Here is a short interview with Dan Hesse in Portfolio magazine: Q and A With Sprint-Nextel CEO - Executive Articles - Portfolio.com He talks about improving customer service, what they might do w/ iDen and other stuff.
I like how he has says that it takes a while for perception to catch up with the improvements made. That's exactly what I think is happening.
Anyone who says Sprint's CS is getting better is full of it. Maybe I'm just a little bitter because I'm on hold with them right now and I have been dealing with ignorant customer service reps for the past two hours. Oh yea, and no solutions in sight. *sigh*
I'm still new to Sprint, having both Verizon and TMobile as well. But, from my short (2 month's perspective) my initial experience with both ordering the service and resolving an issue, have been pretty satisfactory. I started with a simple question about adding an email account. Not only did I get a good answer, but I got two follow-up phone calls asking if the problem was resolved. One of the callers left a voice message and a number which, to my surprise, was her actual extension. When I returned the call, the CSR was fully aware of the issue and knowledgeable of my initial problem. If this is becoming typical, I would say that Sprint has a good handle on how to improve customer service and perception. I am still waiting for a response from TMobile to a question I asked over 4 days ago if that gives anyone a benchmark. Given my experiences, and the performance of the Sprint network and features thus far, I can't say anything but good things about them. Hopefully this will continue and be the norm for everyone else.
Some people I know have said it has improved a lot while others say it hasn't. So who knows but I doubt that Sprint would just sit back and do nothing to improve it's overall customer service with Dan Hesse in charge. So I tend to believe it has gotten at least somewhat better as whole. A check on internet forums turns up much less "I hate customer service" threads and posts than what we had a year ago.
In some cases, Sprint has even gone too far to try to be good with customer service, to the point where they are irritating. I have had received call backs from Customer Service asking if my reasons for contacting them earlier have been resolved. This is well-intentioned, but the callers are always agents with an accent so thick I can barely understand them and they can hardly understand me.
I agree with you on that. Communication is very important. I called customer service on another electronics product that I recently purchased. Their accent was so thick and the call sound volume was low so I just hung up without even saying what I needed. lol I called back and got someone better the second time though.
Yeah, most of sprints customer service is outsourced. The center were I worked, most of the people's first language was spanish. I for one don't know a word of spanish. If you look at the thread about call center employees, I think I posted some stories about working for them. There are some agents that are really good at their job, but not that many. It doesn't help they really don't give you that much training and just throw you out there expecting you to learn everything while out there taking calls. They have been cracking down on people not speaking well and people not fulling helping that person. The last few weeks I was there, over 20 people were fired in one week for not helping people or not speaking right. But just Hesse said, its going to take a while for them to weed out the bad people at the CS centers.
For the last 2 years all my customer service reps have been in Oklahoma, Utah, or Canada. In Telesales I've occasionally gotten reps from the Phillipines, but not for regular customer service. I think the ecare reps are all in India. - sheureka
Call center outsourcing is very strong here in the states, don't automatically interpret outsourcing as an out of country solution. It's very very common for the carriers to utilize stateside call centers that are run by other companies. All of the carriers utilize these "local" call centers to varying degrees.
Yeah, T-Mobile and Sprint use the same company in some call centers. The hold music is even identical! FWIW, the best reps I have had seem to have been based in North Carolina.
I think I have only called customer service one time in the past year and that was to fix a phone activation problem. That call went just fine and I got my problem fixed.
I know T-Mobile has a call center near me, in the Charlotte, NC area. Not sure if those are former SunCom employees.
Yeah, I guess I forgot to say that its stateside that most of the call centers are outsourced to. The one I worked at was Convergys and it was a center for Sprint and Comcast. I think they're stopping the overseas outsourcing because of all the complaints that you can't understand the people. It depends where you live in what state the reps are located. The center I worked at dealt with calls from the west coast. I just hope they weed out the lazy reps and not trying to be mean, the ones that have a thick accent too.
I haven't really either but the combination of a low audio connection and a heavy accent make it difficult to understand.
Yeah, neither have I. They may not understand what I'm saying, nor will their response be anywhere near logical, but I can clearly make out the words that they are saying.
