By Steve Ragan Jul 11, 2007, 15:30 GMT
Sprint recently sent letters to customers advising them that they had until July 30, 2007, to pick a new carrier. The customers who got the letters were picked by Sprint because they were seen as calling support too often. A business has the right to refuse service, but the reasoning behind the actions of Sprint leave some confused and some investors worried.
Sprint is the third largest mobile service carrier in the US. They are a distant third behind Verizon and AT&T, and like AT&T their customer support is often called poor, or at best sketchy. After the Associated Press published the news of the pending letters, several sites online criticized the company for taking their own failures out on customers who are simply calling support for services they have paid for. The total number of customers who will get the kiss-off notice ranges from just under to just over a thousand customers, a relative small number of the total subscriber base.
Yesterday, the AP obtained a letter sent to one Sprint customer, “While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time had led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs,” the letter states. Customers who have gotten the boot will need to change providers before the end of the month in order to keep their cell numbers. Those who are still in contract will not be subjected to the termination fee.
Sprint said that the customers were picked by the company after an internal review of legged support requests. The investigation lasted about six months, and accounts were researched carefully. Sprint spokeswoman Roni Singleton said, “We feel strongly that the decisions we made, we stand by them. These decisions weren't made lightly.” She added that the customers made about forty or fifty calls per month to the customer service department. Most of the calls centered on the same problems, even after the CS department had felt the issue resolved.
“If the average person is calling less than once per month and these people are calling 40 or fifty times more, [which] takes away from customer service,” Singleton said to the AP. “Our priority is to improve the customer experience.”
The AP followed up on that comment and asked Verizon and AT&T their opinions. Both companies said they terminate customer contracts if they are abusive to staff, or violate their terms of service. However, neither company would cancel a customer’s account over calls to support. The other issue Verizon had was the method of notice, the Dear John letter if you will. "We have never severed ties with customers in a mass mailing like this," said Verizon spokeswoman Cheryl Bini Armbrecht.
In recent news, there were reports that Sprint was changing marketing strategy and rolling out new campaigns to attract new customers. How that effort will fare is up to debate online, as the backlash over the account purging settles.
“[The] Stupidity of companies never ceases to amaze me,” said one comment online. Is this a stupid more on the part of Sprint? The issue is that while they went about it in a callous manner, Sprint does have the right to remove customers. “All companies do this. Keeping customers you lose money on is stupid,” points out a comment on Digg. There might be some truth to that, and the effort by Sprint will pay off.
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