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When I asked the softball question of where the idea of a 30-day return policy originated, I received a softball answer. Singleton replied, “It essentially came from the idea that we love and believe in our products and services and because we are confident that our customers will too, we wanted to make it easier for customers to sign up with Sprint.”
I guess didn’t expect them to say that it’s because Sprint is seeing a net-loss of hundreds of thousands of subscribers every quarter and is desperate to win new ones any way they can.
Despite the rhetoric, I have to give Sprint some credit. Honoring a 30-day return policy without haranguing customers into staying– or trying to upsell them in the midst of the returns process– is fair, honest, and decent. I felt as though I were being treated as a person rather than as a number, wallet, or
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For years the industry has talked about the ‘holistic’ customer experience, to the point where the word is an absolute cliché. |
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As bad, the in-store experience could not have been more different than that of the contact center. Instead of being greeted by a friendly, courteous person who clearly wanted to help me and would be evaluated on her ability to do so, I encountered creeps who didn’t want to help me, tried to up sell me in a completely inappropriate way, and who didn’t present themselves as the least bit trustworthy or knowledgeable.
For years the industry has talked about the ‘holistic’ customer experience, to the point where the word is an absolute cliché. In my experience with Sprint, part of that holistic experience was more positive than any customer experience I’ve had with any mobile
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or moron. I think the entire wireless industry would benefit from behaving this way, rather than wrapping customers up with threats, penalties, and irritating hurdles.
That said, the inconsistency across the customer experience is disappointing. Being literally dumped by two different tech-support agents who couldn’t come close to solving a problem I ultimately identified in the manufacturer’s online support forum is embarrassing. It says the product rolled out without the techs being educated properly. It also says that the metrics used to measure their successes and failures aren’t reinforcing the right behavior – the techs were playing CYA at the customer’s expense, and it cost Sprint a paying customer.
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operator ever. But, it was soured by its utter lack of consistency across channels and processes. If the returns process received an A overall, the in-store process was a C- at best and the tech support process gets a big fat F. That’s a GPA of 1.9, which means academic probation with a real possibility of flunking out.
For any company, that’s bad news. For a wireless carrier on the ropes when it comes to customer retention and acquisition, it’s unsustainable. Sprint deserves a lot of credit for trying to turn the tide and move the industry in a positive direction, but it still has a lot of work to do to transform its business – as it claims to be – through a superior, end-to-end customer experience.
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