Case Study
Pioneer Connect: 100% Call Coverage at a 76-Year-Old Oregon Co-op
Pioneer Connect is a member-owned broadband cooperative serving the central Oregon coast to the Willamette Valley — fiber, fixed wireless, phone, mobile, and streaming TV, delivered with the kind of local service that keeps members around for decades. Its Customer Experience team went live on Call Coach IQ on May 1, 2026, running every new inbound call through the platform automatically. Here is what that has actually looked like since go-live, in the team's own numbers and their own words.
Transparency Note
Alex Brandt, Customer Experience Manager at Pioneer Connect, is also the founder of Call Coach IQ. Pioneer Connect became an early platform customer because Alex managed its Customer Experience team before and during development — giving him direct visibility into the gap between what manual spot-checks could catch and what full call coverage would make possible. All figures in this case study are drawn directly from Pioneer Connect's live Call Coach IQ account and reflect actual platform activity since go-live on May 1, 2026.
Results at a Glance
Figures below are pulled directly from Pioneer Connect's own account activity in Call Coach IQ, covering May 1, 2026 (go-live) through July 2026.
100%
Of substantive customer calls scored automatically, up from occasional spot-checks
2,978
Total inbound interactions processed since going live on May 1, 2026[1]
1,973
Substantive customer calls fully scored against Pioneer Connect’s own rubric[1]
87.8 / 100
Average agent score across every scored call, not a sample
237
Calls flagged for detectable churn-risk signals
147
Sales opportunities automatically flagged for follow-up
At a Glance
| Type | Member-owned broadband cooperative |
| Service area | Central Oregon coast to the Willamette Valley (~1,300 sq. mi.) |
| In operation since | 1950 (76 years of service) |
| Network | Fiber + fixed wireless |
| Services | Residential & business internet, phone, mobile, streaming TV |
| Customer Experience team | 13 agents, 2 team managers |
| Call Coach IQ live since | May 1, 2026 |
The Problem: Personal Service, No Dedicated QA
Pioneer Connect has been building goodwill one call at a time since 1950 — the kind of co-op where members leave reviews thanking a real person for picking up the phone instead of a robot. That same personal-service culture is exactly what makes call quality hard to scale by ear: a 13-agent Customer Experience team generates far more calls than any manager can personally sit through, and like most contact centers this size, Pioneer Connect had no dedicated QA analyst headcount. Coverage depended on what a manager happened to overhear from the floor, or what a member escalated on their own.
That is the same structural gap most contact centers run into: industry-wide, manual QA programs typically sample somewhere between 2% and 5% of total call volume, simply because there is no other way to fit call review into a manager's day. The calls that most need attention are, by definition, the ones nobody happened to be listening to — a churn signal buried in call #4,000 is functionally invisible to a spot-check program.
So what would it actually have cost Alex Brandt to personally review, score, and write coaching notes on all 1,973 of the substantive calls Call Coach IQ has scored since going live on May 1, 2026[1]? Using the same methodology in our manual QA cost breakdown — listening time at 1.25× the average call length, plus 7minutes per call to score the rubric and write coaching notes — against Pioneer Connect's own average scored-call length of 5.5 minutes, that works out to about 13.9 minutes of manager time per call.
Cost of manually reviewing every scored call
~456 hours
13.9 min × 1,973 calls
~$14,004
At $30.69/hr — the national average call center manager salary of $63,834/year (ZipRecruiter, 2026)
This span covers about 2 months since go-live (May 1 through July 2026). A full-time manager has roughly 365 working hours available over that same span. Manually reviewing every scored call in that window would have required about 125% of that time — more hours than a full-time manager has available in that span at all, before accounting for coaching conversations, escalations, hiring, or anything else in the job. Full manual coverage was never realistic; that is exactly why coverage depended on what a manager happened to overhear.
The Solution: Call Coach IQ
Pioneer Connect brought in Call Coach IQ to close that gap without adding QA headcount. Every inbound call is automatically transcribed and run through AI call scoring against the co-op's own rubric, tagged for sentiment, and screened by conversation analytics for churn-risk language, sales opportunities, and retention saves — the same signals a manager would only catch by listening live, now surfaced on every call instead of the 2–5% a manual program could reach.
