Contact Name: Amy Quinn
Company: Cox Communications
Entry Name: CPN, Cox Product News, launch
Category: Internal Communications
Classification: MSO Headquarters
Project Summary
Planning & Strategy
Based on the results of the company’s Employee Opinion Survey, the internal
communications team in coordination with company leaders identified a need to support
Cox’s product strategy through targeted employee communications. To meet overall product
objectives, the internal communications team developed Cox Product News (CPN), a
quarterly news segment for Cox employees, created by Cox employees, which focused on
Cox products and services.
The strategic focus for CPN was to create greater awareness among employees about the
value of Cox products, competitor product offerings and “myth bust” employee product
misconceptions, as well as bring attention to marketing and sales success stories. CPN was
also seen as a tool to create executive visibility opportunities for company leaders, another
area of focus for the communications team.
To ensure success of the program, the internal communications team gathered vital
feedback from key stakeholders, including marketing, product development and regional
employee communications. Using the results of this feedback, the team developed an
overarching CPN plan, with a focus on Customer Care and Field Operations employees as a
crucial audience demographic, with all Cox employees as an ancillary audience.
To
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guide the planning and strategy, the team defined key objectives for CPN:
Support Cox strategic priorities related to our products.
Increase employee product knowledge and engagement with all Cox product lines.
Enhance employees’ competitive intelligence and empower employees to serve as “Cox
product ambassadors.”
Support ongoing product enhancements, initiatives and campaigns.
Reinforce leadership focus on “speed to market.”
Provide product-related communications tools to field communicators.
Initiate leader communications to cascade through the organization.
Refine communication process to ensure Field Ops and Customer Care employees have
access to ongoing product communications.
One of the key challenges we faced was engaging those specific employee segments we
identified as target audiences, because they typically rely less on traditional communication
channels (Intranet, e-mail communications). Because these employee audiences were
fundamental to the strategy of CPN, we clearly defined ways to ensure CPN reached these
specific employees.
Implementation
Once the CPN plan was refined and approved by leadership, we began to collect relevant
feedback for implementation from key stakeholder groups, including product marketing and
development, regional internal communications teams and functional department heads.
Because one of the key goals was to educate and increase product knowledge and dispel
myths in certain employee groups (notably Field Operations and Customer Care), we also
gathered feedback from those teams on content development, internal advertising and
effective distribution.
At the same time, because we wanted CPN to be news “for employees, brought by
employees,” we led an extensive internal search for anchors and “stars” to fill defined roles
in each segment. We selected two anchors from Cox departments and identified regular
CPN segments – “A Minute of Your Time,” a fast-paced one-on-one interview with product
and company leaders hosted by the Vice President of Public Affairs; “How Cool Is That?” an
entertaining product myth-busting segment; a regional-employee focused “Man on the
Street” segment concentrating on regional employee product engagement; and a Q&A
segment in which employees could submit product-related questions, which were answered
on-air.
To promote the launch of the first CPN, the internal communications team utilized all
current channels and also launched a new mobile-friendly video player to reach those
specific audiences who are less connected to ordinary communication channels. We also
provided CPN in formats for Customer Care employees (on their dedicated Intranet) and to
Field employees on CDs, jump drives and - later - as links for supervisors to use in weekly
huddles, team meetings and one-one sessions.
Feedback on the initial launch was extremely positive – and provided an opportunity to
gather additional useful feedback from employees on what they liked, what could be
improved and how to make future CPN segments more relevant.
To complement our product news communications and support CPN, we also launched CPN
Online, a “one-stop-shop” for product news stories and features on the employee Intranet.
We now drive employee traffic to CPN Online to get the latest CPN broadcast as well as the
most up-to-date product news.
Results
View rates for the initial CPN broadcasts from the corporate site are approximately 5,000
(One-fourth of the total employee population). Added to this measurement is the viewership
on the Customer Care Intranet, the view rates for Field Operations employees on CDs, jump
drives and links we distributed to supervisors or – most importantly – the view rates from
regional news channels in all Cox markets, which touch the entire employee population of
approximately 20,000 people.
Various metrics and feedback point to an overall view rate in the range 65% to
70% of the full Cox employee population, a remarkable rate of return. For targeted
employees, Customer Care posted CPN on their employee Intranet site and Field Operations
team leaders shared CPN as part of staff meetings and team huddles, and used as an
employee educational tool.
Additionally, feedback from frontline employees to the President of the company has been
extremely positive and points to a high level of employee engagement with CPN, and
subsequently with CPN Online. We have also gathered feedback from our Employee
Communications Advisory Council on the positive impact of CPN.
Sample employee comments:
 Cool, slick, professionally done and loved the news segments
 Was the right length and product content to keep people interested and engaged
 Great graphics and production quality; liked seeing leaders
 A creative and engaging way to educate and promote our products
 Loved being able to watch on Blackberry, mobile devices, online and in meetings
Based on the effectiveness of CPN, the team has made the CPN quarterly broadcast and
CPN Online a key component of our overall internal communications strategy. Going
forward, we continue to refine CPN to meet the needs of the business and support employee
education, awareness and engagement across the broad Cox enterprise, having surpassed
our goal with its initial launch.