 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech Tech Talks on Think Tech. Surprise. Okay, and we're talking about broadband. We're talking about how broadband is doing. The broadband providers are doing in the time of the virus. There's somebody who knows, there's somebody who's the founder and CEO of SurfPak. SurfPak is a broadband provider, among other things. Richard Zhang. Hi, Richard. Thank you for joining us this morning. Hey, good morning, Jay. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Here we are. We're actually not that far into it. When you start counting the days and the weeks, Hawaii hasn't had more than about three weeks or so in a serious virus. I think our first case was disclosed on March 6th or so. It's not that long ago. Our world has completely changed since then. Not only the cases, but the way we greet each other and talk to each other, the way we do business, of course. Our lives in general have been seriously impacted over that very short period of time. Tell me, how has your life at SurfPak been impacted in that short period of time? Yes, Jay. This is definitely a challenging time for everyone. Nobody would expect this, as you said, three weeks ago. After the first case in Hawaii, we made a lot of adjustments in the business and how to adapt to this because the customer demand is quite different from before. What? Well, certainly it's had that effect on every business I know, except we have distinction going on these days between essential services and non-essential services. SurfPak and broadband providers in general are clearly essential services. So how did this come to your attention as the CEO and what reaction did you have and what steps did you take and what steps are you taking now to deal with the extraordinary changes in our world? Yeah, I think when this whole thing started, first, just like everybody, we were like, oh, okay, it's some cases on the mainland. It's not a big deal in Hawaii. Then we started noticing people looking at ways to work from home because we provide the broadband internet services and phone services for businesses. So when some of the customers start calling and say, hey, what can I do? And I talked to some other businesses, they already started the contingency plan. What are they going to do in case that the office shut down and business shut down? So after a little bit, do nothing in the beginning, we realized, hey, this thing is going to hit us really quick, really fast. We see this avalanche coming towards us. So basically, we get our, lucky thing is we have a business continuity plan. We do every year, we do dry runs. So we just bring the plan and put it in place. Initially, we were thinking about, okay, have an employee go home, test the home internet to make sure they can still access the system from home answering phone calls. So during the day, we have a plan to do it a week later. Then in the evening, we realized, hey, this thing is going to be hitting us really hard. So we're like, okay, let's accelerate the plan and do the testing the next day. So that was a Friday about two weeks ago, but maybe three weeks ago now. Then after that weekend, we just send everybody, send email to every employee that, hey, if you can work from home, you should start from home. So that is actually one week before the city shut down. And during that week, we see our call volume literally doubled. We were swamped with phone calls and people say, hey, I need to work from home. I need to send all my phone calls to voicemail or play a different greeting. So it's lucky we have everybody working on our phone already. So we don't have to worry about our internal operation. So that free up all the resources we can go out and help the customers. You're talking about changing the connection from the office to the home. You're talking about educating people and helping them reconnect from home, both on broadband and also on voice over IP, which is really part of broadband, I guess. And so that would be reasonable to anticipate as soon as you find out that people are going to have to work at home, you know already that they don't have those connections at home and they'll be calling you because you offered telephone support. So you knew you put all that together immediately and you knew that you would have to be prepared for that kind of onslaught of telephone calls. And I suppose that people were slightly panicky and demanding. Right, right. I mean people, we always pride of our customer service. So when people call us, they can always get hold of engineer, talk to people. So we are not, I don't think any business is designed to have this like double call volume, literally overnight coming in. And we really struck in the beginning, we tried to get it back to the customer as soon as possible. And it is very challenging. So the team really step up every day, work long hours and over the weekend, get the tickets answered, get the problem resolved for the customers. How hard was it, Richard? How hard was it to connect all your people at home? That sounds like for you, it would have been pretty easy. Yeah, once, you know, the thing is, you know, people when they access, if they go home, use the Internet, they need to access the resources in the office. So we need to make sure this is secure. So for our managing network customers, we already have Firewall in place, VP in place. So it's just a matter of give change, give them a chill so they can, you know, put the VP connection at home so they can access the company resources securely from their home office. And the same thing with the voice IP phone, we need to, you know, set it up or give them credentials and get everything running. The biggest challenge is it's not hard, it's more like resource taking. We need to get engineers to set things up, talk to the customers. Everybody home connection is different, you know, we need to make sure that, you know, if there is any, you know, issues with their home connection or home computer setup, we need to work them through the different scenarios and get things running for them. So as I said, the hardest challenge is how do we get resources on our side to help people in a timely