A strongly worded letter to the executives at Sprint regarding their quality of customer service.

Timothy M. Donahue August 14, 2006

Executive Chairman

Sprint Nextel

2001 Edmund Halley Drive

Reston, VA 20191

CC: Ms. D.J. Huston – Supervisor, Executive Escalations; Gary D. Forsee - President and CEO; Timothy E. Kelly – President, Consumer Solutions

RE: Sprint Customer Care

Dear Mr. Donahue,

I am writing to you today because I believe that as an executive of Sprint Nextel, you presumably have a high degree of interest in your customers’ satisfaction with the service your company provides. I know that as one single customer, this letter describing my experience may not carry much credence with a high-ranking executive. I do assume, however, that when taking into consideration the satisfaction of your customer base as a whole, you must also realize that for every one customer who reaches out for help there are 20 customers who silently move on to your competitors.

I know you have many educated specialists who you pay very well to tell you these things, but I do not see the harm in highlighting a few basic points of common business knowledge before I continue.

* Research indicates that only a small portion of dissatisfied customers register complaints. This is due in part to the perception that companies are unwilling or unable to make corrections or resolve the problem.

* According to Tax and Brown (1998: 76), only 5-10 percent of customers who are dissatisfied complain to the company and most of them “are dissatisfied with the way companies resolve their complaints” and “have more negative feelings about the company after going through the service-recovery process”.

* It costs between six and ten times as much to gain a new customer as it does to keep an existing one.

* On average, one dissatisfied customer will tell 11 others who will on average tell five others. That is 67 people with a negative view resulting from one customer.

* Of the customers whose complaints are resolved, 83 percent will remain loyal and each will recommend you to five others.

* About 68 percent of customers who stop dealing with a particular organization do so because of some indifference on the part of said organization.

* Dissatisfied customers will switch to competitors if alternatives are available and if the company does not apply a number of mechanisms to prevent customers from switching.

I am quite sure you know all of that. These statistics are relevant to me today because I have fallen into this class.

I have been a Sprint customer since 2003. I chose to go with Sprint regardless of the negative word of mouth I had heard from a friend. At the time, the pricing was attractive and the Vision service appealed to me. When shopping for phones, the ones available for the Sprint service were the most appealing to me as well.

Last year, my husband had service through T-Mobile and we were considering that we would save money if we had both of our phones on one combined plan. We were both satisfied with our service, but I convinced him to switch to Sprint. I was very proud to call up customer service and state that I had drawn in a new customer for you. He needed a phone, and I decided to upgrade my phone at the same time. I was eligible for the new phone credit because I had been a customer for more than 2 years. As a new customer, my husband was eligible for a rebate as well.

The entire process of adding a new line, transferring the old phone number to the new phone, ordering two phones and getting the correct items charged to my account as promised required 12 calls totaling at least 6 hours over the course of 3 days. Sprint Customer Service has disconnected me more times than all other companies’ customer support centers combined. Every time I am disconnected, I must call back with no way of reconnecting to the rep that was previously helping me. Then I must verify my identity again, explain my situation again, and on occasion, I must even reiterate what the problem is several times because the CSR that I receive is of obvious middle-eastern descent and cannot communicate or be communicated with effectively in the English language. However, none of this occurs before waiting in queue again, for what is rarely less than 5 minutes. When I call initially, I press one for English. I realize now that this means English as a second language.

I would like to add a comment here regarding a particular exchange during one of these calls. A representative I spoke with offered to me a free extra phone while I was ordering the two that I needed. He asked if there were any other family members for whom I could get the phone. I stated that only my husband and I reside here. He said, “It’s free, you may as well get it – you could give it to the dog.” A spare phone is a handy thing to have in case the one I am using should fail, so I skeptically questioned him about it. After a considerable number of very direct questions, I was able to conclude that the phone was free with activation of a third line on my account – a service that would cost $9.99/month thereafter. I find it absurd that a CSR would suggest activating a telephone “for the dog.” A free piece of merchandise is different from a piece of merchandise that binds me to a 2-year service agreement at $9.99/month. No person in their right mind would consider the latter for any pet in their household.

On another occasion, I called to find out if I was enrolled in auto-pay and I was disconnected. When I called back, the automatic system left me in limbo listening to dead air for 2 minutes before I hung up. I dislike going through the automatic system in the first place because it is time-consuming. Sadly, though, it sometimes seems that the voice recognition system understands me better than the live reps do.

About a month ago, my husband’s phone became damaged and we needed to activate his phone number on my old phone that we thankfully kept as a backup. This was a trial as usual.

