Grow the team you already have

Grow the team you already have

Years in the industry
Employees trained, reps through C‑suite
Formats: onsite, live virtual, on demand, coaching
States

Training and enablement

Your team has been to a training day. People liked it. The room felt different on the way out. Then it’s a Friday in October, and a member calls angry about capital credits. What lasts isn’t the day. It’s the coaching after it, the supervisor who knows how to give feedback, and a reason for anyone to still be doing it in month four.

A lineman, a supervisor, and a member service rep don’t always need the same training. They do need to be on the same page. We handle all of it.

Six reasons rural providers come to us for training

Besides our kickin’ attitudes

The day went well. People liked it. Ninety days later a member calls furious about a rate increase and the team falls back on exactly what they did before. A single session feels productive and rarely sticks, because nothing came after it.

Where we begin

  • Find out where the old habits are winning
  • Build reinforcement into the program, not around it
  • Put a monthly rhythm behind it
  • Measure against where you started

You promoted the person who was great on the phone. Nobody taught them how to give hard feedback, run a performance conversation, or coach somebody who’s been there longer than they have. So they manage the schedule and hope the rest sorts itself out.

Where we begin

  • Give supervisors a coaching framework they can use Monday
  • Practice the conversations they’re avoiding
  • Calibrate what good actually sounds like
  • Back them up while the habit forms

CPNI. Red Flag Rule. The annual training somebody has to document, deliver, and track, on top of everything else. It matters, it’s required, and it is nobody’s favorite Thursday.

Where we begin

  • Assign the on-demand courses
  • Let people take them on their own schedule
  • Track completion without chasing anyone
  • Keep the documentation you’ll need

A member asks what a gig actually gets them, or why fiber beats what the cable company is offering, or what the FCC label on the website means. Your rep is friendly, capable, and guessing. Friendly only carries a conversation so far.

Where we begin

  • Teach the technology in plain language
  • Build the answers to the questions people actually ask
  • Practice them out loud
  • Give new hires a starting point

Three of your most experienced people are within five years of retiring and their knowledge is not written down anywhere. Nobody’s been developed to take over, and the roles are too important to fill in a hurry.

Where we begin

  • Look honestly at the bench
  • Name the roles that would hurt most
  • Build development plans for the people moving up
  • Start before the retirement party

The board wants a strategic plan. Your leadership team hasn’t had an uninterrupted conversation since March, and half of them disagree about the direction without having said so out loud. A day away only works if the honest picture shows up with you.

Where we begin

  • Interview people individually first
  • Survey the leadership team before the session
  • Bring the patterns into the room
  • Leave with something the board can read

Whatever your market,
whatever your size

01

Onsite staff development

A few days with your team, in person, on the skills that matter most to you. This is where the trust gets built, and everything else stands on it.

02

On-demand courses

An industry-specific library your team takes at their own pace. Customer experience, soft skills, broadband fundamentals, plus CPNI and Red Flag Rule compliance. Tracked and reported.

03

Call coaching

We listen to real calls and give you objective data on where the team needs help. Individual development plans, scoring, and coaching reports supervisors can use.

04

Reinforcement

Monthly webinars and regular touchpoints that keep it alive after the onsite ends. This is the part most training skips and the reason most training fails.

Where we start and what we do depends on your goals and needs. Leadership sessions, succession planning, and strategic planning facilitation are part of this too.

Mid-Rivers Communications

Most teams start with five or six things to listen for. Every six months you add two more. Mid-Rivers has been at this long enough to run the most demanding criteria of any team we score, and in 2023 they averaged 88%, peaking at 93% in August.

What that looks like on a Tuesday: a rep with a cheat sheet on her desk for the words she’s replacing. A team that argues about whether “okay” is ever acceptable. One who realized her allergies meant she wasn’t really listening, called her supervisor, and went home for two hours.

“One thing about Pivot training, it makes me hate calling other companies. Their customer service stinks. It makes me appreciate ours.”

Mid-Rivers Communications

We take the work personally.
It’s the only way we know.

Questions we get about training

In person, live virtual, on demand, or a mix. Most programs start with onsite days and continue with monthly reinforcement and on-demand courses between sessions.

Yes. Every scenario and role-play comes from situations your team actually faces. Capital credits, install delays, rate change season, outage escalations. Nothing borrowed from hospitality.

Everyone who talks to a member or manages somebody who does. We train CSRs and MSRs, linemen, engineers, supervisors, technicians, and executive teams. Often in the same program, at different levels.

Yes. Both are in the on-demand library, interactive, and tracked for documentation. Compliance training doesn’t have to be painful, and it definitely shouldn’t be your problem to build.

From a half-day workshop to a multi-day program. It depends on your team’s size, your schedule, and how much you’re trying to change.

That’s most of who we work with. We can train one person or a couple hundred. A co-op with four member services reps gets a program built for four member services reps.

Against where you started. Pre- and post-assessments, call scoring, participant feedback, and the behavior change that shows up on real calls. Completion rates are the least interesting number in the report.

Depends on format, length, group size, and how much gets built from scratch. Tell Ben what you’re working with and he’ll be straight with you.

Ask\-Ben\-Circle

Training that’s still working in October

Tell us what’s going on. Ben has spent years connecting broadband and electric providers with the right people at Pivot. Let’s set up a call.