Cruising to Las Vegas: Mark Lipford is on a roll at Cox Communications' fast-growing system in Sin City

Cable World, Feb 25, 2002 by Mavis Scanlon

It isn't every day that one gets calls from a job recruiter while vacationing in the Caribbean. But that's exactly what happened to Mark Lipford, who at the time was VP-operations at Cablevision Systems.

Last July Fourth, Lipford was on a cruise ship off the coast of Jamaica with his wife, kids and parents, when an executive recruiter reached him on his cellphone to tell him about a position with Cox Communications.

Cox was looking to replace Jill Campbell, the well-regarded general manager of Cox's Vegas operations who had been named VP-operations in May.

One month, several phone interviews, one trip to Vegas and two trips to Atlanta later, Lipford, 45, took the job.

"An opportunity to work for Cox and run the Vegas system doesn't come along very often," he says.

Within a week of landing in Vegas, Lipford held a dozen small "shirtsleeves" meetings with the system's employees to determine their needs, according to Steve Schorr, the Vegas system's VP-public affairs. Lipford responded immediately to one small complaint: a lack of hooks on the bathroom stall doors. "The next day," Schorr says, "there were hooks."

A more significant request from employees was for cross-training, especially from customer care representatives who often had to transfer callers to other departments to have their simple questions answered. Within 30 to 60 days, customer care reps began learning other aspects of the business, even accompanying technicians on truck rolls.

"That's fast in the cable business to get it all together," Schorr says.

Lipford says employee training and morale are crucial.

"I think we're creating a culture where it's fun to come to work and where [the employees] feel valued and respected," Lipford says. In addition to training, he's taking a cue from the Cox practice of "serious career pathing." "I like to surround myself with the best and brightest," he says.

He's also doing a good job of keeping those people. The Vegas system's turnover rate is less than 7%, Lipford says, which is low considering employee turnover is as high as 20% at some other places.

The Las Vegas system is one of Cox's fastest growing. Nevada's population increased by 66.3% over the last decade, according to the 2000 Census, a greater percentage than any other state. That's a blessing and a curse to Lipford, who oversaw 15,000 new basic connections for a net gain of 3,800 basic customers in January alone. Managing that growth is one of the system's challenges. "When someone moves into that house we have to be there," he says.

Lipford is proud that service appointments are down to a two-hour window--with a 98% on-time rate.

Additionally, the system has responded to the city's burgeoning Hispanic and other minority communities with new foreign-language programming, for example.

Dick Fraim, general manager and president of Las Vegas's CBS affiliate, KLAS-TV, calls Lipford a forward-looking thinker who is not only creative, but open to others' ideas. Cox, KLAS and Greenspun Media, owner of the Las Vegas Sun, among other media properties, and a minority owner of the Vegas cable system (Cox bought the system from Greenspun in October 1998) are partners in cable news channel Las Vegas One, and Fraim has met with Lipford on an almost monthly basis as a result.

Lipford is also adamant about getting and keeping Cox involved in the Vegas community; Fraim says Lipford's desire to make Cox a "responsible force" was clear at their very first meeting. "Every month he has been more impressive to me," Fraim says.

Cox is involved with the United Way, the Boys and Girls Clubs and the YMCA. The system also has set up a Safe Haven program for battered women--Cox is printing bumper stickers carrying the phone number of a shelter--and is supporting alternative schools in the area and a Nevada-based adoption program.

Lipford says he encourages his employees not to miss their families' Little League games and dance recitals. And while ten-hour days are "not unusual" for him, Lipford maintains that his No. 1 goal for this year is to balance his own work and home life, including not missing his son's ball games.

Although he misses the personal and professional relationships he forged over two decades of working on the East Coast--prior to Cablevision, Lip ford was a regional vice president for the former Time Warner Communications in Rochester, N.Y.--he says he is relishing the opportunities afforded him in southern Nevada.

He recently treated his family to a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon to celebrate his son Matthew's tenth birthday.

COX COMMUNICATIONS LAS VEGAS

OWNERSHIP: 80% owned by Cox; 20% owned by the Greenspun family

MILES OF PLANT: 5,341 coaxial miles and 746 fiber miles

PERCENT UPGRADED: 100%

HOMES PASSED: 613,935

TOTAL SUBS: 374,000

DIGITAL SUBS: 112,000

HIGH-SPEED SUBS: 66,340

BASIC CABLE RATE: $9.70/month (price decreases as of March 1)

EXPANDED BASIC: $25.25/month **

DIGITAL RATE: $7.95-$14.95/month

HIGH-SPEED RATE: $34.95/month **

ADVERTISING AVAILABILITY: local avails on 46

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