Paperless Telecom: Cox Business cuts paper use through electronic ordering

Like Verizon, another telecom service provider that has undertaken paperless initiatives which have benefited the company as well as the environment is Cox Business, a division of the cable television giant that provides telecommunications services to business customers. The company now encourages customers to place service orders electronically using a system provided by RPost.

Cox Business undertook the initiative as part of its parent company Cox Enterprise’s Cox Conserves program, which has reduced the organization’s carbon footprint by 10% since 2000 and plans to reduce it by an additional 20% by 2017.

Paperless order placement is an option, rather than a requirement, for Cox Business customers, but Dan Hoffman, director of technical operations for the service provider, estimated that close to half, if not more than half, of all orders now come in electronically.

“It allows us to communicate with the customer in a paperless manner, and it remains paperless all the way through to the installation,” Hoffman explained. Without it, customers have to sign a printed contract and fax it, send it by US mail or hand-deliver it to Cox Business. Considering that some large customers may have three to four changes to their service a week, and that the average contract has several pages, Cox Business estimates that it saved more than 50,000 pieces of paper in the fourth quarter of 2008 through the electronic ordering option.

The RPost system relies on software installed on each sales representative’s computer. “The sales rep attaches the contract into an RPost email, which the customer receives with the attachment,” Hoffman said. “Embedded in the email is an ‘I accept’ button. If customers are pleased with the attachment, they click the button in the email and enter their customer information, and that information is electronically sealed onto the attachment.”

Because Cox Business buys RPost as a hosted service, all contract documentation resides with a third party. “The customer can pull that information without us being involved,” said Hoffman.

Another advantage of that approach is that it did not require a large upfront investment. Cox Business pays for the service on a per-transaction basis. “It’s easier to cost-justify because you have direct revenue to tie every order to,” Hoffman noted.

But perhaps the biggest benefit of the electronic ordering option, for Cox Business and its customers, is that it has reduced the amount of time it takes to get contracts back from the customer. With the paper-based approach, a sales rep sends out a contract and waits several days for it to be returned. “Now they’re on the phone while they send it,” Hoffman explained. “They can walk the customer through the documentation and the customer can click ‘accept’ right then, and you see a five- to 10-minute return time versus three to five days.”

After a client accepts a work order, service information from that order flows into the customer relationship management (CRM) system at Cox Business, which in turn integrates with the company’s workflow system to deliver necessary information to installers. The CRM system was developed internally at Cox Business about two years ago. That initiative also helped reduce paperwork by eliminating the need to make multiple copies of an order for keying into various back office systems.