5 Days ago, we decided to bring the broken phone to a Sprint store to see if it could be repaired. I brought it to the Tukwila, WA Sprint store and explained the situation. The clerk told me that I would receive a call when they knew if they could fix the phone, and that it would probably be about an hour.

Today, I have not yet received a call. I looked up the phone number for this particular location and dialed them directly. An automated system answered that offered me four options – none of which had anything to do with repair. When I selected the only option that sounded like it would connect me to a local rep, I waited on hold for a few minutes before the computer returned telling me that there is nobody available to help me. It then gave me the option to wait on hold again. When I chose this, I was placed on hold, and was yet again told that there was nobody available to help me. I was at this point given my options, but this time with the option to speak to a store employee omitted. The next option to choose was billing. This connected me to a distant call center. I explained that I wanted to find out the status on my repair. The rep looked up the phone number for the store and I explained to him what I had already gone through after dialing that number. He then proceeded to transfer me to that phone number anyways. I decided to see if anything had changed and went through the whole procedure once more. As before, I ended up with no option other than connecting to a rep at another call center.

This second rep seemed very polite and actually seemed to comprehend my situation the first time I explained it to him. He attempted to investigate my repair on his own after I gave him my e-Ticket number. I waited while I listened to the background noise in the call center for several minutes when I was suddenly startled by a dial tone.

I called back yet again, waited on hold for eight more minutes, and when I reached the third CSR of the day, I had to explain several times what the problem was. When I told him that I had dropped a phone off at the Sprint store and need to know the status of the repair, he proceeded as if I had asked him where to go to get my phone repaired. I repeated myself and he offered the phone number to me. I explained again that I could not reach anybody at the store. He then put me on hold stating that he would try to reach someone there for me. When he came back, he said that he could not get anybody to answer there. I replied, “I know, I have called 3 times already.”

His solution at this time was that I must drive down there to ask them in person.

I had come to this conclusion on my own by this time. But if it is the Sprint store policy to be unreachable, this should be a known fact and it should be openly stated when a customer calls, rather than instating what appears to be a mask for the apparent fact that the telephones are ignored within the Sprint store. If I had been informed of this in the beginning it would have saved me well over an hour and a half of my time today – the time I was trying to save by not having to drive down to the store to find out why I had not yet received notification about the status of my repair.

Having provided customer service myself, I know that many customers who are frustrated or angry deal with their emotions negatively while seeking assistance. I would like to emphasize that being aware of the effects these actions have on the quality of service received, I have never yelled, cursed, insulted or become argumentative with any employee of Sprint. I have spoken firmly once while requesting to speak to a manager during the third call of the third day I was trying to correct the issues regarding adding my husband’s line to my account. I believe I did break down and cry once as well.

I appreciate Sprint as a service provider but I will often balk at calling whenever the need for customer service arises.

To add insult to injury, I am embarrassed to have brought my husband to Sprint. He is constantly having his calls dropped, and this whole time I have defended Sprint because although I drop a call occasionally, I do not consider it frequent enough to be a problem. I have defended Sprint on that matter, arguing that maybe if we bought him a more expensive phone it would receive a better signal. I am now considering the fact that he uses his phone MUCH more than I do and in more areas than I do. Maybe the frequency of dropped calls would be the same for me if I were using as much airtime as he does. Less than a month had passed before he was expressing regret that he left T-Mobile to become a Sprint customer.

I am a dissatisfied customer who desires to switch to a competitor, but the only mechanism that I perceive to be in place to prevent me from switching is your cancellation fee. I was told today that if I cancel before October of 2007 it would cost me $150 per line to disconnect. I brought my husband to Sprint, and was committed to a new 2-year contract as a result. Now the option to cancel the contract costs me twice as much because I was a loyal customer and decided to double the business that I bring you.

I am trying to impress upon you that I feel alienated by Sprint and I guarantee that this is not an isolated incident. If you Google the phrase “I hate Sprint” today you will receive 656 results. “Sprint Sucks” gets you about 14,900 hits. For the sake of contrast, “I hate T-Mobile” returns 224 and “T-Mobile Sucks” gets about 872 results. Again, this is only to impress upon you that if you are not already doing so, considering a re-vamp of your company’s image starting with a new customer service first campaign might be worth discussing at an upcoming board meeting. The new image seems to be working well for Qwest, who incidentally used to be my phone service provider before they began their new campaign and I had the option to switch to Comcast.

I look forward to viewing relentless Sprint commercials emphasizing your version of “The Spirit of Service” and greatly anticipate experiencing a regime change of this type first-hand in the year and 2 months I have remaining on my contract.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Amber