Some of you may not be aware that this month Sprint received top honors in a Pali Research study for wireless customer care response times, beating out our competitors. The study, which included 2,500 calls placed into the call centers of all of the major wireless carriers, showed Sprint answered more than 91 percent of the calls within 30 seconds or less. While this study recognizes only one segment of the overall customer experience, it does underscore all of the hard work Sprint’s customer care organization has put in over the last 12 months to improve upon the service we provide to our customers. We realize there is always lag time between the actual improvements we make and what is reflected in these studies, so our performance in the Pali Research study is encouraging.
Our goal continues to be to reduce or eliminate our customers’ “pain points” upfront so that you won’t have to worry about calling us to try to resolve an issue. This is one of the reasons we launched our Ready Now program (www.sprint.com/readynow) in Sprint retail stores. We trained and certified all of our store associates to be able to work one-on-one with customers to personalize your phones, help you set up features, show you how they work, and answer any questions before you leave the store. On the customer care side, we’re asking ourselves if we’re resolving issues on the first call, are we providing a consistent quality interaction when you call us, and have we set up every customer’s account correctly and confirmed those details with them?
As I’ve said before, in reviewing our own internal metrics, we know we still have a way to go, but we believe we’ve made some significant improvements and we’re excited to see that we’re starting to be recognized for those efforts. I assure you that my team and I have made improving your customer experience priority number one. We know you have choices in wireless service and we are going to work hard to earn – and to keep – your business.
Thanks.
Bob
First, let me say thank you to everyone who has responded to my blog. In just a few days, I’ve received some great feedback on your experiences and the types of things you feel we still need to work on. So far, what I’m hearing is the following:
Well, you’re right on target and these are all areas in which my team and I are focused on improving. I’ll give you a couple of examples.
As poster “Privax” notes, “communication is a big issue with customer service…”. To improve the communications and language skills of our agents in offshore locations we have expanded training and skill-building to better address customer handling, knowledge, grammar/word choice and accent. We know that our efforts will ultimately help us get past any language barriers and allow us to solve issues faster for customers.
To help our agents be more knowledgeable and to more quickly resolve our customers’ issues we are improving the systems that our agents use when they’re on the phone with our customers, to help them retrieve the right information more quickly and to more clearly identify the best possible plans and devices to meet a customer’s individual needs.
Now, the good news is that we are seeing some positive results. We’ve seen eight months of continuous improvement in customer satisfaction. Customers are being transferred less frequently and care agents are resolving issues on the first call. This is a great sign that care agents are taking ownership of issues as they arise. But as many of you have heard me say before, while this is encouraging, it should be noted that this is a gradual improvement and we know all issues won’t be fixed overnight. We do have an aggressive focus on increasing customer satisfaction and while we recognize we’re not where we want to be yet, our goal here at Sprint to improve the customer experience remains steadfast. Our commitment is to serve, solve and satisfy our customers.
I value each of you – our customers - and thank you for choosing Sprint. Please keep your ideas and thoughts for improvement coming…I’ll continue to visit the blog each week and want to hear from you…
Thanks. Bob
Hi, I’m Bob Johnson, chief service officer for Sprint. I often hear from customers about their experiences with us. More and more acknowledge our service improvements, but others still share stories that, frankly, are unacceptable. Many of you who visit the Buzz About Wireless site know that Sprint is working hard to improve the overall customer experience and your feedback will certainly help us make the right changes to succeed. This is why during the next month I want to hear from you. The Buzz About Wireless team has set up a special forum for all members of this community to tell me what’s on your mind. What’s working in customer service, what’s not and how can we improve upon your experience?I look forward to your ideas and I’ll be reviewing your feedback each week.Thanks.
Bob Johnson
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