PHIL ISETT, MSOL
A Murray 10 Baja ten-speed bike to be precise, costing $126. For a seventh-grader in 1981, that was a huge objective. After giving a “logical and heartfelt presentation” to his parents, they agreed to purchase the bike on one condition: Phil had to work part-time at the family business – the Huntingdon TV Cable Co., Inc. – and pay back the total amount. One-hundred hours and five payment installments later, he fulfilled his obligation. (More on the bike later.)
Phil continued to work part-time at the Huntingdon TV Cable Co. throughout his middle school, high school, and college years. After graduating summa cum laude from Geneva College with a double-major in Business Administration and Economics, he began to work full-time for the business. Phil developed two local-origination television channels, as well as launched Digital Media Services, a company subsidiary that focused on designing client presentations. Three video productions were recognized as Telly Award™ Finalists.
After the company was sold to Adelphia Cable Communications in 1999, Phil served in a variety of roles, both in field operations and call center support. In the span of six years, he was promoted four times, from an Operations Manager supporting 6,500 customers to Director of Customer Care Process Improvement for the entire company. During this time, he led multi-site operations, policy-standardization projects, customer-support tools development, and personnel-preparation campaigns for new initiatives.
In 2002, Phil completed his graduate work at Geneva, obtaining a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership. In the years that followed, he was able to drive classroom academics into workplace application. To help enhance the effectiveness of both profit and non-profit organizations, Phil originated and applied practical leadership and alignment models.
In 2006, Adelphia was acquired by Time Warner Cable. During Phil’s tenure there, he served in several director roles overseeing a number of critical Customer Care areas – strategy development, initiative implementation, accounting and business measurements, customer-support tools, and knowledge management. He launched the national Office of the President, a customer-support structure to address customer escalations faster and more effectively. In addition, Phil facilitated an enterprise, consensus-building campaign to standardize the company’s credit policies and adjustment codes. The number of core codes were reduced from 3,400 to 36, and new procedures led to a 15.9% decline in year-over-year adjustment dollars. Further, he led the deployment of Customer 360°, a suite of customer-support tools for call center personnel.
Regarding Phil's efforts at the time, the Senior Director of Operations Support and his boss remarked, "Phil's partnering skills help us to move forward faster. The trust that Phil builds across the organization with his team, the broader [Customer] Care Team, and especially those in other functional areas is a huge contributor to the success of our organization."
Time Warner Cable merged with Charter Communications in 2016. As a member of its Operational Readiness team, Phil provided customer-support model analysis, facilitated process assessment and improvement, and deployed call-center impacting projects. His team was actively involved in eighty-five (85) different initiatives supporting Customer Account Management, Call Reduction, Customer-Support Tools, Product Deployments, and Policy/Procedure Standardization.
Phil reported to the Vice-President of Operational Readiness who commented, "Phil is an excellent communicator. He is very detailed . . . to ensure alignment and understanding of requirements for effective launch readiness and post-implementation support."
Currently, Phil leads the Office of Change Management (OCM) at Fulton Bank. In 2017, Phil had decided to change his career path and pursue interests in the field of change management. Fulton's OCM consults and collaborates with company stakeholders in the development of change management and change leadership initiatives, ensuring the organization maintains high-performance during times of change. Phil is serving as the Vice President, Organizational Change Manager for this group.
When asked what he’s learned from his experiences thus far, Phil shared, “Authentic partnerships - which take time to establish and grow - are critical for getting things done and done well. Also, I've found that people want to be a part of something special, something fulfilling; and . . .
Further, Phil added, “For an organization to achieve any measure of success, it needs to routinely affirm its purpose and principles, align its plans, processes and platforms, and advance its people and partnerships. I know what I’m saying is obvious and nothing new. But we tend to forget that just leaning on common sense can often lead to uncommon results."
After all these years, Phil still has the bicycle he purchased in 1981.
“It sounds a little silly, but it’s the first big thing I ever worked for. Even though I no longer ride it, I just don’t have the heart to let it go.”
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