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CSR's are not empowered to make decisions and solve problems. In other words they end up worshipping rules to keep their jobs.
Customers want to speak with a real person that is rational and values the customer. Good luck.
There have got to be companies that value the customer. Anyone know who they are?
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I think with Sprint there are a large variety of plance, discounts, and incentives.
It can be difficult to sort things out.
Maybe other companies are the same and just deal with it better.
My calls with Sprint were rarely short. Also, usually they would have some follow-up and not resolve during the call, so that lowers the first-call percentage.
Sometimes it even comes down to leaving things to be done after the call, and somehow they don't get carried out. Or you have to see if the changes are reflected on your next bill, etc.
plance? plans, i meant
wow...I need to walk away from the computer
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They need for the Consumerist Hotline people to train the front line guys and actually empower them to help the customer and something might be better.
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One of their managers during a call with them told me that \"yes we are ripping you off but that doesn't mean that I have to refund you the money\". His manager told me that \"He's just following company standards and is doing what he is told, and not to refund you the money because thats our policy for these situations, he should not have told you that we are ripping you off though\".
Sounds like a couple people hate their jobs.. if they are willing to admit that over the phone.
oh yeah and plus most of them i swear can't even read the bills properly. try telling them call #105. and they will have no clue what that means.
Even worse, of those problems that don't get solved on the first call, probably fewer than 1% get solved even after 10 calls.
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Thank goodness I never have had a technical problem with sprint. Now the billing department, that's another story.
The only time I have ever had sprint work on my problem was when I would threaten to leave sprint.
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''Why is Sprint's customer service so bad?''
Probably because they aren't paid enough? (just a supposition...)
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Sprint CSR's are the worst I have ever dealt with. I have dealt with Bangalore tech support that was more helpful.
All these people are trained to do is read a script off of the screen. They do this very badly.
Several times, I heard statement like \"I need to axe you your four digit pin\"
When I told one that my address was in Montreal, Quebec. He asked me if Montreal was the state or the city.
Verizon is not very popular here at the Consumerist but after 10 years with Sprint they have been an absolute joy to deal with.
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If your job was to take hundreds of calls everyday from customers with problems, and you had to take 90% of those to your boss to straighten out/authorize credits, you would either be fired for bothering the boss so much, or you'd take your self-respect somewhere else and quit.
But there is a third choice! Tell the customer you'll go to the boss, then forget about it, and thus keep your job.
So, they are bad because the only ones who aren't weeded out are the soulless jerks who can keep you under contract, and not cause any of the higher-ups any grief.
53% sounds about right, or perhaps a little high. When I call Sprint, I know it's more likely than not that I will need to make another call, and perhaps another one after that, before my issue is resolved.
I called on Sunday to discuss canceling my account in response to their proposed changes to my contract (effective January 1). The Retention rep offered me 20% off my bill and free text messaging, which I accepted. I asked her to confirm that my contract would not be extended and to verify the end date. Twice. And I recorded the call so I'll have a leg to stand on if I need to follow up next month.
I've heard Sprint will terminate your service if you call Customer Service too much. I wonder if they factor the 53% resolution rate into the equation. If I call 20 times, it's really as if I called 10 times, since half of those calls went nowhere.
Also, I'm assuming this 53% number is for all issues, from the insanely simple to the hopelessly complex. If a large number of inquiries are \"easy problems\" with high success rates, the 53% number is skewed. If my concern requires thought or effort, what are the odds I'll be taken care of on the first call? 20%? Lower?
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@Coder4Life: I had a whole long thing with Cingular about some false roaming charges on my bill. I spoke to dozens of CSRs, and I don't think more than 1/4 of them knew the difference between roaming and making a long-distance call.
It was incredible how many of them would attempt to prove to me that I was roaming by checking the area code of the number I had dialed.
I worked customer service for about two years. I was a supervisor after about 6 months. I did my job really well. What is important to understand is CSR jobs suck something horrible for the CSR. Getting bitched at all day does not do much for your company morale and makes you less likely to want to help anyone. Follow that up with insentive plans based on the number of calls per day you handle, and BOOM....the anti CSR is born...also CSR jobs require a decent amount of product/service know how(to do your job well) and there is a huge turn over rate because not many people can handle people complaining, yelling and swearing for 8 hours a day.
The best advise I can give is be nice, and respectful to your CSR and they will do the same in return and also try their hardest to push your problem through to a resolution. CSR's are just like everyone else, there are good ones, and bad ones. In the case where you get a bad CSR who really doesn't want to help you, ask for a supervisor and don't take a call back. I could keep writing for hours but I am work...thank god it isn't customer service.
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I think it's funny that this post indicates that Sprint should have greater first call resolution if it has three times as many reps. Have you worked at a call center? Issues of training and staffing are exponentially difficult as the size of the center increases.
I do phone support for a University and have a 91% resolve rate :X
Just bragging.
