Poor Customer Service is Killing Sprint
The standards of quality customer service in the American telecommunications industry have been steadily lowered since the divestiture. What was once a salaried, pensioned position with great benefits executed by professionals who had undergone months of training was slowly given over to disinterested temporary employees who didn't listen to customers but instead read to them dispassionately from a script.
And while executives at the telcos claimed their poor customer service didn't have an effect on the bottom line—the only justifiable claim they could make, since the quality of the customer service became a staple of casual kvetching and late night talk show monologues—it was clear to anyone with a vision that extended past the next quarter's earnings statement that unhappy customers would eventually make for a failing company.
So it is with not a little gloating that I read this report in Business Week about Sprint Nextel, a company hemorrhaging customers and stock value since their merger three years ago, not because they are without good technology and products, but because they treated their customers so poorly.
Employees like Paula Pryor saw the merger's impact firsthand. The 38-year-old, who worked in a call center in Temple, Tex., says the numbers-driven management approach implemented after the combination led to poor morale and deteriorating customer service. Even bathroom trips were monitored. "They would micromanage us like children," says Pryor, who was fired last year after taking time off when her father died.Sprint's new CEO Daniel R. Hesse is said to have put customer service as his top priority under his new regime, but we'll see.
To crib from Dostoyevsky, the degree of vitality in a phone company can be judged by entering its customer service queue.
Sprint's Wake-Up Call [BusinessWeek.com]
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Oh, this fills me with glee.
I had Sprint back in 2001. I moved from San Diego to Los Angeles, and made a lot of calls looking for work. As it turns out, Sprint had changed my calling plan without telling me...
So instead of 400 daytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends, I all of a sudden had only 200 minutes per month, period. The $215 phone bill was quite a shock.
They refused to lower, reduce, or work with me on the bill in any way. My options were to pay it off immediately, or have it go straight to collections.
Paid it off. Cancelled the service.
Not surprised to see that it's finally biting them in the ass.
A couple of my friends worked in a Sprint call center for a while. They weren't allowed to take days off for any reason, so one of them quit in order to take a day off to visit her family.
They said the week-long training course was brutally dull. They were stuck reading a script. They weren't allowed to make any deals, but they could redirect a call to someone whose job was to retain the customer at any cost. Once they were sufficiently sick of the job, they started doing that at the slightest hint of customer dissatisfaction.
Sprint is really shooting themselves in the foot, and they probably don't realize they're doing it. Employees who are unhappy don't do a good job, no matter how hard you try to make them work. And they don't stay, so you have to train new ones and you lose experience.
The bottom line is not always about money. Any company that micromanages their employees like that deserves to lose money.
I'm in charge of my company's Nextel/Sprint account.
I found their customer service getting better over the past year. For example, when I justed canceled 3 phones. They did it in 5 minutes. No arguing. No Fuss. Last year it took me 20 minutes to cancel just one phone. They kept saying a manager had to authorize the cancellation and one was not available. Maybe, because it's a corporate account service is better. Like all business, it is good customer service is what makes you stand out.
Our company has been with Nextel almost since the beginning. We've recently started shopping and will probably be switching. The customer support used to be just amazing. Absolutely top notch. It went into the toilet quickly after the Sprint merger. It's improving, but I still can't believe they gutted such a customer-centric company.
This problem I feel is not limited to Sprint. I worked for a call center in Canada for just shy of a year, selling domain names and support services. The micromanagement was endemic, and getting worse before I left.
At one point, after i returned after being in hospital for 4 days with a fairly serious medical condition,(and, yes, i had informed my section manager) I was told that this amounted to "abandonment" and although I wouldn't be fired THIS time, a note was entered in my file!!!
Many of the really terrific people I worked with had university degrees, or were in school. (At the time I had my undergrad degree in Science and an MBA) but most were looking elsewhere because of the poor management. The last i had heard, the company had been sold, and much of the work was being outsourced to India
While I never worked under conditions quite so draconian, I did work at a "management by metrics" call center. It really does deemphasize quality. It also makes the job even more stressful than it already is.
My personal experience is that the phone or internet based customer service with Sprint is sub-par, but I've had nothing but success when going into a full-fledged Sprint Store, (as opposed to visiting a Sprint kiosk at the mall).
There's usually one competent techie at the store who can intelligently help my with my concerns.
Yes yes yes, anyone who has worked ina call centre will tell you this.
They stats they get are not an indication of anything that goes on in the real world. You have a team leader, whos only incentive is to moan at you if you log on 3 mins late, or if your on a call TOO long, you know, helping people out and that. The end results is you think, who cares? And dont bother to do your job properly.
Ha, this makes me strangely happy. We just had a hour long talk with a customer service rep over a billing dispute, and still no solution in sight. I would switch, but I have a plan from over five years ago - it is simply impossible to find the same features for the same price today.
i honestly think sprint has good service N0W.i've been with sprint for over 5 years and i really like the plans.You should give sprint a chance.