Can Sprint reinvent its woeful customer service?
J.D. Power ranks Sprint's customer service last among wireless carriers. They are infamous for poor service, such as the time they ingloriously "fired" their 1,000 or so customers who complained the most. Now, CEO Dan Hesse is trying to change all that. The question is can Sprint succeed where it has failed so many times before?
The answer remains to be seen, but Sprint has taken two key steps that I applaud.
- They made customer service a priority for every executive in the company. This includes hiring Bob Johnson as the company's Chief Service Officer. Weekly executive meetings lead off with a briefing on customer service.
- It focuses service reps on problem resolution and customer satisfaction, not talk time. This is a relatively new move for Sprint, but a report on MSN claims the average number of times a customer calls each year has decreased nearly 50%, allowing them to shut down 17 vendor call centers.
Sprint still lags the other carriers in service, but it can take time to change the market's perception about your company. For now, perhaps they should set their sites on not being last.