From what I've read on this site, T-Mobile isn't exactly a haven for customer service ninjas either - case in point, all of the \"my phone got stolen, now T-Mobile wants me to pay for calls to _____\" stories.
Almost all phone-based customer service sucks unilaterally. I will say that my recent calls to AT&T Wireless have resulted in resolution within minutes. That includes getting them to reverse a feature addition I did not request, as well as refunding me the 9 months of the service for which I was charged (it was only $4/mo, so I didn't notice), as well as a botched phone upgrade that resulted in me reverting to my old phone, old plan, old data plan as well as them reversing the 2-year contract extension. Over the years, I've had my share of crap from AT&T CSRs, but recently, they've been great.
Bad CS Hall of Fame candidate? Hewlett Packard. Took them 6 months to get around to sending out the call tag for a crappy printer. I just finally got the call tag & the refund check for the printer last week. \"Case Managers\" that disappear, randomly change their phone extensions, claim to have never received emails, voicemails and faxes, never call back, etc. It took a call to their HQ, main switchboard, asked to be xfered to Mark Hurd's (the CEO) office, talk with a nice Exec CSR, who put me with a new case manager that handled the problem same-day, rather than just striving for same-year. Two guys over there - good, the rest - a mix of non-English speakers and just plain sucky know-nothing, don't-care people.
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Poorly paid reps, little actual training, supervisors that really want you to take a long walk off a short pier, and disturbing work environments, actually. And G-d forbid you wanted to give a customer a credit they deserved!
I worked for Teleperformance USA taking Sprint calls my freshman year of college, and they hired anyone that could type twenty-five words per minute, had no drug testing policies and a heck of a lot of people doing a lot of drugs, and the one thing that really made me quit was the employee that monthly painted the bathroom with her... monthlies.
This means nothing without the proportion on customers who experience problems with each carrier. Perhaps T-Mobile creates a lot of dumb problem that can easily be solved with one phone call. That would be an awfully good way to artificially increase the fixed on 1st call percentage. What would be a more useful statistic is the percentage of customers that have a problem that is not fixed with one phone call.
@m_m: \"What would be a more useful statistic is the percentage of customers that have a problem that is not fixed with one phone call.\"
Um, 47%?
Several problems:
1) The first-tier reps can't do anything except read off a script. With 51%, that means you either need better scripts, or need to empower tier 1 to deviate from the script.
2) Even the second- and third-tier reps are often hamstrung by a terrible back end that's often down entirely, or just doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Sprint's computers are awful.
The last time I called to activate a new phone, I was on the phone for an hour while the CSR struggled to make the computer accept the discount codes promised by Account Services when I re-signed my contract. Eventually I just asked the rep to call me back when she figured it out. To her credit, she did, about an hour after that. That's a good CSR working with a bad system.
In short: Empower your employees, fix your infrastructure. That's all it takes.
i work in retail and sell sprint wireless, att wireless, and have sold verizon wireless...i think the biggest disadvantage sprint has is there computer systems...not even so much the poor people that aren't very good at communicating the problems to the customer. when you have a problem with verizon or att and you call the person helping you doesn't have to figure out what billing system your in (sprint has 2), work with a code system that often puts your charges on many different screens (verizon and att reps can see pretty much what you see and work from there), or work with a system that requires codes to charge any of these charges or services. the other obvious issue is that they have too many people that all do different things on the account, and no one person that knows all of the systems. the only way sprint will ever fix there problems is to take there best reps train them in all area, lay off the rest and simplify there computer systems.
I recently called Sprint and inquired about extending my contract (3 lines) and I was told that, \"We can reduce your bill by 30% each month over your current bill.\"
EGAD, I think. THIRTY PERCENT? Are you serious?
\"Yes sir, thirty percent.\"
For me, this is about $45 a month, so I go for it.
I'm put on hold for 20 minutes, and I get someone who says, \"Thank you for calling Sprint. May I help you?\"
So I go through all the rigamarole again, to learn that she extended my contract, and that it is 10% off EACH LINE, and the second two lines are only $10 each, so all total, I would save about $10.50 a month.
It took four phone calls to straighten it all out and undo the mess she caused.
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Most call centers want quantity over quality, so CSR's give quick fixes and dump the call most of the time in order to make their stats. Combine that with minimal training, high CSR turnover rates, and low morale, and it's no wonder Sprint has so many problems. I know people in the TMobile call center and they are striving to fix it on the first call, regardless of how long it takes. That's the difference: quality vs quantity.
Sprint has a sales culture throughout the company - and it goes for the CSRs as well as everyone else. My wife considered a job running one of their call centers a couple years ago (don't ask. Ok -- bad job market, bush recession, i was still in school, and we needed $), because it would pay a lot more than her similar position with Scholastic (publishing).
