Sprint Dumps Needy Customers - Gismodo - READ THIS - Interesting Customer Service Model

From Gizmodo

Did you ever have a boyfriend/girlfriend who seem really cool until they start
calling all the time, forcing you to dump them even though they were super hot?
No? Well Sprint has, except they call these crazy boyfriends/girlfriends their
customers. In a "Dear John" letter for the record books, Sprint dumped their
most high-maintenance customers.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ouch/spri...ers-275374.php

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› See More: Sprint Dumps Needy Customers - Gismodo - READ THIS - Interesting Customer Service Model

wrote:
> From Gizmodo
>
> Did you ever have a boyfriend/girlfriend who seem really cool until they start
> calling all the time, forcing you to dump them even though they were super hot?
> No? Well Sprint has, except they call these crazy boyfriends/girlfriends their
> customers. In a "Dear John" letter for the record books, Sprint dumped their
> most high-maintenance customers.
>
> http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ouch/spri...ers-275374.php

While I'm certainly not defending Sprint, there are two sides to every story.

--
Notan

On 2007-07-06, Paul Miner <[email protected]> wrote:

>>http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ouch/spri...ers-275374.php
>
> Is this a new policy? IMHO, every company that deals directly with its
> customers should operate this way. It seems like a win-win for
> everyone. Unhappy customers get to move on without paying their bill
> or an ETF, while the company gets to dump those that it cannot please.

I've never heard of dumping customers because they call too often, not
in this industry. It's a cost of doing business. I do tons of
telephone tech support, same concept... yes, handling customer calls costs
money, and yes, there are some people that are going to be a drain on your
resources, but a mass firing of lots of your customers isn't the right way
to deal with it.

From a bottom-line standpoint, yes, it's a good idea. However, it is
going to turn out to be a PR nightmare for Sprint. #1, they're firing
customers for a reason for which no other carrier is willing to fire
customers. #2, you need to find another carrier by the 30th of July or
you're screwed. That's not a ton of time.

Sprint has traditionally had a decent network and great phones, or at least
did for the 4 years my wife and I were customers. But customer service went to
hell after the merger, and obviously, the stupidity promulgated by Sprint
management hasn't stopped yet. Damned shame. Pre-merger, even when a lot of
people around me were complaining about customer service, I personally wasn't
seeing it. Most of my CS experiences with Sprint were great during that time.

Originally Posted by

From Gizmodo

Did you ever have a boyfriend/girlfriend who seem really cool until they start
calling all the time, forcing you to dump them even though they were super hot?
No? Well Sprint has, except they call these crazy boyfriends/girlfriends their
customers. In a "Dear John" letter for the record books, Sprint dumped their
most high-maintenance customers.

Ouch: Sprint Dumps Needy Customers - Gizmodo

Dumps on the needy? This is probably some tard who can't read and has to call sprint 5 times a day. For all you people who hate sprint take note... here's your chance to get out of your contract without paying the early termination fine.

Steve Sobol <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On 2007-07-06, Paul Miner <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>>http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ouch/spri...mers-275374.ph
>>>p
>>
>> Is this a new policy? IMHO, every company that deals directly with
>> its customers should operate this way. It seems like a win-win for
>> everyone. Unhappy customers get to move on without paying their bill
>> or an ETF, while the company gets to dump those that it cannot
>> please.
>
> I've never heard of dumping customers because they call too often, not
> in this industry. It's a cost of doing business. I do tons of
> telephone tech support, same concept... yes, handling customer calls
> costs money, and yes, there are some people that are going to be a
> drain on your resources, but a mass firing of lots of your customers
> isn't the right way to deal with it.
>
> From a bottom-line standpoint, yes, it's a good idea. However, it is
> going to turn out to be a PR nightmare for Sprint. #1, they're firing
> customers for a reason for which no other carrier is willing to fire
> customers. #2, you need to find another carrier by the 30th of July or
> you're screwed. That's not a ton of time.
>
> Sprint has traditionally had a decent network and great phones, or at
> least did for the 4 years my wife and I were customers. But customer
> service went to hell after the merger, and obviously, the stupidity
> promulgated by Sprint management hasn't stopped yet. Damned shame.
> Pre-merger, even when a lot of people around me were complaining about
> customer service, I personally wasn't seeing it. Most of my CS
> experiences with Sprint were great during that time.
>
>
>
>

I think you'll find that Sprint is taking an "enough is enough" approach to
this. Having done some billing system analysis lately for a couple of
companies, number of contacts per month showed some interesting data. In
some instances, customers were calling in hundreds of times a month for any
variety of reasons. The bottom line was that companies are now looking at
the profitability of individual customers and choosing not to do business
with those that they consistently lose money on- while the number of
customers might take a small hit, profitability and margin both show
positive growth.

Think about it- if you put the average cost per minute of talk time at a
cellular call center at $1 (which is probably a little low), someone on a
$39.99 plan loses money for the carrier well before the half hour mark
(taking other customer costs into consideration). Why would I keep a
customer that calls a hundred times a month (on average) and costs my
company to lose over $250 a month (if the average call is three minutes)?

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 21:33:49 -0500, Dirty-Harry
<[email protected]> wrote:


>Dumps on the needy? This is probably some tard who can't read and has
>to call sprint 5 times a day.

It all depends upon what criteria they're using to qualify
"problem" customers.

Without going too deeply into it, Sprint screwed up the
programming on my wife's phone in the back-end of the system in
December 2005. I could prove that the problem was in their system and
not her phone beyond the shadow of doubt. But it took a full four
months of calling every day and speaking to technicians (who agreed
that I was correct, but had no standard protocol for speaking directly
to the proper person to remedy the problem), as well as customer
service people and finally "executive services" to convince them to
make the fix. Once I was able to get to the highest person in
technical management, the problem was corrected in ONE DAY.

IOW, Sprint was the tard.

So was I a "problem customer" because I had to keep calling
and pushing? Would I be dropped, even though I was 1000% right from
the first?

DGI

On 2007-07-06, Scott <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> I think you'll find that Sprint is taking an "enough is enough" approach to
> this. Having done some billing system analysis lately for a couple of
> companies, number of contacts per month showed some interesting data. In
> some instances, customers were calling in hundreds of times a month for any
> variety of reasons.


Well, that is completely excessive. That's an average of at least 3-4 times
a day, EVERY day if you figure only 100 calls per month. I'd fire those
customers too.


> The bottom line was that companies are now looking at
> the profitability of individual customers and choosing not to do business
> with those that they consistently lose money on- while the number of
> customers might take a small hit, profitability and margin both show
> positive growth.


Well, I guess the question is how often you have to call for them to fire you.

Framing it the way you framed it... well, the policy makes a lot more sense
to me now.

David G. Imber <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 21:33:49 -0500, Dirty-Harry
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>>Dumps on the needy? This is probably some tard who can't read and has
>>to call sprint 5 times a day.
>
> It all depends upon what criteria they're using to qualify
> "problem" customers.
>
> Without going too deeply into it, Sprint screwed up the
> programming on my wife's phone in the back-end of the system in
> December 2005. I could prove that the problem was in their system and
> not her phone beyond the shadow of doubt. But it took a full four
> months of calling every day and speaking to technicians (who agreed
> that I was correct, but had no standard protocol for speaking directly
> to the proper person to remedy the problem), as well as customer
> service people and finally "executive services" to convince them to
> make the fix. Once I was able to get to the highest person in
> technical management, the problem was corrected in ONE DAY.
>
> IOW, Sprint was the tard.
>
> So was I a "problem customer" because I had to keep calling
> and pushing? Would I be dropped, even though I was 1000% right from
> the first?
>
> DGI
>
>

You'll find that they are looking for an ongoing pattern, not something
tied to a single issue- many months in a row of resource-hogging, not a
single prolonged instance.

Steve Sobol <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On 2007-07-06, Scott <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> I think you'll find that Sprint is taking an "enough is enough"
>> approach to this. Having done some billing system analysis lately
>> for a couple of companies, number of contacts per month showed some
>> interesting data. In some instances, customers were calling in
>> hundreds of times a month for any variety of reasons.
>
>
> Well, that is completely excessive. That's an average of at least 3-4
> times a day, EVERY day if you figure only 100 calls per month. I'd
> fire those customers too.
>
>
>> The bottom line was that companies are now looking at
>> the profitability of individual customers and choosing not to do
>> business with those that they consistently lose money on- while the
>> number of customers might take a small hit, profitability and margin
>> both show positive growth.
>
>
> Well, I guess the question is how often you have to call for them to
> fire you.


If they are smart, they are taking a top-down approach- starting with the
worst offenders and working their way down. I doubt that anything
approaching what the normal person would call the beginning of "excessive"
will ever come into play, especially if they are looking for months of
abuse as opposed to a single spike in call volume. They already admit
publicly to having a customer service issue that they are working on, so
they should expect to have soem issues coming in that take time to fix.

>
> Framing it the way you framed it... well, the policy makes a lot more
> sense to me now.
>
>
>

>
> Well, I guess the question is how often you have to call for them to fire
> you.
>
> Framing it the way you framed it... well, the policy makes a lot more
> sense
> to me now.
>
Don't see a massive "firing of Sprint" customers, so I guess there's your
answer. BTW, I'm also sure you can add your carrier of choice be it VZW or
at&t to this. And as someone said previous this is a win/win, you get out
of the contract w/o ETF and can port your number over, as well as a clean
credit slate from Sprint. I don't agree with a previous poster that almost
a month to change is not enough time. It can done in and hour or so, maybe
less by going to any other major carrier. It can even be done online.

>> So was I a "problem customer" because I had to keep calling
>> and pushing? Would I be dropped, even though I was 1000% right from
>> the first?
>>
>> DGI
>>
>>
>
> You'll find that they are looking for an ongoing pattern, not something
> tied to a single issue- many months in a row of resource-hogging, not a
> single prolonged instance.

He's still a customer of Sprint? Well I guess there's the answer?

If you think Sprints the only company to do this, or the only industry to do
this, you're quite wrong. Do I think Sprint, Vzw, at&t and Tmobile are out
for anything but their own good, yep. But I also don't think they have any
hidden agenda.

On 2007-07-06, Michael Paris <[email protected]> wrote:

> credit slate from Sprint. I don't agree with a previous poster that almost
> a month to change is not enough time. It can done in and hour or so, maybe
> less by going to any other major carrier. It can even be done online.

I was that poster. I don't typically have tons of time to go cell phone
shopping. It doesn't take long - I just have a ton of stuff to do.

"Michael Paris" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

>>> So was I a "problem customer" because I had to keep calling
>>> and pushing? Would I be dropped, even though I was 1000% right from
>>> the first?
>>>
>>> DGI
>>>
>>>
>>
>> You'll find that they are looking for an ongoing pattern, not
>> something tied to a single issue- many months in a row of
>> resource-hogging, not a single prolonged instance.
>
> He's still a customer of Sprint? Well I guess there's the answer?

I believe you'll find that this will be an ongoing project for Sprint- not
getting a letter this week or next week does not mean that you are immune
from such action down the road.

>
> If you think Sprints the only company to do this, or the only industry
> to do this, you're quite wrong. Do I think Sprint, Vzw, at&t and
> Tmobile are out for anything but their own good, yep. But I also
> don't think they have any hidden agenda.
>
>

Of course they are out for their own good- they are publicly traded
companies (or divisions of one) whose sole reason for existence is to make
money. Anyone thinking that they need to focus on their customers' needs
out of some sense of charitable empathy has it all wrong.

"Steve Sobol" wrote:
>
> I was that poster. I don't typically have tons of time to go cell phone
> shopping. It doesn't take long - I just have a ton of stuff to do.

Well if you were one of the recipients of this letter you would now have a
lot of extra time on your hands. Calling Sprint thrice a day can be a
time-consuming and draining experience. <g>


--
Mike

Paul Miner <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 08:06:02 -0400, "Michael Paris"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>And as someone said previous this is a win/win, you get out
>>of the contract w/o ETF and can port your number over, as well as a
>>clean credit slate from Sprint.
>
> The way I read it, they not only waive the ETF, they also zero out
> your bill. Watch for people to take advantage of that. <g>
>

Just talked to a couple of contacts at Sprint- it sounds like it was a one
time thing and not an ongoing program. Less than 2000 customers recieved
the letters and there are no plans to send more.