There is an undeniable trend within the telecom service provider industry to automate, to centralize and to streamline operations to attempt to serve customers well and save money in the process.

One regional CLEC has been bucking that trend and Integra Telecom thinks it now has proof its more hands-on approach is working. The company this week announced results of its latest survey of customers within its four primary markets – Portland, Ore./Vancouver, Wash., Seattle, Salt Lake City/Ogden, Utah and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Those results show Integra outperforming other CLECs in market share and outperforming the market in customer satisfaction.

“We believe that good customer service generates loyalty and good customer loyalty generates market share,” said John Nee, vice president of marketing for Integra. “We think these customer survey results prove that philosophy is paying off.”

Integra contracted with Riley Research Associates, an independent research firm, to survey its customers and other business customers within those markets, Nee said. The company has been doing annual surveys of its customers and periodic surveys of other businesses for several years, he said.

The surveys show that in overall market share, Integra has a 10% share in Portland/Vancouver, trailing only incumbents Qwest and Verizon; a 5% share in Seattle trailing only those same two incumbents; an 8% share in the Salt Lake City area trailing Qwest and a 6% share in Minneapolis, trailing incumbents Qwest and Frontier Communications.

The company also has an overall satisfaction rating of 8.8 among its customers, outranking McLeod (8.5%); AT&T (8.4%), Qwest (8.3%), Eschelon (8.2%) and Verizon (8.1%).

Nee attributes those rankings to Integra’s way of doing business.

“We have a very unique business model –a distributed model, where we have local customer care representatives in the markets that we serve,” he said. “When a customer has an issue, a local rep answers the phone. We have local executive leadership teams to manage customer care, sales and operational professionals and that enables us to provide higher level of customer care.”

The company does maintain centralized systems to support its distributed organizations, and seeks to gain efficiencies through that process, but believe the extra expense of distributed customer care saves money in the long run.

“By providing a higher grade of service, that customers are demanding, we increase the loyalty of the customers we , which keeps them as customers longer,” Nee said. “Our churn isn’t as high, and our customer acquisition costs aren’t as high. A lot of the cost is of serving customers is in acquiring them, and getting them set up. The longer you keep a customer, the more profitable they are. Each year you are not churning customers, you are adding on to a growing base of profitable customers.”

Integra markets itself as being competitive in the way it prices its voice and data services to small to mid-sized businesses but doesn’t seek to be the low-cost provider, he said.

“We go to market with this [customer service] value proposition instead of being lowest cost provider,” he said. “We have always rated quality of service over price. That said, we understand there is a price-service ratio that the marketplace will demand. We would never price ourselves out of the market, we are always competitively priced.”

Earlier this year, Integra acquired Electric Lightwave (ELI), another regional CLEC, from Citizens Communications, and is in the process of setting up executive teams in the new markets it acquired – Boise, Idaho; Phoenix; and Sacramento, Nee said.

“Employees have been integrated, customers and markets have been integrated, and we have appointed executive teams in Phoenix, Boise and Sacramento in preparation for developing those in the Integra model that has served us well,” he said.