The information on the average number of calls per month was from the Slashdot summary of the WSJ article.
I, for one, am not in any way dissuaded by this from calling Spring customer service about any issue whatsoever. If they want to drop me and I don't agree that it's within their contractual right to do so, I'll sue them for recovery of the cost of my Treo and any consequential damages (including my time) that I think appropriate. If they're within their contractual rights to drop me, then they have the right to do so. It's their business. I think this whole thing is being converted from a mole hill to a mountain. The much bigger and more important issue is the overall quality of Sprint's customer service, which has been objectively rated (regardless of my anecdotal experience or anyone else's) as terrible. That's where the focus should be. Cheers, Don -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael S. Lax Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 12:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Treo] Sprint canning users who complain too much Where do you the 25 calls per month figure? Does this include being on hold and getting dropped (or just hanging up after waiting 20 minutes)? Does this include the CSR's who hang up on the customer? Does this include calling back when requested? And so on. While I agree there are a very tiny percentage of people who may not be servicable, I think the bigger question with Sprint is whether they're simply trying to stop providing any level of customer service by scaring customers into ever calling when there's a problem. Not only are they setting the expectation of service as low as possible, they want to make sure customers know they better not call for customer service. So while everyone's 'assuming' most of the customers canned are unservicable, has anyone actually done any exit interviews to determine this? You can bet Sprint's not going to do that. Mike Lax From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Don Ferguson Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 12:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Treo] Sprint canning users who complain too much 1000 customers on a base of 53 million. Approximately two in every one hundred thousand customers. That's a few drops of water. As for your other comments, what can I say? Color me skeptical that someone who calls Sprint customer service 25 times per month is probably not allowing the system time to correct a problem, or not accepting a flat answer that they're given that's not going to change. Sometimes the answer is just the answer, and sometimes it's just not what we want. I've certainly been on the other side of that type of situation, but frustrating as it may be have found (maybe because I worked for a huge corporation at one time) that if one lets the corporate machinery work, and plays the escalation game, rather than the harassment game, things most often work out. I doubt that working the corporate structure could be any more frustrating than calling customer service every day. The thing people who haven't dealt with large numbers of people (hundreds of thousands, or millions) don't often get is that there will ALWAYS be someone in a group that size that is completely, unreasonably, unflinchingly, irrationally wrong, and no amount of helping/talking/working will get them what they want. The rate of that type of behavior in the general population, I'd wager (though I don't have any studies to back this up) is higher than 1.9 in a billion. I'd bet that my oh-so-judgmental label fits a large number, if not all of the .000019 of Sprint's customer whose contracts were cancelled. Cheers, Don -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] <mailto:treo%40yahoogroups.com> [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:treo%40yahoogroups.com> ] On Behalf Of Jason Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 10:51 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:treo%40yahoogroups.com> Subject: RE: [Treo] Sprint canning users who complain too much 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 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links
