SCTE: Cox Taps TOA for Customer-Service Tools

Cable operator to use Web-based solution to manage field techs.

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/25/2008 2:25:00 PM

Philadelphia -- Cox Communications selected TOA Technologies to provide it with Web-based customer-appointment and mobile-work-force-management systems, Cleveland-based TOA announced Wednesday at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ Cable-Tec Expo 2008 here.

Cox will deploy TOA’s SaaS Customer Appointment Management solution, ETAdirect, in all 18 of the cable systems it operates. The TOA technology will be used to help Cox schedule, route and manage its nearly 6,000 field-service technicians from coast to coast. Cox’s dispatchers and field-service technicians will wirelessly access the ETAdirect system on hand-helds, laptops and desktops to deliver enhanced service to Cox customers. One goal is to help provide more accurate estimations of appointment times to customers.

Cox and TOA collaborated on a Web-based portal, iWerks, for managing all field-service activities. The portal provides immediate access to ETAdirect’s modular system and serves as an interface to a portfolio of “mashup” applications, enabling technicians and dispatchers to have the tools necessary to view all customer-care tasks, including customer-feedback, customer-history, home-certification and diagnostics tools.

“Our goal with iWerks is to transform installs and troubleshooting visits to the most customer-friendly event it can be,” said Catherine Mitchell, vice president of field services at Cox, in a statement. “The TOA platform allows our technicians to be more responsive to our customers’ needs while also being more efficient and effective on the job than ever before.”