manner? Yeah, well, disclosure, you're our broadband provider at Think Tech. It's very important, central to our operation. And we like you. And you have always been good on support. So this is part of your brand. And I know that, you know, as all the customers of SIRVPAC, all customers want to, you know, want to be able to call you. And that's an important thing. Other companies, you can't get through. You can never get through, even on a good day. So you can always find an engineer, a technical support person at SIRVPAC. And I guess, you know, the question I have is, you know, it goes beyond just the broadband. It goes beyond just the broadband and the void phone. Because when people go home, they're using their computers. And now your engineers, you know, they not only have to answer questions about the, you know, the basic provision for the broadband and the basic provision for the phone, but there's going to be all these leakover questions about how I set my computer up. Am I right? Right, right. Yeah, definitely. So we have to go above and beyond how people are on the issues. Normally, we don't have to resolve, right? But now, you know, before the phone in the office, we set up the connection, the network in the office, when they go home, it's, you know, totally different setup. So we have to really work through the steps and, you know, different issues and have different solutions. We had really nailed down to this. So one thing we were really like, when we were slaughtered by the customer phone calls, one of my friends came in and talked to me and said, hey, you know, he own a business that does, you know, reservations for Lua, you know, of course, when this thing blew up, you know, there was nobody having, you know, Lua, nobody wants to come to Lua anymore. So he's like, you know, I have a few people here, they're really good in, you know, call center and that, you know, how to customers, can you use them? Like, first I was like, yeah, you know, this is pretty technical. We probably cannot use it. Then we're like, wait a minute, you know, we have this, you know, huge volume phone call coming in, you know, we can probably train these people very quickly. They can get the customer information, you know, get all the tickets created so I can use all my engineers' time to solve technical problems. But in terms of communication, you know, gather information, and these people can handle it. So within, actually, literally within a couple hours, we get like three call center people up and running, and you know, set up VM, set up, you know, VoIP phones, so they, yeah, they have to work from home. So, you know, our, we have one engineer train these people, as I said, literally, then we have all the recording, actually, we have a transcription, we transcribe all the phone calls so we can review it to find all the problems. And, you know, these people literally like, you know, within two days, they can come to full speed and be able to answer phone calls. So that is a huge thing for us because that free up all the resources for the engineer so we can really handle on the, handle those hard technical problems. Wow, that's a win-win-win-win. Yeah, you know, they still have jobs, you know. Exactly. They have jobs that owner don't have to worry about, oh, I have to, you know, follow these people, you know, these people have a job, they have pay, and to help our customer service and our engineers, you know, solve the problem. So, yeah, so this company wins, we win, and the customer wins. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lesson, there's many lessons in there, not only for broadband providers, but for others. I mean, it's a service to the community, what you've done. You've pulled them, you've taken them off the streets, so to speak, and you've repurposed them for things they can do when you've kept them in the workforce. You've helped to, you know, modify the shock the community, the business community, would otherwise have on this. So what do you do with the company that calls you, Richard, and says, you know, we can't operate anymore. We're not an essential service. Our employees have to go home. The way we do what we, you know, our business model does not permit them to work from home, is no way they can be helpful at home. So we're going to have to shut down on this, Richard. Do you have that experience, and what do you do? Yeah, we have, you know, customers, you know, sending emails and calls for, you know, for like, the business is not running, or even they run, but they couldn't pay us, or, you know, even for us, right, we are essential, you know, we will always be available for customers, but I worry so much, you know, it's like, what if the customer couldn't pay us, you know, are we going to be having trouble paying, you know, my employees, you know, my vendors, what if my vendors just cut off my service. So it is, you know, as a, as the CEO of the company, that's definitely a huge, huge concern for us. Yeah. Well, you know, there've been articles in both the Times and I think the Wall Street Journal about April 1, which is coming two days from now. And April 1 is the first of the month and it's, it's, it's bill payment day. It's paying the rent, it's, you know, it's paying all kinds of suppliers, it's, it's paying, you know, mortgages and loans, and it always happens on the first. And in both of these articles that appeared that I noticed, you know, they're, they're concerned, they're, they're concerned about, you know, what, what happens to the country when every, it's like, it's like, it's like Y2K, if you remember Y2K, it all happens on the same day, right? And nobody knows exactly what's going to happen. So April 1st, all these bills come due. And I mean, you may get a flood of calls and letters and emails and telling you that, oh, sorry, I can't pay, or maybe not. I don't know. And so, and the same thing with the banks and the same thing with the mortgage companies and so forth. So we're going to find out soon. And one of the things that you mentioned before we started was that this is not the kind of thing where you make a plan and then something happens like coronavirus. And so you adapt your plan. This, this is not monthly, monthly