So Sprint Nextel “fired” approximately 1000 customers last month. Why? because they called customer service too often. Nothing like getting a letter in the mail saying … buh bye! Nothing says service like “you call too much, so we only want customers who won’t complain.” Folks, the golden rule has been officially changed to the Customer is Always Wrong! Absolutely Ridiculous! What are they thinking?? Now, I have Sprint on one of my phones and I have called customer service, mainly to fix issues with their service. A few questions, if I may … 1) Anyone know what the magical Mendoza number is? ‘Cuz … I have no idea and need to know. 2) Does it count when I visit the Sprint store next to my office? Need to know that one as well. 3) what about the times I get disconnected from customer service and have to call back, is that double counting?
I guess I just don’t get it. I work in a service industry. We work very hard to capture and maintain our client base. It’s much too competitive to just drop clients like Dennis Miller drops F bombs. I’m sure they did some type of profitability analysis. However, how do you quantify the negative press or negative word of mouth such as what your reading now? You don’t. Because sooner or later the public will forget about it or perhaps most of the public will just never know.
Sprint is quoted saying that these folks called 40 - 50 times per month and were calling about the same problems over and over after Sprint officials felt they had resolved the issue. They went on to say … “If the average person is calling less than once per month, then that takes away from customer service from other customers.” I wonder if anyone from Sprint who did their due diligence actually picked up the phone and called one of these clients and asked them why do you feel the need to call customer service so often? If I were a betting man, I would bet that the client’s perspective is that the issue was not fixed in many of these instances. I wonder if they would be willing to give customers a bonus for not calling customer service! In the end, I guess the best thing is that these obviously unhappy customers can now switch to a better provider without paying an early termination fee. Can you hear me now!!!