Since going live on May 1, 2026, every new inbound interaction has been processed automatically. As of July 2026, that is 2,978 inbound interactions processed in total, of which 1,973 substantive customer calls were fully scored against Pioneer Connect's own rubric — every one of them, not a sample.[1]
Manual review time and cost eliminated
~456 hours
Of manager time this analysis has replaced, using the same review-time math above
~$14,004
In manual QA labor cost avoided, at national-average manager pay
But the bigger difference isn't just time back — it's that even if Alex had the 456 hours to spare, manually listening to every call still could not have produced what Call Coach IQ measures on each one. A reviewer can estimate that an agent talked too much, or seemed scripted, or rambled; Call Coach IQ measures it precisely, on every call:
57.1% / 40.6%
Average agent talk / customer talk ratio, measured on every call
6.7
Average questions asked by the agent per call
1.60
Average filler words per 100 words spoken by the agent (≈ 6.6 per call)
Talk/listen ratio, filler-word rate, and questions asked come from Call Coach IQ's conversation dynamics analysis, which runs on every call alongside scoring — not a manual estimate, and not something a human reviewer could reliably tally by ear at this volume even with unlimited time.
Average score across the full population
87.8 / 100
Computed across every scored call since go-live — not estimated from a handful of spot-checks.
Sentiment is tracked on the same basis. Across every scored call:
| Sentiment | Share of scored calls |
|---|---|
| Positive | 36% |
| Neutral | 54.5% |
| Negative | 6.6% |
| Mixed | 2.9% |
What Full Coverage Actually Surfaces
The point of full coverage was never just speed — it was visibility into what was already happening on the phones that nobody had a practical way to see before. Call Coach IQ's conversation dynamics layer generates this on every call at Pioneer Connect, not a sample, including:
Every call scored, not a sample
Pioneer Connect's Customer Experience managers previously caught what they happened to overhear from the floor or what a member escalated directly. Call Coach IQ now scores all 1,973 substantive calls handled since go-live against the co-op's own rubric, the same standard applied every time. (See “What counts as a ‘call processed’ in these numbers?” below for what is and isn't included in that figure.)
Churn-risk signals surfaced automatically
237 calls have been flagged for detectable churn-risk language — a specific complaint, a comparison to a competitor, or a repeat unresolved issue — so a manager can follow up before a member decides to leave, rather than finding out after a disconnect request.
Conversation dynamics no manager could measure by ear
Across every call Call Coach IQ has scored since go-live, agents speak for 57.1% of call time on average (customers 40.6%), ask an average of 6.7 questions per call, and use filler words (um, uh, like, actually) at a rate of 1.60 per 100 words spoken — about 6.6 filler words per call. These are exact, per-call measurements, not estimates a manager could produce from memory even after listening to every single call.
Sales and retention moments that would otherwise go unnoticed
147 calls have been flagged as sales opportunities and 10 as retention saves in progress, giving managers a live view into where the team is already winning — without needing to listen to the call to know it happened.
Sentiment and coaching signal at scale
Across every scored call, 36.0% register positive sentiment and 6.6% negative — a distribution no manager could reliably estimate by ear across thousands of calls, but one that is now available on demand to guide where coaching time actually goes.
From Pioneer Connect's Customer Experience Team
Here is what two of Pioneer Connect's Customer Experience agents have to say about having Call Coach IQ score their calls every day.
“As a Customer Experience Specialist at Pioneer Connect, I use Call Coach IQ every day, and it’s become one of the most valuable tools in my workflow. It has made reviewing customer interactions so much faster and more effective than our previous process. What I like most is that it helps identify coaching opportunities that I might have otherwise missed. Instead of spending hours listening to entire calls, I can quickly focus on the conversations that matter most and use the insights to help improve the overall customer experience. The AI analysis is thorough, consistent, and saves our team a significant amount of time. The platform is also very easy to navigate. Everything is organized in a way that makes it simple to find the information I need, whether I’m reviewing calls, looking at trends, or preparing feedback. It has made my day-to-day responsibilities much more efficient. I’ve also noticed that having consistent, objective insights has helped us have better coaching conversations and has made it easier to recognize both strengths and areas for improvement. It’s a tool that genuinely supports growth instead of just measuring performance. Overall, Call Coach IQ has had a positive impact on both my work and our team’s ability to deliver a better customer experience. I would absolutely recommend it to any organization looking to improve quality assurance, coaching, and customer service.”