change in plan or even weekly change in plan. You review your plan every day. Tell me about how that works. Yeah. So definitely had you mentioned, you know, Y2K, people know Y2K will come, you know, when, you know, it's 2,000 January 1st. So people have years of time to plan for this. And, you know, this coronavirus, you know, even though it's, you know, in China for a few months, you know, honestly, nobody, even including me, you know, nobody takes it seriously. They're like, okay, whatever, you know, it's like 1,000 miles. Yeah. So what really helped us, you know, we do have, you know, business continuity planning for actually has been going on for the last four years. So every year, you know, we look at our plan to see, hey, if there's something happening, you know, typically people don't plan for, you know, for pandemic, right? People plan for, you know, local disaster, you know, hurricane tsunami, maybe something like that. And this one, but those plans, although it doesn't apply to here directly, but definitely help us to understand, you know, what are we going to do when this thing happens? So one thing, as you mentioned, the changing, this thing is like changing so fast, right? Like we initial to send everybody home, but we're weak ahead of time. We think, okay, we have a few days plan, you know, we have one engineer go home, the next day, another engineer, then, you know, so after a week, we get everything ready, we can send everybody home. Then we had to plan on Thursday, then Thursday evening, we look at news, we see the, you know, this thing is coming really hard. We're like, wait, we kind of wait for a week. So we decided right away. So Friday morning, everybody come in, we have a company meeting, then, you know, after lunch, everybody go home, right? Everybody send everybody home and, you know, take the computer, take your monitor, take the phones, then we test it, see how everything works, which is good because we found some problem, right? Some people didn't have good internet at home, okay? Somebody's, you know, router is not working well. So that helped us to really address the issues and get those problems resolved before we get huge amount of phone calls coming in. So, yeah, this thing, you know, definitely, you know, you need to look at the situation and the review plan, you know, probably multiple times day and that's the only way to survive in this pandemic. Once I want to add, you know, we, in this whole process, we really communicate with employees, you know, we have the most workforce staying at home now. So, you know, before, you know, there is meetings or, you know, water cooler by the water cooler, you know, water tank, we can start talking, you know, address people concerns. So even with, you know, people working from home, we have Zoom meetings, you know, all hands meeting, talk about, hey, how's the company doing, you know, what are we face in the future, you know, talk about those, you know, concerns from customers who couldn't pay us, you know, what are we going to do, you know, I communicate that very clearly with all the employees, right? The company has enough reserve, we're going to survive, you know, even for a few months, if we don't have, you know, customer payment, we can still survive. So it's another problem, you know, and, but, you know, if this goes even longer, then we might have a problem too. So I communicate that they're very clearly with all the employees and it's a very critical situation. Yeah, we live in strange and threatening times. You know, one thing is, have you been thinking about what happens at the end of the, you know, at the end, at the end of the crisis? I mean, hopefully not would, at some point, it's going to end. We don't have to figure that out right here now when it's going to end. Nobody knows when it's going to end. But let's say it's going to end in the space of a year, a year and a half. Oh my God, that's a long time. Do you have an idea about how, you know, you will reorganize yourself? Maybe it's gradual, maybe it's all of a sudden. How are you going to bring everybody back, you know, to your office premises? You can do it gradually and how are you going to, you know, get back to normal? Yeah, I don't know, you know, this is going to be a really hard question because, you know, the normal, I would, yeah, I can definitely imagine, you know, after several months or maybe, as you said, a year, everything will get to the normal. But I can guarantee you one thing, the normal is going to be different than normal. It's going to be a new normal. Yes. How would it be different, Richard? Do you have an idea about how it will be different? Well, I can only, you know, there's, you know, lots of things will change, right? So I can speculate on one thing, you know, like people will get used to work from home, right? The business owners will say, hey, you know, working from home is not a bad thing. Maybe more people can work from home. So, you know, definitely, you know, we will adapt to this. You know, our business has been adapted in all these years. We started 2004. We keep adding new services. So I'm pretty sure we're going to be different a year from now in terms of services we provide. But how is it going to happen? What's it going to be? You know, I think it's just like everybody's guessing. There's still a little too early to tell. Yeah. One thing you said that sounds interesting, though, you know, you bring in additional staff to do triage, you know, to do input and get a general idea about what people are calling about and then refer them to the engineers, you know. That two-level kind of triage seems to me that's something that sounds so good and so useful and so helpful to your business is one possibility where you might continue that after things return to normal now. Yeah. So, you know, when we get hit by this, you know, lots of business to try to adapt to the new things, right? Even the restaurant, you know, in the first week, first weekend, you know, I want to support the local business, you know. I have the means so I want to, you know, to take out for some of my favorite restaurants, right? I don't want them shut down and I couldn't, you know, enjoy the food