The one thing that got emphasised over and over again was that she'd be assessed based on how much her unit sold services, not on how well calls were resolved. She stuck with Scholastic, because they actually feel customer service should involve, you know, customer service - and solving problems for 30-something thousand was better than causing more problems for 40-something thousand a year.
A friend recently got hired for outsourced company that has a new contract with Sprint to do customer service. Seems like Sprint let go 80% of their inhouse CSRs because of their bad rap. The problem with the new plan is the want 1500 new people in 3 - 4 months. The outsourced company is hiring anybody left and right (even w/o high school diploma) just to meet the 1500 requirement. I think this means that customer service will actually get worse. Sprint will probably just move on to a new company next year with another unrealistic plan.
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The first thing Mr Hesse needs to do is figure out who thought it is acceptable to have a special Bat Phone for Consumerist readers to give them better service than the regular number, and fire that person immediately. If you can do it for certain people, why can't they do it for all of their customers.
Dealing with Sprint for the last few days on ordering an HTC Touch; also a Telco sys integrator dealing with Sprint on/off for almost 10 years. The only reason I am dealing with them is for the supercheap SERO plan. I am completely baffled by the cluster@$%& that is the Sprint ordering process. They have had these same problems for close to 10 years with availability of systems to help them fix these problems. I am amazed, 53% seems too high for these bumblers. And they shot themselves in the foot by fumbling the whole Cable partnership. They are lost in WiMax, with no direction. I really hope to see this brand go away and for someone like Google, or SK Telecom take them over. They have valuable assets and a good network, but the people running operations need to go away.
I agree. I have a t-mobile phone, a verizon phone, and a sprint aircard. In addition I deal with ATT and Sprint cell phones for work (different carriers for different areas) and sprint is the worst. My t-mobile phone rarely has problems and when it does, they get fixed. I quit ATT because they had crappy reception in my area but their customer support was good. Verizon is outstanding. We use them for the majority of our work phones and they get phone replaced for us within 24 hours (we have 200+ phones from them so we are replacing them frequently) and they are great with helping us manage our account. Sprint is horrible. They took over a week to replace a phone that was DOA when they sent it. Couldn't resolve an issue we had with a treo 755 (I figured it out after a week of sprint and palm working on it), their hold times are obnoxious (if they don't just say \"call back later\". Worst service ever.
I work for T-Mobile and have for several months now so I can say I have seen the company with fresh eyes as opposed to those who have seen the company crawl from the ashes of total failure. During training I focused on what I thought was important to a call center, call resolution time (CRT for insiders). And at one time held pride in the fact I averaged 210 second per call after only my frist month, I was fast, but that was it, not good, but fast! I was shocked when my senior rep AND my coach told me to SLOW DOWN and take your time with your customers. And I found out they were right.
I've had Verizon and AT&T and they all seem to share my former tactic, get the customer off the phone as fast as possible and move on the next. I've never worked at a place that told me the opposite. I still work for T-Mobile and the job has it's frustrations so I won't say it's perfect. But they care.
For Tmobile CSR's, one call resolution is part of their stats. They would consider that 70% statistic an awful score. The reason why Sprint's one call resolution is far worse than Tmobile's and likely, Verizon, is because Sprint's whole goal is to win the argument and get the customer off the phone. I honestly don't think Sprint actually cares about their customer service.
Well to give you an example of one location in Victoria, Texas. Sprint has outsourced its customer service to a company Cap Gemini I believe, who in turn outsourced to a third company called spherion. You can see already the complication of working for a company who has a contract with a company who in turn is fullfilling a contract for another company. Well to make matters worse the employess are paid very little, they do not have benifits, very seldom do they receive incentives, the company does not have a quality department so very few call ever get monitored. Of course the list could go on and on just of the negatives in this one location that handles sprints business customers. If this is the situation that they put their business customers in I can only imagin how bad the consumer customers are treated.
The problem, I see, and many Sprint employees see as well, is that each employee is required to sell, sell, sell to every customer that calls in. Selling is more important than first call resolution.
Today was payday and 64 employees quit after picking up their paychecks. Some of the worst employees are still working for Sprint. Reading scripts verbatim, robot-like speech, disrespt for customers and other employees. Supervisors who will not work or help out.
I worked there for five months and could not stand it. I'm amazed I lasted that long. The customer issues don't get handled after the call because we could not get into the accounts and didn't have the time if we could. We came in early to spend time looking for a working compute/phone and was counted late. We were given points against us at every turn. Points against us would get so high they forced us to work overtime to deduct them. They threatened to fire us everyday. Thet did not pay us for time looking for working computer or waiting to get a computer. I worked well over my fourty hours and got paid for three quarters of it. I quit have been unemployed for over a year, car was reposessed and I may loose my house. I could be homeless this winter. We were paid only for being on the computer and phone. We were anxious to get out of there and away from that dreadfull place. I had enough of the sex, fights, drugs, foul languages, fillthy conditions and supervisors with their heads up their butts.
All of the above?