Apple Inc. has the Genius Bar at its wildly popular stores. Cox Communications Inc. will now have a Learning Lounge.
Rhode Island’s dominant cable TV provider acknowledges it is taking a page or two from Apple’s retail playbook as it opens new “Solutions Stores” in Rhode Island and several other states ahead of the launch of its wireless phone service in Rhode Island later this year.
The stores – one opened in early December in a Smithfield shopping plaza and another opened Dec. 27 at Warwick Mall – are a far cry from the traditional cable TV customer-service offices where people exchange cable box and modems and pay their monthly bill.
Instead, the Solutions Stores borrow from Apple’s streamlined, clutter-free store design. And don’t expect to line up waiting for the next available customer-service representative, either.
Cable TV operators traditionally set up service centers like banks, according to Roger Sokolosky, vice president of sales for Cox New England. “but we wanted to change the whole dynamic,” Sokolosky said. “We wanted to have a much more interactive experience, a much more immersive experience with our products.”
“Cable TV used to be a utility,” he added. “But today it’s changed completely. People use our service in every facet of their lives and we need to have a different environment to service our customers better.”
The foray into retail by not only Cox but other cable operators, too, is an attempt to counter growing competition from sources such as Apple’s iPad and streaming online content from websites such as Hulu that are chipping away at pay-TV subscribers.
And that competition apparently is taking a toll, according to industry data.
Cable and satellite TV operators nationwide lost 335,000 subscribers in the second and third quarters of 2010, the first time on record that the number of subscribers declined, said the research firm SNL Kagan.
“However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss the impact of over-the-top substitution on video subscriber performance, particularly after seeing declines during the period of the year that tends to produce the largest subscriber gains due to seasonal shifts back to television viewing and subscription packages,” Ian Olgeirson, senior analyst at SNL Kagan, said in a statement.
Cox, the third-largest U.S. cable company, is hoping the Solutions Stores will be a differentiator – “a game-changer for our company and our customers,” Sokolosky said.
‘We know we have a lot of competition in the market, whether it’s from telephone companies or the satellite companies,” he said. “We know our customers have choices, so we’re making a big financial commitment to invest [in] the Solutions Stores.”
The strategy is actually a two-pronged approach.
The newly designed stores will serve as a platform to help launch Cox’s wireless business, a place not only to sell the service but phones and other wireless-related products.
Cox rolled out wireless service in several markets late last year, including Orange County, Calif., Omaha, Neb., and Hampton Road, Va. But company officials won’t say when the service will be made available in Rhode Island, saying only that it will be this year.
Aside from the wireless business, Sokolosky said the company also wants to use the new stores to educate customers on rapidly changing aspects of digital technology.
“You have 3G, 4G, LTE, Wi-Fi – people are getting confused out there, and we’re there to answer the questions,” he said.
“We’re actually going to have a full-time educator behind the counter to help customers one-on-one or to conduct small classes on, say, programming your DVR,” Sokolosky explained.
To that end, Cox has hired more trained personnel to staff the retail stores.
“We’d be perfectly fine with [a customer not spending money at the store] as long as you walked out a Cox customer,” he said. “The stores are not only to help us move more wireless phones and get more folks into digital cable boxes, but to provide a place where we can educate customers on how things work and demystify the technology out there.”
“It’ll be a different experience for the customers,” he added. “They’ll be encouraged to ask questions.”
Yet, despite the new store design, customers still will be able to perform the traditional tasks, such as paying bills and picking up cable boxes and modems.
In fact, the Solutions Store at Smithfield Crossings shopping plaza in Smithfield replaced Cox’s longtime traditional customer-service offices in Lincoln.
And now that the Warwick Mall store has opened, Cox said it will close it’s location at Chapel View plaza in Cranston at the end of the month.
In addition, the Cox Digital Store in South Kingstown will be getting a makeover in the coming year. Sokolosky said the South Kingstown location, opened in 2008, served as an early prototype for the Solutions Store.
And there are plans for future Solutions Stores in Rhode Island, including locations that would replace offices in Providence and Pawtucket. Sokolosky wouldn’t be specific about the number of stores to be added or when it would happen.
“But we’re looking for space and negotiating leases,” he said. •
