TelePacific Communications recently teamed up with master agent Sandler Partners, its top-performing master agency, to host a luncheon at the Intercontinental Dallas for existing and prospective agent partners operating in Texas markets.
Dick Jalkut, the 11-year President and Chief Executive Officer of TelePacific, and the former CEO of NYNEX when it was the largest ILEC in the nation, kicked off the event by sharing his insights about industry trends and market developments, and also articulated the new focus and capabilities that TelePacific is bringing to the Texas market in partnership with Sandler Partners.
In late 2011, TelePacific acquired Tel West Network Services Corp., a fiber-optic network provider linking the five biggest metro markets in Texas. At the time, Tel West was direct sales focused. TelePacific, with its robust and award-winning agent program accounting for nearly 40 percent of revenue, initiated an integration effort to bring Tel West’s agent program into its own agent channel. In January, with Tel West’s operations and agent program fully integrated, Tel West’s name was changed to TelePacific Communications Co., and channel management started forging new agent relationships in Texas.
“The agent community has always been very important to us,” explains Ken Bisnoff, TelePacific’s senior vice president of strategic opportunities and channel chief. “We have developed terrific relationships with agents in California and Nevada, and we intend to do the same in Texas. This event provided us with an opportunity to meet and greet many of the agents who work with Sandler Partners in Texas, and further educate them on our capabilities, agent-centric philosophy and unwavering commitment to supporting agents and taking care of customers.”
Bisnoff also presented during the luncheon, touching on universal agent concerns such as timely quoting and sales support, sales engineering assistance, provisioning support, timely and accurate billing, and other service and support themes as well as TelePacific’s Ethernet broadband footprint and strong performance in customer satisfaction and retention as documented in third-party surveys.
Alan Sandler, managing partner of Sandler Partners, said that that many agents in Texas had unpleasant experiences with Tel West.
“The Tel West to TelePacific transition isn’t just a name change,” Sandler says. “It’s a sea change. Having been an independent agent myself, and now representing the interests of nearly 2,000 agents, it would be difficult to overstate the importance of working with agent-friendly carriers, and TelePacific strongly supports the agent community.”
