American Madness

Intelligent Criticism in the Service of a Better Nation




I bet they’ll manage to screw this up, too

Posted by Josh Friedlander | 1 Comment

sprint logoSprint has decided to dump some of its most annoying customers, those who have been calling an average of 25 times a month, mostly regarding problems with their billing.

This does not surprise me. I call Sprint at least once a month, because they routinely get my billing wrong. Recently, Sprint more fully integrated its Nextel and Sprint PCS divisions into a new billing system. As a result, I was billed for a text message overage of nearly 100 text messages (because Sprint had unilaterally prorated my texting plan when they switched systems), and I was also charged for nearly 30 text messages to India. I’ve never texted anyone in India.

When I called last month, after an 8 minute wait to get someone on the phone, I was transferred to a new billing center, and waited 20 minutes to get them on the phone. My total call time was in excess of 50 minutes. Luckily, I have a headset and was able to work on other matters while waiting.

My favorite part of the conversation was when the Sprint customer support lady asked if perhaps my texts to a French friend had occurred while this friend had perhaps been traveling in India — as if texting a French cell phone located in India would result in me being billed for a text message TO AN INDIAN PHONE NUMBER!. In any event, that was not the case.

After our 50-odd minute conversation, the Sprint representative said my bill would be corrected and the needless fees removed inside of 4 hours. That was two weeks ago and I am still waiting. I have been too busy to call back. Coincidentally, another Sprint represented (or someone purporting to be one) called me last week to ask if I had experienced any difficulties with the new billing. I was busy and couldn’t talk, but asked this indivudal to call back at 8pm that night. He agreed, but never called.

Sprint can certainly boot its most vocally unsatisfied customers if it likes, but the company would do better to look within for the source of their ennui.

Posted on July 7, 2007 in Business

Comments

One Response to “I bet they’ll manage to screw this up, too”

  1. Shawn Cutburth
    December 20th, 2007 @

    I work for Sprint and there was several reasons why they decide to cancel the contracts with those customers. I and many others disagree with the choice they made, however, to serve the other 55 million customers better it was necessary. Simply put the reason you where on hold so long was because the phones where being tied up with other customers having the same problem. Not really an excuse but a fact. The call volume increased dramatically.

    I do think we have areas to improve. But as a nation leaning at outsourcing customer service is the main issue. The volume of customer service reps increases but the quality goes down.

    Example:

    For are Spanish clients they reach and speak with a fluent Spanish speaking customer service specialist who is most likely native to Mexico. This is a requirement.
    The plus side is that they also might share similar cultural background and understand each other.

    However for US citizens wanting an English rep, they send it to Manilla…where they natively speak English, but it isn’t in a dialect we can understand, next they have a different culture and this impacts how we communicate and understand each other. They have different ways to express themselves and know how to properly emphasize certain words. This leads to frustration and ultimately a poor customer experience.

    This isn’t just a Sprint issue, it is a common issue with most large companies outsourcing customer support. The solution is to bring it back home and offer higher quality customer service representatives.

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