On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Don Ferguson wrote:
> Ah, OK, it's good to have the source. So Sprint cancels 1.9 x 10**-9 of
> their customers for calling an average of 25x per month regarding
> billing issues.
1.9 x10^-9? Do you really mean 1.9 per billion? Wow. Sprint is bigger
than I thought! ;-)
> I can live with that! As far as I'm concerned, me worrying about this
> is like worrying about the level of ocean going down every time I get
> out of it: statistically true, but trivial and insignificant.
Except that this is a measurable number of Sprint's customer base who may
or may not be at fault here versus an unmeasurable drop in the ocean that
impacts nothing. These are real people whose real lives are really
effected by having their cell phone accounts canceled. What are the odds
that Sprint makes keeping their number easy? Considering the contempt
already shown for these people I wouldn't hold my breath. Yeah, they want
the customers to go elsewhere, but why should they be helpful at this
point?
> If cancelling a few loons who call nearly every day about billing issues
> helps them get their poop in a group when I call with *real* issues:
> lets them focus training so the levels of support actually get smarter
> as you go higher (I've found their level 1 support - in-between Customer
> Service and Level 2 support - to be the most knowledgeable and helpful),
> I'm good with the letting go .0019% of their customers who don't like
> how much it costs.
"Loon". How wonderfully judgemental of you when you have no idea why
these people were calling and whether they have "real" issues or not. In
the past I've had to call vendors every other day before they would fix a
problem that was *their* fault. Recently I bought a new car and the
dealership screwed up and ordered the wrong features. Should I shut up
and forget that there are features I wanted but didn't get? Should the
dealership tell me to go buy another brand? No, they need to fix their
mistake and they're working on doing that. Similarly, had they mischarged
me for the car I would expect them to refund the difference. I would
guess that most of the customers calling in "too" often aren't calling
over a couple of bucks. A few years ago AT&T billed a friend of mine an
extra $1000 because they mistakenly changed his plan when they were
supposed to change his wife's and it took him about a month of of constant
calling before they would fix it. Should he have just swallowed the extra
and paid it? What would Sprint do? (WWSD? ;-))
To go back to Craig's restaurant analogy from last week: If several
restaurant customers complain repeatedly about something is it better to
kick the customers out or figure out if their complaint is legit and fix
it? If the fries are taking too long maybe he should order another fryer.
If the bills are consistently wrong retrain or fire the cashier. If they
don't like the paint on the walls their only real option is to leave.
Maybe it does make sense to drop these 1000 customers but without more
information we don't know if the bad PR is worth it. Apparently Sprint's
management thinks so, but considering my past experience with Sprint I
would bet they could have handled this better.
> And yes, I'd feel differently, I suppose, if I were one of those "loons"
> and felt somehow justified in calling about billing issues every day.
Judge not.... :-D
-Jason
-----
--- There are no absolute statements. I'm very probably wrong. ---
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
- Albert Einstein
