Frontier Communications 2009 Annual Report Download - page 11

our services. These trends may continue and may result in a continued challenging revenue environment. These
factors could also result in increased delinquencies and bankruptcies and, therefore, affect our ability to collect
money owed to us by residential and business customers.
We employ a number of strategies to combat the competitive pressures and changes in consumer behavior
noted above. Our strategies are focused on preserving and generating new revenue through customer retention,
upgrading and up-selling services to our existing customer base, new customer growth, win backs of former
customers, new product deployment, and upon managing our profitability and cash flow through targeted
reductions in operating expenses and capital expenditures.
We seek to achieve our customer retention goals by offering attractive packages of value-added services to
our access line customers and providing exemplary customer service. Bundled services include HSI, unlimited
long distance calling, enhanced telephone features and video offerings. We tailor these services to the needs of
our residential and business customers and continually evaluate the introduction of new and complementary
products and services, many of which can also be purchased separately. Customer retention is also enhanced by
offering one-, two- and three-year price protection plans where customers commit to a term in exchange for
predictable pricing and/or promotional offers. Additionally, we are focused on enhancing the customer
experience as we believe exceptional customer service will continue to differentiate us from our competition.
Our commitment to providing exemplary customer service is demonstrated by the expansion of our customer
services hours, shorter scheduling windows for in-home appointments and the implementation of call reminders
and follow up calls for service appointments. In addition, our 70 local area markets are operated by local
managers with responsibility for the customer experience, as well as the financial results, in those markets.
Customers in our markets have direct access to those local managers to help them manage their
communications needs.
We utilize targeted and innovative promotions like “aspirational gifts” (e.g., personal computers) or
promotional credits to attract new customers, including those moving into our territory, to win back former
customers and to upgrade and up-sell existing customers a variety of service offerings, including HSI, video,
and enhanced long distance and feature packages in order to maximize the average revenue per customer
(wallet share) paid to Frontier. Depending upon market and economic conditions, we may offer such
promotions to drive sales in the future.
We have restructured and augmented our sales distribution channels to improve coverage of all segments
of our business customer base. This includes adding new sales teams dedicated to small business customers and
enhancing the business selling and support skills in our customer sales and service centers. We have also
increased our focus on customer premise equipment (CPE) sales for customers requiring an equipment solution,
and have extended our CPE sales reach beyond a handful of markets. In addition, we are introducing new
products utilizing wireless and Internet technologies. We believe the combination of new products and
distribution channel improvements will help us improve business customer acquisition and retention.
We are also focused on increasing sales of newer products, including unlimited long distance minutes,
bundles of long distance minutes, wireless data, internet portal advertising, and the “Frontier Peace of Mind”
product suite. This last category is a suite of products that is aimed at managing the total communications and
personal computing experience for our customers and designed to provide value and simplicity to meet our
customers’ ever-changing needs. The Frontier Peace of Mind products and services suite includes services such
as an in-home, full installation of our HSI product, two hour appointment windows for the installation, hard
drive back-up services, 24-7 help desk PC support and inside wire maintenance (when bundled). In 2009, the
Frontier Peace of Mind products generated approximately $3.2 million in revenue. Most recently, we
introduced our myfitv.com website which provides easy online access to video content, entertainment and news
available on the worldwide web. Although we are optimistic about the opportunities provided by each of these
initiatives to increase revenue and reduce churn, we can provide no assurance about their long term profitability
or impact on revenue. Our hard drive back-up services, 24-7 help desk PC support and myfitv.com services are
also available outside of our service territories.
We believe that the combination of offering multiple products and services to our customers pursuant to
price protection programs, billing customers in a single bill, providing superior customer service, and being
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FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES