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Brian Jones, newly appointed president of AirTouch Cellular and senior vice president of AirTouch Communications Inc. [ATI], will use his experiences in the field as general manager of AirTouch Cellular of Los Angeles and Cellular One in Detroit to help him prepare for his new responsibilities.

So what changes does he plan to make?

"It's a great testimony to our leadership and direction [that] I don't anticipate making tremendous changes. But the company has had long term plans to make changes, including plans for meeting competition," Jones said in an exclusive interview with MPN recently.

Those changes include consolidating AirTouch's domestic markets and integrating best practices collected from individual markets across the entire AirTouch footprint, Jones said.

...AirTouch Starts Benchmarking Program

To collect best practices, AirTouch began a benchmarking program four years ago, Jones recalled.

"A lot of people talk about quality and then go on without making the changes," Jones said, but AirTouch prides itself on finding things that work in a particular market and incorporating them throughout its markets, he added.

"We had a shift in company culture to facilitate change," Jones said. Today, the company encourages its staff in the field to collect information from customers and pass it up the line to upper management, he said.

AirTouch has set up forums to make sure good ideas from individual markets are brought to the attention of upper management, Jones said. It also has set up formal forums where the domestic, international and paging units convene to share their best practices, he said.

One formal group, the global operating practices group, which includes representatives from all of AirTouch's operating units, meets monthly about key issues, including prepaid cellular and fraud, Jones said.

...AirTouch Keeps High-Usage Customers Within 'Loyalty Fence'

The best way to keep in touch with customers' needs is by staying in touch with field staff, Jones said. "We keep a loyalty fence around [high-value] customers by staying in touch and [by doing] that, [AirTouch can] keep half of our existing customers and then continue to add to that."

Aside from implementing best practices, AirTouch is focusing on communicating its positioning message: cellular is easy to do business with; it is easy to buy and use cellular; and cellular frees up time, Jones said. He added that AirTouch's goal is to demystify cellular for the average consumer.

When asked about the blurring lines between cellular and PCS, Jones commented, "People are going to see that the technology doesn't matter and where you lie in the spectrum and the choice of equipment vendors doesn't matter as much as good execution of plans, good management and a focus on customers."

When asked about how competition will affect AirTouch's planning cycle, Jones replied, "We have always had an annual planning cycle, but have done [a review] whenever necessary."

He stressed the importance of not getting distracted by every little change a competitor throws out on the market, sticking instead to a solid plan based on customer needs.

Jones also stressed the importance of finding a balance between proactive and reactive marketing.