Nrby: Use-Cases, Insights and Reviews | 2024 Cuspera

As a member of the Cable community and a former executive for one of Cable’s key vendors, I’m interested in what my colleagues and neighbors think about cable. The topic comes up often in casual communications as people often ask, “what do you do for a living ?� My experience with their reactions over the years when I tell people I work in the cable tv industry has always been less than satisfactory. Its seems people still have the movie “The Cable Guy� as their base perception of the industry so they immediately launch into some topic or issue to highlight their dissatisfaction; Increasing service costs, clunky equipment, unprofessional service technicians, placed on hold and transferred too many times without proper problem resolution…the list goes on.

The bottom line, there is a real or perceived dissatisfaction with the industry as a whole. We all know the great strides cable is making using technology to innovate the customer experience design and increasing the overall customer experience. The acid test remains, will a random consumer have something positive to say about the industry. This random consumer has been hard to find in my experience but recently I’ve had one person give glowing positive reviews about the voice recognition feature in their remote. I won’t name the cable provider, but this feature is a great example of adding a straightforward technology in an easy to use and understood manner. There are other examples in this vein not offered by cable such as real time signal quality monitoring and offering refunds for poor video quality. At least one popular streaming service has this feature and I am always pleasantly surprised when the provider sees the issue and informs you before you call.

I remember one of my first meetings with a cable operator in which we were discussing the merits of technician empowerment and enabling field technician to self-select daily jobs. The reaction from the operator was visceral: “Why would I trust the field guys to do the right thing – they are last ones I trust!�

A lot has changed since that early meeting. The world has become more decentralized. Businesses and organization have flattened their hierarchies. New enterprise collaboration tools are eliminating organizational silos. In essence there has been a dramatic shift of power and control with more transparency of information. Information transparency builds trust within and between organizations. Trust enables people and organizations to achieve more.

Yet, many field operations teams operate in silos, with a chain of command hierarchy and communications process between functional groups. Essentially, the day to day activity of a field technician is very linear, with a sequential schedule controlled by dispatch and ticketing. Over shadowing this day to day activity is a lack of trust in some organizations, which has led to a process burdened with sequential checkpoints and a strict dispatch-controlled work-day. But there is a chicken and egg dilemma trying to migrate to an open and more transparent trusted environment. Without the proper tools and mindset, achieving trust can be elusive and almost impossible.

We are in unprecedented times. COVID-19 is disrupting every aspect of our personal and professional lives, forcing us to make trade-offs on both safety and commerce. Personal well-being versus economic well-being. Who lives and who dies is now a function of balancing those tradeoffs. Retracting too much or not enough can result in unintended consequences.

As an early-stage privately-funded startup, we too, live or die by the tradeoffs we make. But in the case of the COVID-19 crisis, no balancing act was necessary. The most valuable asset of any startup is the team. As I like to say there are 5 elements that create value in a startup: 1-Team; 2-Team; 3-Team; 4-Market; 5-Product. A great team can deliver any product into any market. Products and markets can change and a great team adapts.

And nothing is more important than the health and safety of our team and their families.

In early March, well ahead of any state-ordered shut-downs or stay-at-home orders, I mandated that all our employees work remotely for their safety, and that of their loved ones.