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The situation:
With a fast-growing Hispanic population, Kansas is a good example of a market that is more diverse today than it was five years ago. It's also a good example of a Cox system that looked past the numbers represented in its customer demographics to ask who is missing from our customer population and why they are choosing not to do business with Cox.

By asking these questions, Cox's local management found that while the Hispanic population is as large as 52% of the overall market in some cities, a much smaller percentage of Hispanics were Cox customers. Moreover, they noticed a much higher churn rate among Hispanic customers. "This told us we were attracting the customers but we weren't keeping them," explains Adina Barnes, Director of Marketing in Kansas.

To figure out why, the Kansas team then formed a cross-functional team to examine how Cox relates to its Hispanic customers. Through their investigations and research, they learned that the Hispanic market has a different value system than the customer base that the team was accustomed to serving. While Cox was accustomed to meeting the needs of customers for whom price was the key selling point, the team discovered that Hispanic customers put more value on ongoing service. "We found that the way to build loyalty with this customer base is through continuous service," Barnes says. "We'd been focusing on price as the way to sell to them, but in a very real sense, service is selling to these consumers."

The Solution:
As a result of this new understanding, the marketing group undertook activities that go beyond what is considered typical marketing terrain. They revamped bills and product literature, printed them in Spanish, and made sure that Cox's counters, call centers and field reps had the tools they needed to help these customers understand how to use our products.

Barnes says, "It's unnatural for me to think that the right mix of programming and discount aren't what drives sales. But for this market, we have to enlarge our concept of selling so that it includes activities that meet this customer group's need for service. That's what it means to be a good company for people to do business with, across every dimension of our population."

The Results:
Early results in Kansas already show a measurable drop in the Hispanic churn rate - evidence again of the value diversity brings to us and to our customers.