Is Yahoo really changing?

At first, the initiatives Yahoo Inc. announced this past week, including new email product offerings and mobile deals in Asia, paint the company as a Web giant bravely regrouping for future battles. But rebel shareholders looking for a proxy battle, top executives heading for the exits and a reported major reorganization may only create even more trouble in an already sinking ship.

Right now, the company has an air of confusion about all of this. First, it's not surprising that Yahoo is reorganizing to try to accelerate growth. However, if the growth doesn't happen, the reorganization won't matter. A reshuffling of product organization could be made public in coming days, with the company centralizing several product groups, including its mail, search and home-page units. But, be careful with reorganizations since sometimes companies focus on looking busy instead of actually working on the company look better.

Secondly, Yahoo pointed to recent acquisitions such as RightMedia and Maven Networks, the expansion of its newspaper consortium and its new search outsourcing deal with Google Inc.

Thirdly, the expansion of email domains it currently offers. Yahoo says its user base of 260 million worldwide can start fresh with an address of their choosing by setting up an account that has ymail.com or rocketmail.com domains as their new email identity. Also, the company has signed deals to be the preferred search service with five more mobile-telecommunications companies in Asia, thus totaling 23 such relationships, increasing its share of the market for mobile-search queries. The focus on e-mail and mobility makes sense because these have traditionally been among Yahoo strengths.

Shareholders do not look happy either. Especially, the public attacks from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has repeatedly accused the board of stopping merger talks with Microsoft, and has pressured to replace CEO Jerry Yang if he wins in the upcoming board elections. Further, some senior executives have announced that they are leaving, including Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of the company's network division and Flickr founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield.

Even before the Microsoft bid went public last February, the company's reputation had been taking a beating for some years. Yahoo has struggled over the troubled introduction of Panama, the delayed technology meant to help Yahoo compete head-to-head with Google in search. To complicate things even more, Microsoft is actively recruiting in Sunnyvale and Yahoo's prestige as a Silicon Valley pioneer has been diminished as a result of recent struggles to regain a competitive edge.

Cox Communications loves Customer Care

Today’s discussion is something that I’ve been thinking for a while but never really found a company that sets the example. But lucky for us, the consumers, that might be changing. U.S Consumers generate about $60 billion of yearly revenue just on voice plans. In fact, cable companies have been laying miles of new fiber-optic cable and doing everything they can to steal chunks of that business from the phone giants. However, they haven’t been very successful yet, pulling away just about $5Billion in phone revenues.

There seems to be one exception, Cox Communications. They found a formula that works, which is beating phone companies on customer service. On a variety of metrics, from network performance and reliability to billing and cost, customers in several regions describe Cox as their preferred provider. That is a big surprise given the poor reputation that many cable providers have among their own customers. But developing crossover appeal will become increasingly important as the broadband lines blur. Cable companies are offering new phone plans; AT&T and Verizon are launching TV and other advanced video services. Further, Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, and Advanced Newhouse Communications are beginning to sell a wireless phone service, Pivot, in select markets.

Let’s keep in mind that phone is the fastest-growing portion of most cable company’s business. For instance, Cox is generating about $1 billion a year from its 2.1 million phone customers, with profit margins of about 50%-60%, with nearly 20% of the homes in neighborhoods where it offers phone service signed up, according to researcher IDC. Conversely, less than 7% of customers in cable giant Comcast's neighborhoods take its phone service. (Cablevision Systems Corp. has the industry's best phone-penetration rate, 29%). On the other hand, phone companies capture 5% or less of their potential TV customers.

But let’s get back to customer service. First, Cox uses one customer-care provider, with U.S.-based centers. Second, rather than pushing agents to hurry customers off the phone and causing multiple call-backs, Cox strives to handle issues in a single call and grades representatives on how well they eliminate problems. Third, to avoid confusion, field technicians tap into the same system used by call-center reps. However, performing at the same high level in wireless could be challenging as they will use Sprint Nextel Corp.'s cellular network, which has been overwhelmed with problems after Sprint's troubled integration with Nextel. Also, cell-phone service is one area where consumers seem less eager to switch. So, it will be Cox’s job to convince customers that cable companies can provide wireless service and customer service at the same time.