Cox's Launching Pad Salutes the Customer

Cable World, Jan 13, 2003

Byline: SHIRLEY BRADY

During his 16 years overseeing Cox's Hampton Roads, Va., system, former General Electric engineer-turned-marketer Franklin (but call him Frank) Bowers has won numerous awards for running the most profitable Cox system - but that's not his only accolade.

His subscriber base has mushroomed from 135,000 to more than 415,000 thanks to strategic acquisitions and savvy subscriber-growth tactics. The fifth-largest Cox system was also the first to launch Cox Business Services, and its success has made it the template for subsequent rollouts in other markets. It's been a testing ground and launch pad for advanced services such as VOD, a measure of the confidence Cox corporate has in Bowers and his team.

"Frank and his team have built a cohesive powerhouse system grown from several complex acquisitions of adjacent properties," says Claus Kroeger, Cox's SVP of operations. "Across their vast operating region, they consistently deliver to customers multiple digital services with a high degree of customer focus. Their spirit of total integration within the system and with the local community, maritime industries and government has created Cox Business Services' largest revenue center in the country and a model for collaboration between ad sales, marketing and community outreach."

Butch Blanks, director of management services for Newport News, praises Cox's performance during its upgrade. "They continue to be very responsive and committed to customer service in our city and have greatly enhanced its community service efforts," he says.

Bowers is particularly proud of the value Cox has brought to the Hampton Roads community, which is home to the world's largest naval base, in Norfolk, and other military sites such as Langley Air Force Base on Virginia's Tidewater peninsula.

The area's military bases are key customers of Cox Business Services, the system's commercial broadband operation that grew out of the acquisition of Merrill Lynch's Teleport Communications Group in 1992. The business unit offers bundled phone and high-speed Internet service.

"We thought the business market was a very good market for us and started a small company called Cox Fibernet with a small number of employees," says Bowers. "Dana Coltrin was put in charge of it - he was my VP of engineering technology - and he put in about 25% of his time into this little business. He found it was a full-time business and within 12 to 18 months it was cash-flow-positive."

Coltrin, who still runs Cox Business Services in Hampton Roads, launched the full-blown offering in 1993 by pitching Internet access and phone service to large business accounts such as Langley AFB, which now boasts more than 16,000 connections to Cox's platform.

The division reached out to Hampton Roads' small and midsize businesses in 2001 with the Cox Office Solutions Pak, which includes high-speed data access, two digital business phone lines with four features per line and 100 long-distance minutes per line for a flat monthly rate plus one-time installation fee. The growth rate for the small business sector alone has been more than 50% a year, says Coltrin.

"Over 60% of the employers with more than 1,000 employees in this market have Cox as their main phone and data supplier," he notes. "And we have 80% of employers with more than 2,500 employees."

About 30% of Hampton Roads' population is connected to the military in some way, thanks to Langley, the Norfolk Naval Base and several army bases.

"The military presence makes us pay attention to women," says Colette Jelineo, the system's VP of marketing, referring to the company's focus on keeping customers whose spouses are away from home. "The African-American and Filipino populations are also significant here, and that's related to the military presence, so we do community outreach to them."

That outreach includes the Filipino Channel, a digital network costing $10.95 a month, and Sea Net, a naval affairs program that airs on local origination Channel 11 (dubbed WCOX) and is picked up in other Cox systems near naval bases such as Pensacola and San Diego.

"We also have a lot of dependents here, so there are huge swings in population when the carrier battle group goes out," says Bowers. "During the Gulf War, we saw about 60,000 people leave town over a three-month period and then after the war they came back, so we're really affected by what's going on beyond Hampton Roads."

The military routinely reaches out to Cox during times of crisis.

"During certain emergency situations, such as when the Iowa - a battleship that came out of this base - blew up, we came in and put special communications in for the Navy so they could have a gathering area for dependents and families to hear what's going on," says Bowers. "We did the same thing during Desert Storm. When the military have emergency needs they come to us to provide access to CNN and emergency telephone services to various locations, so they know they can call us because we don't ask any questions, we just get it done."