A few years back, the company where I worked started having these yearly “tours” by Important Folk, explaining things like company results to the factory people. Since our yearly bonus had a lot to do with those results and the people touring were very well chosen, the show-and-tell was very well received.
On the second year, the Operations Manager (the guy who’s the boss of all the Production Managers) for the geographical area said that when the year before Sales had been told by Central Sales to “give us a list of customers that make you go ‘ugh’ when you see it’s them and we’ll see about dropping them,” both the people from Sales and him had been asking the name of Central’s supplier of funny smokes.
5% less customers. 12-15% more sales (one was in volume, one in $). About 20% less ulcers (estimate :D). Holy. Shit!
When he mentioned having seen some of us nod sagely before he even gave the results and asked some of those to explain (mainly he wanted to see whether they were just nodding to make him happy or what), he discovered that about one quarter of our people knew about that version of Pareto’s rule that states “10% of your customers cause 90% of your pain. 10% cause 90% of your business. The two 10% are rarely one and the same.”
Sprint may be a sucky company (never used their services, I had one of their calling cards for a while but was already using VoIP at that time), but the philosophy to drop the painfully-hot potatoes is perfectly sound.
My current customer’s representative (I’m 2nd tier Help Desk and so far have only one factory for my specialty field) writes letters like this:
"This work not!!!
My wife used to work in retail and what Sprint is doing would have been awesome to do there. Your good customers are going to appreciate it. There are some people who just aren’t worth doing business with.
I hope more retailers get the message from Sprint.
OTOH, the other side of that is people like my friend who was getting hit with $300 in “roaming” charges every month. He lived and worked in Chicago, his account was in Chicago, and he was suppossed to have access to all local networks (digital and analog) for hundreds of miles around. When he would call Sprint to complain about the extortionate roaming charges, they would tell him that, since he had left his calling area, he had to pay the roaming charges. They would not, however, explain to him how he spent hours and hours on “roaming” phone calls when he never left Chicago and didn’t call people very often. Clearly (to me) there was some kind of fraud going on, but they refused to work with him, or broke promises they had made him, or would grudgingly give him refunds that would then be revoked without explanation the following day. He probably did call Sprint every day or every other day for several months.
Come to think of it, he probably would have appreciated being “dropped” without a cancellation fee.
I’ll agree that Sprint does not necessarily have the best and brightest working for them. They may not have the service their customers deserve. But two things: first, I don’t know of a company that has better service AND comparable network size AND comparable pricing. I have generally good luck with my phone unless I’m in Bumfuck, TX (it’s unfortunate that I am there rather often, though).
Second? Their service will almost certainly improve because of this. Managed right, this could be a huge boost to the morale of their CSRs. Happy CSRs make a much, much better experience for their customers.
Seriously, if you call to complain more than once a day, you should be thrilled to be let out of your contract. I wonder how many of these constant complainers will bitch about not being allowed to have a Sprint phone.
I recently signed up for the Sprint EVDO (Mobile Broadband) service for $49.99 a month. It’s DSL-like speeds over their wireless cellular network. So far I’ve had good luck, of course I signed up over the Internet. I expected a ton of fees on the bill but it’s only like $53 a month with the taxes and fees. Not too bad when my only other Internet options are dial-up and satellite.
This whole thing is weird to me, because I’ve got a new blackberry, unlimited data for my laptop, and 800 nationwide minutes for less than $90 a month, and have never had one single problem with the service or customer support responsiveness from Nextel.
I’m in the “dump your toxic customers” camp–my company did it, and boosted our bottom line by almost 25% total.
Just out of high school, I worked at a store called Maas Brothers. Most people remember the store very fondly. It got swooped up when stores all started being owned by one company. (I don’t think Campo bought them, but it was the same era) It was an upper scale department store that had trained personnel and very high service.
I worked in the shoe department. We would take anything back. We had a woman that would buy every expensive shoe we had. To them, she was a great customer. The problem was, she wasn’t a size 10, but bought size 10s. About once a month she would make her trip, huge shopping bags in hand, to return every. single. pair. of. shoes. They were “defective.” She would piss, moan, scream, yell and get her money back.
One day, we have a very nice lady come in. She had bought a pair of shoes that just destroyed her feet. She admitted there was probably nothing wrong with the shoes themselves, just that they fit her horribly. She had comfy shoes on and showed me the damage, it was bad. I go back to the supervisor. I explain. He told me “If she throws a fit, take the shoes back, otherwise, don’t.”
I walked out, went up to the lady and said “Ma’am, we will gladly take these back for you. I apologize for any problems you had.”
WE trained customers to be assholes. The first woman should have been banned, if it wasn’t for her, the second woman never would have had a problem.
I get the feeling that a lot of people in this thread (and on this board) just liked getting walked on. When I read “good customer” I read one who doesn’t bitch and will happily give away their money to companies because they feel they owe them what the company says – just so they won’t make waves and hurt others’ feelings.
If I purchase a product and/or service from a business and they don’t deliver, I will incessantly call and complain. I’ll escalate the call as high as it goes. I’ll write e-mails and letters. I’ll do anything to either get the situation resolved or terminate the business relationship between myself and the vendor, without any unreasonable costs incurred by me. That last part is ALWAYS a point of contention because most satellite TV/cell phone/cable providers make outstanding profits by stealing from their unsuspecting customers – e.g., cancellation fees (I’ve never had one calculated correctly, and I’ve never been told I was wrong after pointing out their error).
