Sprint’s Customer Service

In a recent interview at Fortune, Bob Johnson, the Chief Service Officer for Sprint, took time to discuss the improvements he’s making at Sprint.

Sprint has repeatedly received the worst customer service ratings from J.D. Power & Associates, and the company sees that this may be one of the things that is leading into the poor performance of their company.

First of all, they’ve changed the way customer service representatives are paid. Originally, they were paid by the length of the phone call; the shorter amount of time, the more money would be received. Johnson has changed this, observing that if you’re incentive is to keep the call short, then occasionally the problem will not be resolved. Since the majority of the time they see problems with the billing, Sprint has also adapted a new plan that is a flat rate of $100 a month for unlimited voice and data. Therefore, customers won’t be on the phone as long with errors on their bill.

Bob Jackson states:

We’re already seeing improvement. I am a long way from declaring victory, but we have improved in two key areas - first-call resolution and customer satisfaction - for four consecutive months now.

But Sprint may still have a long way to go before regaining it’s customers faith in their service.