Highlighted for being a national player with operations in all 50 states, TNCI (News - Alert) was founded in 1991, bought in 2013 and earned revenue of $60 million right out of the gate. Continuously striving to acquire different telephone companies under a growing brand, the company’s portfolio now boasts nearly every telephone product you could want and is currently headquartered in the beautiful city of Santa Barbara, Calif.
At this week’s New York-based Telecom Exchange event, I was lucky enough to sit down and speak with Jeff Compton, CEO and president of TNCI as well as Blue Casa, highlighted for being the “phone service that makes you smile.”
Compton said, “Our target audience really ranges from small to medium-sized (SMBS) to enterprises with customers all over the map in every industry you can imagine such as kiosks, ATMs, call centers and clients needing MPLS. Our national MPLS network significantly benefits retailers that have 100 to200 locations and our 17 underlying carriers that offer local and long distance support ensure that connectivity and services can reach any state and even rural areas.”
Just recently closing the acquisition of TNCI back on May 1, 2013, the benefits end-users will see is an ultra high level of stability.
“Currently in our space, there is lot of uncertainty and our guarantee to the customer is that we will try to change as little as possible. Our brand is the same and our service is same but the part that will change is we are continuing to buy more companies and more facilities-based model in order to increase the capabilities the network can offer,” Compton added.
Extremely satisfied, clients’ love the company’s MPLS solution as it powers an extremely diverse, national reach at very cost competitive price, yet that doesn’t mean TNCI is completely free from challenges.
In fact, according to Compton, some of the main challenges his organization is facing in the industry today is the fact that it is always a herculean effort when you purchase a new company and you must then “stabilize the ship.” Yet, it is “good work and we should be challenged like that often,” he further commented. And just because Compton’s firm continues to add new companies to its portfolio, it still tries to keep employees in tact as much as possible as there is institutional knowledge within the current workforce and benefits to keeping them exactly where they are.
Compton stated, “Another challenge I continually have is finding more companies to purchase at a reasonable price. The boards and equity that would like to liquate are there but it’s usually at an unfair price.”
With the increasingly popular trend of customers getting more sophisticated and interestingly enough starting to operate as pseudo telephone companies, typically when they get to a certain size it can be very hard for them to adapt for one to two customers. He concluded, “No matter how big we get, I never want to forget that because a paralleled level of customer service is key. That is exactly why we have live agents available approximately 13 hrs a day and with our next acquisition, you never know it could be 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”