Now… what if Sprint routinely screwed up these people’s accounts? Wouldn’t that warrant several calls? Why is the immediate assumption that all 1200 of these now-banned customers were in the wrong all the time?
Well, then, maybe you should go back and read the thread again. And this time try for some comprehension, because your take on it isn’t what’s being said here.
I’m in line with Sapo hoping Sprint drops me, partially due to the monumental fuckups they’ve pulled with my billing. I strongly suspect the salesperson was looking for a big commission, so signed me up for everything under the sun after I was gone because I complained about how long it was taking to get a fucking phone and re-up (over three hours). But getting that initial snafu cleared up was a huge pain in the ass and it took months to clear up. (Do the phone people get a comission by not actually canceling the various bs subscriptions?) I do nothing fancy with my phone. I don’t text, I don’t do fancy ringers, I don’t surf. I just fucking TALK. If I see as much as a $.02 overcharge on my next bill, I will begin calling every day. Gawd I hate them.
Try reading, comprehending, and responding to my whole post next time, not just the paragraphs you choose. And this time, grasp it fully before replying with snark.
Now if Sprint dropped you, there’d be a lot of people here saying, “What a great business decision. Sprint’s bottom line will increase exponentially because they’ve dropped you as a customer. Who needs pain in the ass customers like you? Good on them!”
Like I alluded to prior, I suspect that a good portion of these 1200 customers were probably raked over the coals by Sprint.
Since Sprint took over Nextel, it has gone from being a decent cell company to the company from hell. Apparently, they have taken a page from AOL’s customer service manual lately - my wife called to drop a line from the account and they “couldn’t” and then upon being pressed they placed her on “infinite hold”. When she called back to ask for a supervisor, they apparently do not have any of those. Talk about a flat organization! We would LOVE it if they would drop us from their roles entirely. Perhaps they figure we are just among those types of customers that will just go away if ignored long enough. What a business plan (probably also taken from AOL).
“I am not happy with my service. I believe you are breeching my service contract. You can either let me out of my contract without a cancellation fee and credit me my last months service, or I will cancel my contract now, you will charge me the cancellation fee and I will file a suit in small claims court naming Gary Forsee and Paul Saleh. I’ll also write a letter to the attorney general acusing you of fraud in setting up my original contract with services I didn’t ask for.”
They will probably cancel you immediately. Or make good on your threat - you pay the cancellation charge and file a suit and get $500 for your bother. I’m never had to say more than “breech of contract, small claims court and attorney general” before they are tripping over themselves to let me go.
I was the first to chime in with the potential that the customers may have been toxic. I don’t know whether they were or weren’t. The article just said that Sprint is dropping ~1200 customers due to excessive call volume, with some callers using questionable practices. I won’t go to bat for Sprint or for the customers; I will ask that anyone who automatically views it one way or the other look at the opposite viewpoint. I posted what I did because the OP was anti-Sprint, and I just hoped he might view both sides.
ETA: Even if Sprint raked some of the 1200 over the coals, they’re being let out of their contract, and given 30 days to sign with another carrier and keep their number. Is that such a bad thing?
Actually, I think it’s a great thing for the customer.
The tone of the article is that of “Sprint dropping 1200 deadbeats,” which raised an eyebrow with me, considering some posters’ tales of woe (I’ve also heard lots of bad things about Sprint).
I believe I read that some of the customers who were dropped were calling customer service 40-60 times a month and/or were abusive.
I think it is a good idea to drop those particular customers. It seems abusive enough just to call customer service 1-2 times a day…and being ugly about it sure can’t help solve any problems.
Who calls anyone/anyplace/anywhere 40 - 60 times a month? That is beyond ridiculous.
I said it was weak and that I couldn’t be too outraged about the whole thing (read the last part of my post). The article just caught my attention.
I know some customers can be “toxic”. I did my fair share of retail work and having to deal with horrifying people. But not all customers who complain should be deemed “toxic”.
It sounded anti-Sprint because every experience I have had with them or every experience people I know have had with them was negative. I was routinely treated negatively by Sprint/Nextel CSRs when I had problems with service on my company issued work phone. My friends were treated negatively by CSRs when they had issues.
Sprint/Nextel would routinely act as if every problem was caused by something that I or the other people had done. It was never their fault or their equipment could never be faulty. If you would go into the store for a hardware issue, they would try to sell you a new phone. When you didn’t want to buy a new phone they got miffed and would try to shuffle you out instead of trying to solve your issues.
I have a friend who used to be a sales rep for T-Mobile. OMG, the stories she would tell of some of these hateful people that would come in. Demanding new phones, screaming at her etc… but for the most part, she said some people complained a lot and were anything but “toxic”, but that they had valid problems that she did her best to solve them for the customers. Sometimes they were unresolvable (i.e., they just couldn’t get reception no matter what they did, so they let them out of their contracts).
Yes, companies do have a right to drop nasty, violent customers like a hot brick (like some of the customers mentioned in this thread). However, just because people complain about a service that they pay for that they expect to use, doesn’t make people bad customers.
FTR, my personal cellular service has been with AT&T-Cingular-AT&T since 1997. I have never had problems with the service nor have I ever been treated horribly by CSR’s either on the phone or at a store, even when I had complaints. Then again I am not a nasty bitch on the phone to people either.