I like. So, I called them a week ago, you know, out of some food, no problem, the line went through very quickly. And this weekend, I called several restaurants, their line's so busy, they couldn't even take my calls. So, as you can see, you know, this, everything is, you know, changing so fast. It really, it's really hard to predict, you know. One thing you can see from this example, you know, if you're doing well, you've serviced your customer well, people will come back to you, right? I mean, people will still take your services. They will love you. So, that's why in the last few weeks, we try so hard to answer every phone call we try our best not to send people to a voicemail or have them wait for, you know, long hours, you know, it's like, that's, you know, that's our job. We spend all the resources, answer people's calls, take care of them. I'm sure people will. Sure, it'll pay off, yeah. You know, when we spoke last, Richard, it was January 10th, I don't know if you remember, but ThinkTech always covers the Pacific Telecommunications conference. And we were there, we took some footage of you and all that. And you talked at some length with some great, great interest and excitement about your new data center. Then I wonder, you know, how your data center has been going in the throes of the crisis. Tell me about the status of it, yeah. Yeah, it's great. You know, I'm working at the Mealy Learning today. I still, you know, travel between the two offices. And I can tell you the project is at full speed. And, you know, I guess a lot of contractors, the subcontractors, they, they, the other work has slowed down. But our work, you know, since it's tied with essential services, data center telecommunications. So we are, you know, considered as an essential service. So all the contractors have been working and we didn't slow a little bit. In some cases, we actually accelerated the project because more resources. We do have, you know, have to make some adjustments. So when people work in the data center construction area, we all have to wear masks. So it is good because, you know, our understanding is this they're so hard to get. They may not be able to prevent the virus, but at least if, you know, if I'm sick or for whatever reason, I don't even know this going to block, I spread a virus to other people. So we basically have a policy, you talk about change, we have the policy overnight and we enforce it and they say everybody outside needs to wear these masks. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wanted to talk about one other thing we have a few minutes left and that is where broadband fits from your point of view in the community. I mean, everybody's trying to kind of refigure the economy now, you know, as the economy declines and it is declining, what's going to be problematic? What's going to stop first and second? And if business A stops, what is it going to be on business B and C and D? How are they all connected? And where does broadband fit in all of that? Where do you fit in all of that? What happens, and this is my big question, what happens in the ghost of Christmas future? If you can't do broadband, if we don't have broadband, what is life like here in these islands here in our community? Can you talk about it? Yeah, definitely. You know, the internet and the broadband is critical to, you know, before people talking about the importance, now people realize how important this is because, you know, people need to work from home, like my kids, in two days, they're going to start a new school and they're going to be learning. So they need broadband services. People, you know, had been building internet, but a lot of time we are not ready for this, you know, the bandwidth usage has been skyrocketing. And I heard like in Europe, the government has asked Netflix to drop the video quality from high definition to low resolution because their network just couldn't handle it. So now everybody knows the internet is super important and we need to invest, you know, the private companies and the government, you know, everybody needs to invest into broadband, you know, the whole internet infrastructure, be able to adapt to this new reality that lots of people will be working from home. Yeah, you think we could be in a situation where we have to give up resolution on our internet and our broadband, such as in Europe, such as with Netflix? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think sometimes when I watch Netflix, you know, the quality was not that great. Maybe it's automatically dropped or anything. Right. It's happening already. Well, I'm certainly hope this is an opportunity for people to realize the problem, you know, before the effort, just like we need to produce masks, you know, and, you know, other medical supplies, the same thing, toilet paper. Well, let me just add this last thought and that is, you know, it's really necessary, in my view, that we have broadband, that we have the availability of the internet in these dark times when we were all shuttered in and sheltered in, because life would be very tough without those things. But the other element, and I think it's worth mentioning, is that when we get out of this, when we see the light at the end of the tunnel, when we try to get back to normal, we're going to need broadband all the more to knit the community, knit the economy back up together. We cannot afford to lose it, because if we lose it, then it'd be really hard to bring back our economy, don't you agree? Yeah, definitely. This, you know, the broadband internet not just for, you know, entertainment, it's become essential for workforce and, you know, people have been talking about telemedicine, right, with the pandemic. I heard some machine, you can like take blood pressure and, you know, do some basic testing when you have the machine. So those things can not only make us more efficient, but save people's lives. Yeah. Well, thank you, Richard. Richard Zhang, the CEO of ServPak, a great company, I can tell you from personal experience. Thank you so much for coming on our show and talking about these things. All the best to you and stay safe, and all your people stay safe, Richard. Aloha. Thank you.