1000 customers - A lot of people are mad at Sprint/Nextel for dumping 1000 customers for complaining too much about their lousy Sprint/Nextel service. I’m going to write a post about this on Webmetricsguru as well.
Sprint Nextel (S, news, msgs), which ranked at the top of MSN Money’s Customer Service Hall of Shame in April, apparently didn’t appreciate when people called their customer-service lines to voice complaints, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. So the company told those unhappy customers to hit the road.
“The number of inquiries you have made to us . . . has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs,” Sprint said in its letter.
There are TONS of reasons to complain about cellular telecoms, in particular in America !! Talk about shooting the messenger!
So its not like somehow Sprint Nextel was on the high ground, with perfection in network coverage and no drop-outs and no revenue leakage and perfectly operating services with transparent billing and advice-of-charge and no locked features on phones, etc. There are TONS of reasons to call. And if you are in a bad coverage area, you may be inclined to call many times, to report that the problem hasn’t been fixed yet.
Not to mention, that in our industry obviously we are in a time of unpredecented range of new, complex and confusing services - and ever more service providers - and ever more complex handsets - all the more reasons to call up if you want to trial and use new services..
On the other hand, Seth Godin supported Sprint’s right to fire the 1000 customers in Treating different customers differently but then clarified his position in The first thing
Before you start firing customers, you better be committed to satisfying the rest of your customers. The giant flaw in Sprint’s logic, as many readers have pointed out, is that plenty (almost half) of their customers don’t like them. Getting rid of a nasty group of 1,000 isn’t going to change that very much.
First job: get serious about customer satisfaction.
I’ll write about my own position at Webmetricsguru soon. Like Tomi, I don’t think we get such good service and maybe, even the people who complain a lot, have just and valid reasons for doing so. I’ll go into that in more detail later.
Comments
@ 14:46
My local Sprint Service Center located in Arlington, VA is not a “customer oriented” service center. I bought a new phone in Oct 10 and about a month ago the cover over the charging area broke and flops free. I stopped by today and asked for the back to be replaced. I knew this was the fix because it happened to one of the other phones the day after it was picked up. I was given the run around by Abdul Abo Issa.. He to me to drive to two other long distance locations because he was sure they had replacement backs. I insisted he call - he said he would dial number and let me talk to them. Then he saw me writing his name down and then called and guess what - no replacement backs at those two locations either. He told me that the cover did not do anything. I said I am sure that whoever designed the phone would say it was to keep out dust and moisture. I then asked that one be ordered and was told they could not do that. Then I was told I would not be given new phone. I did not ask for new phone - even though I am paying insurance on this phone. Abdul told me he spoke to his manager, Julian Puentes, and he said there was nothing they could do for me. I saw an assistant manager on the way out and stopped to talk to him about situation. It turns out that Abdul did not speak to Julian Puentes, the Manager, but to Frank Carmona, the Asst Manager. I told him that I had insisted that Abdul call (he thought Abdul called of his own volition. Then I asked him to order a replacement back and he said he could not. I was told that these things “eventually wear out” - even though I just purchased the phone last Oct for a total of three phones. Then he proceeded to talk down to me and said if I had a “high end” phone, I would not be having this problem. I was told there is no solution to this problem - except to check back periodically to see if they had some in stock. Never did they offer to take my name and number in order to call me and let me know when a replacement part arrived.
And never once did they ask for my information so that they could see my history and that I am SSprint Premier Customer.