Sprint Shows that CX is a Business Strategy
- Chad Ghastin
- Apr 5, 2016
- 3 min read
Tuesday October 1st 2014, was the first ever Customer Experience Day (yes, it was actually recognized by Congress). One of the many global online events taking place to celebrate was the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) webinar:Customer Experience from the C-Suite, Discussion with Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint. Led by Bruce Temkin, the webinar was one of the most inspiring I have heard in a long time.
The Situation
At the end of 2007, Dan Heese took over as CEO of Sprint, a company that was broke and facing bankruptcy. To make matters worse, customers were calling Sprint’s Customer Care Department at double the industry average. Lacking the time and financial resources required to effectively compete on network upgrades, Heese instead focused the company to compete on customer experience.
The Strategy
Heese’s strategy was translated into three customer experience priorities that were socialized across the company.
1) Building a Great Customer Experience
2) Strengthen the Brand
3) Generate Cash
The Results
Heese described the customer experience transformation as an opportunity to “never waste a good crisis.” With the urgency required to avoid bankruptcy and retain customers, Sprint was able to achieve measurable success in a short period of time.
► From 4Q10 to 4Q12, 2 years, Sprint added 13 million net new customers to the Sprint network platform.
► In 2013 The American Customer Satisfaction Index recognized Sprint as #1 among all national carriers in customer satisfaction and the most improved U.S. company across all 47 industries studied over the last four years. Sprint was also the only U.S. company to go from last place to first place in its industry over the past four years.
► Since 2008, Sprint has received 18 Received JD Power awards, including 4 JD Power Best Retail Experience awards in a row.
Key Takeaways
► Customer Experience has to be on the CEO’s agenda: Heese makes customer experience the top priority on his weekly leadership meeting agenda and holds executives directly responsible for reducing call center volume or as he put it, “walking the talk.”
► Higher quality costs less than constantly “fixing” problems and offering credits: Fixing operational and product problems at the root, allows Sprint to provide a higher quality product at a lower cost. This is in contrast to the common approach of staffing an army of reps to react to customer issues and dish out expensive “save a stop” credits.
► Clear and measurable accountability across the organization: Variable compensation (i.e., bonuses) at every level of the company is tied to reducing customer call volume. Departments are assigned call reason codes and held responsible for fixing the root operational and product issues that were driving calls.
► Simplify the customer experience to increase value: A plethora of products and service plans left customer’s intimated and confused about which plan provided the best value. To combat this, Sprint rolled out a simplified “Unlimited My Way” plan and focused on better educating customers at the store. In Heese’s own words “Every great innovation is making what’s hard, easy.”
► Consistent and impactful employee engagement: Sprint holds companywide “Thank You Thursdays” where rank and file employees and executives come together to write handwritten thank you notes to customers. The company also has a “Social Media Ninjas” program where employees can act as advocates across social media platforms and solve customer issues.
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