rooms for whatever the case may be, and just kind of have a whole gamut of things. And ultimately, we want to just make business easier for businesses to do business, whatever that is, without all the ruckus.
We do this for a living, right? Not only do we do Connect, but we also support the REMC here as well with this. And so we understand what folks need to do and what they want and have some good ideas. And in the end, you'll probably have a much better solution than what you had when you started off with, and that's ultimately our goal.

Andrea:
Awesome. I love that. So if somebody is a business owner, they're out there listening and they are interested in getting started or learning more, what should they do?

Carrie Jackson:
They can always call in, obviously call into the office, or you can visit our website as well. Those are really the two easiest ways to get ahold of us.

Andrea:
Very good. Well, Curt and Carrie, thank you so much for being on the podcast today to talk about our Kosciusko Connect business phone service. I appreciate you taking the time to come in.

Curt Barkey:
Yeah, it's been fun. Always fun.

Carrie Jackson:
Thanks, Andrea.

Curt Barkey:
You've been listening to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. From all of us at Kosciusko Connect, thank you for connecting with us today.