Customer Service in a Wireless World

It’s been several news cycles since the Sprint 1000 story hit the wire. If you’re not familiar with the story, Sprint Nextel terminated 1000 customers who called customer service too often. The customers were notified by letter and given one month’s notice to find another cellular solution. Having been a Customer Service Manager for a wireless company, I feel I can provide some insight into the story. [Disclosure: I was not and am not employed by Sprint or any direct competitor.] There’s been lot of coverage of the story, so I’m sure I’m not bringing anything new to the table, but if you haven’t followed it, welcome to my two cents.

The cellular phone industry is consistently rated as one of the lowest in customer satisfaction. So right off the bat, we in the wireless industry are fighting an uphill battle.

No one calls their wireless company to tell them good news or to thank them…if they’re calling in, they’ve got an issue. Depending on a consumer’s personality, some call at the drop of a pin (yeah, a bad Sprint reference), while some wait until their life is really interrupted.

I heard some buzz about Sprint justifying the decision based on the cost of the resources needed to support these 1000 customers. A wireless company provides a call center free of charge to the customer, and the cost of operating this service shouldn't play into whether a customer is allowed to call or not. If cost is the issue, these 1000 customers certainly couldn't have affected Sprint's bottom line with a base of 54 million subs.

In my years in Customer Service in the wireless industry, did I ever terminate a customer? Yes, but the circumstances didn’t revolve around an amount of calls to the call center. As a customer service rep, you are called everything in the book; your intelligence, your socioeconomic status; even your name is attacked by an upset customer; so it’s no stretch to imagine that the dream scenario is to be able to retaliate by suspending the customer’s account. It was rare and well thought out to get to the point of disconnecting a customer. We kept track of how many calls came into the call center, but didn’t track it against calls per individual customer. I can see a value to knowing how many times a customer calls customer service, but only from a solution standpoint and not from a way of judging the quality of customer.

1000 phones is a pretty small drop in the bucket for one of America’s largest carriers. It doesn’t even budge their 2.7% churn rate, but how much of an effect will the Sprint 1000 have on the rest of their customer base. In the same way that customer’s personalities differ, it may cause some to consider other options now and others to consider this later.

Some recent research indicated that a carrier's customer service reputation doesn't affect a consumer's decision to start new service, but a huge percentage of consumers surveyed indicated that they have left a wireless carrier for how they were treated. I'm sure how fellow customers are treated can have just as big of an impact on this decision too.

On the other hand, I love their latest ad campaign...ask people in different capacities in a wireless company how the stuff works and it ultimately comes down to magic.

Back in the Cell Phone Business

Before the birth of this particular blog, I worked in the cell phone industry for 3 years. I worked in every facet of Customer Service to which I got well versed in the tech side of cell phones. Alaska is definitely behind the times when it comes to technology in most respects, so gadgety phones were always obsolete up here, because no one (not us or our competitors) supported all the functionality. Another piece of this (and I am going somewhere with this) is that there are no top tier carriers up here. The big boys (Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile and Cingular/ATT) are perfectly content to let the carriers up here handle their customers when they travel...and believe me, carriers up here are more than happy to have them. Take all these factors and add to them the fact that as cell technology is advancing, the limits begin to fall away for Alaskan carriers. In the coming few years, I anticipate that cellular in Alaska could not be differentiated from cellular in SF or Seattle. That being said, I want you to take a moment and indulge me your habits and with your dreams. First your habits. Tell me the top 3 things you do with your cell phone currently that you couldn't live without (making and receiving phone calls is a given).
To break the ice, mine are:
1. Email
2. Text Messaging
3. Web Browser (Scores and News)
Now your dreams. What is something that you wish you could do with your cell phone? I think I'd like to remotely start a car or tell my Tivo (yeah I finally got Tivo) to record The Office if I get dragged out to dinner. Maybe some phones can do this, but mine can't.

Addendum: You can leave your must have habits and dreams in the comments or email me at matt[at]mkinmotion[dot]com.

The World Might Have Changed A Bit Today

No, I'm not going to continue to exhaust the internets with pictures and specs of the iPhone announced today at MacWorld. I think it's a pretty impressive device, and I do think it will revolutionize the industry. I was hoping for an announcement for a new iPod, maybe with a bigger screen or some sort of wireless features, but alas, just the iPhone. I thought of my former colleagues in their CDMA world up in Alaska...no iPhone for you, but considering it doesn't come out until June, I wouldn't put it past Motorola, Samsung, LG or even Nokia to roll out a similar product to go with carriers other than Cingular. Perhaps smart that Jobs and Co. went with Cingular, after all, they are the biggest (58+ million subs). But with Verizon (56+ million subs), Sprint/Nextel (51+), T-Mobile (80 million [worldwide] subs), and the assortment of other carriers both national and regional, the majority of wireless subscribers are not Cingular customers, and carriers other than Cingular want to keep it that way. In fact, there are plenty of exciting phone models being covered down in Vegas at CES, but just none with the buzz of the iPhone. Looks like the other carriers and manufacturers have their work cut out for them in the marketing and competitive strategies. Incidentally, although AAPL shot through the roof today, other manufacturers and carriers were pretty flatlined and unaffected. If Google jumps in the cell world (rumored for a while now), watch out! But enough about a device that won't be out for months...
What's more exciting to me and the original reason for the title is that several leaks have said that the iTunes store will soon sell Beatles music. Although I have every album the Beatles released themselves and a bunch of other stuff, it will make a big splash to have it out there. I recently bought Love, the Beatles remixed and had to wait a few days to receive it. A few days! I highly recommend the album and if you're not convinced or you're a purist and prefer to hear it the way they were originally mixed, do me a favor and listen to NPR's All Songs Considered from December 22nd...it could just change your mind.
And after all that, it's now crunch time for me to decide between the U2 video iPod or the 80GB video iPod to replace my current "dying-a-little-more-everyday-two-plus-year-old" U2 iPod.