“After nearly three years in the industry, I believe this new call coaching tool is a significant advancement. It’s interactive, easy to navigate, and even has some easter eggs for the agents. This tool is excellent for both the business and the customers, as it centralizes the data and offers great flexibility to accommodate the specific needs of the business.”
Summary
2,978
Calls processed since go-live (May 1 – Jul 2026)
100%
Call coverage, every substantive call scored
87.8
Average score across the full scored population
237
Churn-risk signals surfaced automatically
147
Sales opportunities flagged for follow-up
10
Retention saves flagged in progress
~456 hrs
Manual review time Call Coach IQ eliminated for Alex’s team
~$14,000
Estimated manual QA labor cost avoided, at national-average manager pay
What Would This Look Like for Your Team?
Pioneer Connect's 13-agent team saved an estimated 456 hours and ~$14,004 in manual review labor in the roughly two months since go-live. Plug in your own team size and call volume below to see what full coverage would be worth for your center.
Manual QA Cost Calculator
Adjust the inputs to see your team's true cost of manual call review.
$11,440
Direct QA labor cost / year
1%
Call coverage achieved
91d
Avg feedback delay
Assumes 50 calls per agent per day, 5-minute review overhead per call. Missed coaching opportunities represent calls handled with no QA feedback.
Common Questions
How does Pioneer Connect’s team actually use these numbers day-to-day?
Alex’s two team managers start each day by reviewing calls Call Coach IQ has flagged for churn-risk or a low score, rather than sampling calls at random or waiting for a member to escalate. Flagged sales opportunities and retention saves route directly to the manager who can act on them, and the per-agent scoring trends inform which coaching conversations happen that week — replacing the ad hoc, overheard-on-the-floor process the team relied on before going live on May 1, 2026.
[1] What counts as a "call processed" in these numbers?
Every inbound interaction that reaches Pioneer Connect’s contact center is ingested and classified by Call Coach IQ. Of the 2,978 total interactions processed since go-live, 1,973 were substantive customer calls that were fully analyzed and scored against Pioneer Connect’s rubric — that is the population the scoring and sentiment figures in this case study refer to. The remaining calls were excluded from scoring for one of these reasons: (1) Voicemail — the interaction was a voicemail rather than a live conversation; (2) Internal Call — an agent-to-agent or other non-customer call; (3) Short Duration — the call fell below Pioneer Connect’s own configured minimum call length for scoring; (4) Excluded — the caller’s phone number matched a number on Pioneer Connect’s admin-configured exclusion list; (5) Needs Manual Review — the call did not have enough usable audio or metadata for Call Coach IQ to score it automatically; (6) Error — a processing failure (e.g. a failed audio fetch or transcription) occurred before scoring could complete. Disputed calls are not excluded — a dispute happens after a call has already been scored, when an agent or manager contests the AI-assigned score — so disputed calls remain part of both the 1,973 scored population and the 87.8 average score.
How is the average score calculated?
Each analyzed call is scored against Pioneer Connect's own scoring rubric inside Call Coach IQ, covering the criteria its Customer Experience managers define as good service. The 87.8 average reflects the full population of scored calls since go-live, not a sample.
What does "churn-risk flagged" mean?
Call Coach IQ's churn-risk detection reviews every substantive call for signals that a member may be considering leaving — a specific complaint, a comparison to a competitor, dissatisfaction with pricing or a repeat unresolved issue — and surfaces them to Pioneer Connect's managers. Before automated coverage, catching these signals depended on a manager overhearing the call live or a member escalating on their own.
See What Full Coverage Looks Like for Your Team
Pioneer Connect scores every call with Call Coach IQ. See what that would look like for your own contact center.
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