If you were to review Sprints latest earnings you would have garnered that they lost another 1.3 million customers. Yes that's million; people are fleeing Sprint like the plague.How did get Sprint get to this point? You would think that it may be based on poor coverage, slow data, or bad customer service. It's clearly not coverage or data speeds as they consistently rank high for those two marks. The truth is, is that Sprint dug itself into a whole so deep that customers exploited the system.
Anyone who is or was a customer learned quickly that if you call up and say you're going to drop your service that you could essentially get away with cell phone murder. As a pervious user I was able to snag data for at 50% off its retail price while adding an extra 100 minutes to my plan. Does that make me a bad person, I didn't think so but then again it is how you get there is the problem.
Sprint is known to have horrendous customer service. Despite the few that have no problems, anyone having to deal with billing knew you couldn't count on anything. Reports of overbilling, wrong plans, outrageous overages that should have been covered by their plan and the list goes on and on. It's no secret that customer service is disastrous.
The entire problem started when sprint opened its retention department. A quick surf of the web will tell you that if you call a customer service rep and you don't get the services you want for free, simply, hang up and try again. It's this simple hang up and try again factor that really screwed the Sprint pooch. Due to poor training the results you got from Sprint ranged from freebies to nothing at all, it depended on the customer service rep.
As Sprint has tried to slow the bleeding they are essentially running away the customers who stayed for the freebies. Sprint has been cracking down on its free add-ons which are a direct result of the massive declines in Sprint's user base. Why stay with a shoddy company when Verizon and AT&T have much better customer service and reputation.
Sprint has a long and tough road to earn back the public's reputation. They are attempting to flood the airways to help increase a user base but until the fundamentals are fixed they won't see any change. You can't make the declaration either that its Sprints phone selection that's driving customers to the other providers. For a long part of the early 2000's Sprint and Verizon had very similar phone lineups and in terms of RIM, they are the same. This was impart due to them both being on CDMA technology where the markets were not that large for cell phone manufactures. Regardless of phone choice Verizon has been growing by leaps over Sprint.
How can Sprint help themselves? Firstly a revamp of customer service rep training is required. If all of your service reps can't give the same answer then your training is failing. One customer should be able to get a response to any question consistently from any rep. Start with that basic idea and don't make your company looks desperate by bending at the knees and giving away service for free.
Last edited by Marshalus on 08 Nov 2008 - 17:13
Should be:
and
Should be:
In this usage, it should be "hole," no "whole."
As for Sprint... my mom left them after they tried to pull $700 from her. Ridiculous.
Have a training program and stick with it. Follow up with properly supervised on-the-job training, regular performance reviews, constant in-house staff support, and reward points of some kind for staff who go above-and-beyond for a customer. Get it right, Sprint!
On top of it all I even got a 15.00 credit off my bill. I also know the SOC (codes the system knows to "give" your account a feature) codes that can give pretty much anything for free, and applied them to my account.
It pretty much is users like us who kept Sprint where it was, and right now by cracking down on its user base that stayed for the deals they are just hurting theirself worse.
Cutomer service is terrible. None worse than sprint but other than that, you cannot beat the price ..
I want what you're smoking.
"can you hear me now" is verizon, not AT&T.
AT&T paid a pretty penny to Apple for the iPhone to the tune of almost $1bln to have exclusivity. The issue is that the US's network is still way behind when it comes to GSM and people will change over to another provider if they can get better phones. Same thing in Canada, 3 major providers and only Rogers has GSM so people who wanted the iphone had to switch.
It's also really great to have a phone that works overseas.
I doubt Sprint's troubles had much at all to do with the special deals they gave a few people who tried to leave. That didn't drive away 1.3 million people. iPhone did that.
And I get the same over billing from Verizon too, so no company is perfect.
Last edited by RDExpress on 09 Nov 2008 - 12:20
I have a HUGE problem with it. The message is important, but the manner in which it's conveyed is important, too. Internet or not, this is a *published* piece. There's absolutely no excuse for the mistakes in the article.
I know poor service isn't an acceptable excuse but if you do not hire competent people to do the job it will drive you insane.
I did eventually drop them when I moved into a rural area and could no longer get service. They were very good about it and gave me a refund. I guess that is why they are going out of business. Too lax when it comes to business.
Back in PA (western side) its also very nice.
The services you get on sprint + cost really makes it one of the best deals out there.
Most everything this article complains about can be the same for any other provider. *shrug*
FTFY.
? lol. How did you fix it? You made it worse.
The author typed whole instead of hole. I was just joking. :-(
I wish it was the same in my country, I'd love to see some companies getting the boot from the consumers.
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