Learn More About the Telarus Partner Support Team

The May 23rd Telarus Tuesday call brought the Directors of Partner Support, Angela Hefner, Ciera Broberg, Melissa Levergood and Trina Lambourne take a deep dive into the Telarus Partner Support team. The entire recording can be found here.

Roles and Responsibilities

There are a couple of different topics the Telarus Support Team gets asked about on a regular basis. One thing partners seem to have a lot of questions about are the roles and responsibilities of the Support Team versus those of the partners. While the Telarus Support team is happy help their partners, there are certain things they ask you to prepare before bringing requests to them. We have listed those things you as a partner are responsible for, and those things the Support Team can assist you with below.

Partners

• Bill Analysis
• Identifying customer wants/needs
• Pulling & filling out LOA’s, CSRs (if necessary)
• Identifying a budget
• Working with and managing sub-agent requests and relationships
• Communication with customer on order related information

Telarus Support Team

• Pre-Qualification of opportunities
• Registration of leads
• Carrier portal quoting
• General pre-sales assistance (varies on carrier)
• Back office & tools training
• Assisting in understanding Geo-Quote results
• Introduction to Telarus tools, services, resources

Life of an Opportunity

If we were to place your opportunity onto a timeline, it would follow the timeline above pretty closely. It all begins at the time your customer signs the agreement. In order for Telarus to kick off one of the many commission audits to make sure you are paid, we ask that you add the order to your back office. Telarus understands that you get busy, so if you need help adding orders to your back office you can send them to your dedicated partner support manager who can then add them on your behalf. If you’d rather add the orders yourself just make sure you send the signed contracts to your partner support manager via email so they can move you on to the next step.

Telarus processes all cable orders such as Spectrum, Comcast and Altice in-house, all non-cable orders are sent to the carriers for processing. Because we process all cable orders in-house this means Telarus handles the provisioning. When we get rejects or construction requirements the Support Team will work with their partners to notify and address those issues. On the other hand non-cable orders are handled and provisioned by the carrier, Telarus doesn’t get updates unless there is a bigger issue. Most times the carrier works directly with the customer or the agents to correct any issues, but the Support Team is always happy to escalate stuck orders as needed.

Moving on to when the order installs starts another commission audit on the Telarus side, this ensures the commission is received for that order. As this order continues to move through it’s lifecycle the Support Team wants to make sure their partners are notified six months before contracts are up so that they can work with their customers to renew or upgrade as needed. If the partner chooses to renew, upgrade or move their customer to a new carrier the life of an opportunity timeline will typically start all over again.

Uniquely Qualified Support Team Members

There are a lot of things that make the Telarus Support Team, a few of those things are the following:

1. Two hours of training per week to help them stay up-to-date
2. Monthly Unified and Cloud Communications certifications
3. Trained on over 20 carrier portals
4. Receive constant training on pre-qualification and del registration processes

There are many ways that you as a partner can enhance your relationship with your support team. All successful relationships have one thing in common and that is all parties understand each other’s wants and needs. Although the Support Team strives to always do a good job at letting partners know their wants and needs during the partner’s onboarding, they want to make sure that you are also taking the opportunity to let them know about your own wants and needs. The Support Team wants to hear from you, because if you are not letting them know what you like and what you don’t like they are unable to make those changes. Telarus is always enhancing its processes and doing what they can to accommodate individual wants and needs, and their Support Team is always happy to tweak a process or talk with their team to fix any issues that may arise. Communication is key, remember to always talk to your support team and let them know what is important to you and your business.

Keep in mind the following list of things that can help you strengthen your relationship with your support team:

1. Give them as much information as possible in your first request.  Not providing much information slows down their ability to get you timely quotes and can sometimes delay things for an entire day.
2. Set proper expectations.  Ask your support team for timelines and milestones if you don’t know them, that way you don’t have to deal with a customer that expected a cable circuit to install in less than a week.
3. Always add your orders or send them to your support team who will then add them.  This is very important.
4. At a minimum add the customer to your back office that way the support team can run some quotes.
5. Have them like your FB page or connect with them on LinkedIn.  We can get people to share or like your posts.
6. Let them know how they are doing, particularly when they are doing a good job.  We’ve mentioned that you should let them know when things aren’t going well, but also let them know when things are going right.

Visit https://www.telarus.com/rvp-map.php for information on who your support team is and how to contact them.