Humans of iQmetrix: Courtney Miller, Product Marketing

In the sixth of our Humans of iQmetrix mini-profiles, we sat down with Courtney Miller. She’s the Product Marketing Analyst in iQmetrix’s Product Marketing team, a small-town Kentucky resident, and an iQer since Valentine’s Day 2022. 

Her team lead Megan Howse describes Courtney as ​“diligent, collaborative, perceptive, and serene” — an ideal colleague all round! Here’s a little bit more about her.

iQmetrix: Tell us a bit about your role at iQmetrix.

Courtney: I’m a product marketing analyst, and my day-to-day varies greatly. First, we’re such a small team [of three]. But second, it’s the nature of the work — it’s always changing, and that’s what’s so exciting about telco. I think if I was analyzing something like clothing, it would get quite boring after a while. But since telco is just in this constant state of motion, there’s always a lot to keep up with, and that greatly impacts what we’re deciding to prioritize or what different projects we might have.

One thing that I’m responsible for is our TAM (Total Addressable Market) document, so I determined what our market share is, and different strategies to grow that market share. We have a detailed spreadsheet of everyone within our reach in the US and Canada — every single carrier, authorized retailer, MVNO, national retailer, wireline company, OEM, and so on. We keep track of who they are, where they are and what their door counts are, their subscriber numbers, and much more information. 

Our segmentation is something else that I’m responsible for. It’s probably one of my favorite parts of my role because I find it so interesting to look at these different buckets of customers and potential clients in the marketplace. Again, our industry is constantly changing, to the degree where we need to redo our segmentation at least once a year as new players enter the wireless space.

I also analyze our competitive intelligence — how are we better and what’s our competitive edge? — and product health is also something I maintain. How successful we are with our products and do we have room for market growth in a certain product? And then the carrier reports I create are one of the main methods of keeping up with industry trends, which helps us see where the growth is happening in the industry, and where the shifts are going on. 

What did you do before iQmetrix?

I studied information technology in college, so I have a Bachelor in information technology and an Associate in web programming. As I was nearing graduation, I realized that what I was studying was not necessarily what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But I was hopeful I could find something where I’m able to pivot these skills into something else that I enjoy more. I ended up getting a job at Bluegrass Cellular corporate office, just about a seven-minute drive from my house! This was supposed to be the job I was doing while I figured out my next steps, but it was surprisingly rewarding. 

After a stint creating reports for the Bluegrass call center, I was moved upstairs to the Sales and Marketing team, where I was a Business and Marketing Analyst. This was more along the skillset that I’d studied, because I was able to apply a lot of the knowledge from my IT degree to the dashboard I was creating, or the scripts I was running in Excel, or the more in-depth data analysis that I was doing with some of my programming skills. My work there was dashboard creation at first and then, once we got those up and running, I shifted to analyzing our sales performance and recommending different promotions, based on seasonality, on device releases, and on inventory levels. So maybe, for example, we had too many Samsung Galaxies and we had to run those out before we had to write them off. I had to figure out the sweet spot selling those in a promo, so that we could get them out and not lose any money on them. Then also monitoring the performance of those promotions. I loved that job, and I would have stayed for as long as they’d have me — it was like a second family to me.

So, what happened? What’s the story that got you to iQmetrix?

What happened is that Bluegrass Cellular was acquired by Verizon in fall 2020. Many Bluegrass employees didn’t keep their jobs, although most of us were given several months of fair warning. I stayed on longer than most, because I was needed for reporting even after the acquisition was complete, so I didn’t officially leave my role supporting legacy Bluegrass reporting at Verizon until late November 2021. Two former Bluegrass colleagues had already joined iQmetrix, so the company was already on my radar as a great place to work, and one of them was the Lead of Product Marketing at the time I was looking for a role. The position he was recruiting, Product Marketing Analyst, was a perfect fit for my goals and experience, and I started on February 14, 2022.

What’s something that we might not know about you?

I live in Elizabethtown, Kentucky — a small town about 45 minutes south of Louisville. I’m extremely family oriented, and most of my family live in my town or within 20 minutes’ drive. I have my two sisters that I spend a lot of time with, and I have some close friends nearby. We like to go to cultural places like art museums, or drive to Indianapolis or Nashville or Cincinnati and check out different exhibits that are in the area. We also go to a lot of movies, because we live in a small town and that’s something that’s easy to do without venturing out to places that are two-plus hours away. I’m also a big reader with a very eclectic taste in books, from literary memoirs to political biographies to beach reads! I tend to deep dive, as I’m curious about everything, and I think that trait really helps me in my job.

I also have a dog named Peanut, and a cat, Lavender. 

Want to learn more about the Humans of iQmetrix? Follow the series on our blog or our Instagram page.