Almost 3 weeks ago, I sent Gary Forsee an email regarding my extreme dissatisfaction with the Sprint Customer Care team.

Along with other technical issues such as repeated dropped calls, and wrongly charging my account. Unfortunately there was no response until I started to threaten to make noise about my issues.

I finally had a lengthy chat with an Executive Analyst, who was very polite (maybe its because I used 321-Call-Log during this conversation)

Anyways, after dropping the erroneous charges and declaring that he will send an executive order to the engineering department to "investigate" dropped call spots in my local area.

While I still wasn't satisfied, he concluded that I must want out. (boy did I ever) I was frankly honest, and I told him that I indeed did want 'out'.

He said that he 'was very sad to see me go (probably because I affect the "revenue stream") but it is in both of our interests to not have an extremely dissatisfied customer such as yourself'

Anyways, I want to say thank you again, because without your posts, I wouldn't have any idea to get this level of grand customer service.

This isn't the first time a reader has gotten a good reaction by emailing Gary Forsee (see Cancel Sprint Account By Writing Intelligent Well-Crafted Emails to the CEO). You too can reach this Nirvana of customer service. This post has all you need to know. — BEN POPKEN

Oddly framed vase of roses aside, we're basically with it, ethics, it's not how you win or lose, etc, until the very end.

Notice how he adjusts his shirt sleeve for no apparent reason. Police interrogators look for these self-adjusting tics as they are often signs of liars. You can check out the rest of the clips and decide whether Gary is fibbing about his dedication to ethics, or whether he's just nervous on camera. — BEN POPKEN

Cingular
Stanley T. Sigman - President, Chief Executive Officer
3051 Bienville Blvd
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
1-866-220-8446 - President's Office

Sprint
Gary D. Forsee - President, CEO, Director
2001 Edmund Halley Drive
Reston, VA 20191
1-877-875-7505 - Executive switchboard

T-Mobile
Robert P. Dotson - President, CEO, and Director
12920 SE 38th St.
Bellevue, WA 98006
1-425-378-4000 - Corporate Switchboard

Verizon
Ivan G. Seidenberg - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
140 West St
New York, NY 10007
(212)-395-1000 - Corporate Switchboard

— BEN POPKEN

Really? Is this the same man whom one year ago Business Week magazine hailed as one of the "Best Managers of 2004"? Says our tipster, name withheld to protect his job security,

Everyone who was in a position to get him removed has retired, resigned, or been terminated... There is no one in the company shareholders would trust to replace him.

philip: The last couple of months our COO was fired, our Vice President of Customer Service resigned on two days notice, and our Chariman stepped down. Gary Forsee, our CEO, temporarily ran all of these positions at once.
benpopken: eeks
philip: Yeah VP Customer Service was the first to accept a Severance Package (a golden parachute I'm sure) when Gary Forsee announced 5,000 layoffs on January 7th. It was a bad, bad day.
philip: Everyone who was in a position to get him removed has retired, resigned, or been terminated.
philip: There is no one in the company shareholders would trust to replace him. He has ensured himself [a bulletproof] position. He is Chariman, CEO, and President.
philip: We just got a COO last week after almost three months without one... And nobody in executive leadership is experienced enough to lead a $40B corporation with 52 million subscribers. So even though company performance is outrageously disappointing, shareholders are fearful of how much worse it could be.
philip: Objectives for 2007 posted a couple of weeks ago and I have never seen metric demands that are so outrageous. A lot of good people will lose their job and I imagine a lot of good customers will string together tin cans and string. I'm not sure that Sprint is the worst because all things considered I have mixed feelings on if, as a consumer, I hate Sprint or Cingular more... But we are certainly not headed in the right direction and we show no hope of improving in the near future.
benpopken: sounds like you need a new leader
benpopken: but the shareholders are too pussy
philip: Exactly
philip: And the truly worthy talent within our corporation are all being walked out the door for not meeting goals. Or they're opening company policy up for cute 20s-something pro-consumerists bloggers to tear apart for everyone to read.
benpopken: ha!

— BEN POPKEN

Previous leaks from our Sprint moles.

philip:...in our recent all-employee webcast... [Gary Forsee] was very blunt. "These were our goals, we missed them by a lot, we are laying people off, the goals will be stricter, and compensation will be moved to (AND I QUOTE) "somewhere close to 0%"... Can't say that I like him much. Our all-employee web cast was Gary saying, "Am I the only one who knows what I'm doing?" and he evaded a lot of legitimate concerns in the usual corporate evasion manner.
philip: my favorite part [was] the open question session. An employee had the balls to ask...

philip:..."So compensation for specialists and managers is being reduced to somewhere around 0%... despite having less resources and assistance to do more work and achieve higher goals. Will these compensation cuts be the same at the executive level?" I think you might have something about 10,000 Sprint employees who could quote that 30-second piece of heaven verbatim.

5,000 layoffs were announced in January. Sprint is definitely not the happy place to work right now. This makes it even harder to find a sympathetic rep when you call for a billing adjustment. — BEN POPKEN

Previous leaks from our Sprint moles.

Customer service reps have goals to meet for every call they take UPDATE: This is the average reps shoot for per call, over time. You only get an average of three dollars per call to give back to the customer. Calls need to be under seven minutes. All companies have these metrics, but Philip says,

I have never seen any company enforce metrics as strictly as Sprint and truly give no consideration to impacting factors either..."

philip: Even a valid, justifiable adjustment (meaning we were crediting for our own mistake), specialists have a very very small limit. And if they don't make the goal, they don't get their raise. So it's motivation for them to say no.
benpopken: is the limit per call, or per day, or what?

philip: Even a valid, justifiable adjustment (meaning we were crediting for our own mistake), specialists have a very very small limit. And if they don't make the goal, they don't get their raise. So it's motivation for them to say no.
benpopken: is the limit per call, or per day, or what?
philip: The goal varies depending on Line of Business (be it corporate accounts, consumer general, retention, etc) but averages $3/call. Trust me that is not a fair amount or remotely realistic. Today in our manager's meeting the VP of Operations made it clear that it would no longer be acceptable for supervisors to make adjustments for specialists (for instance a specialist might have a supervisor make an $800 adjustment for a billing error instead of getting disciplinary action for being over goal)
benpopken: $3 a call is nothing!
philip: And that amount includes courtesy credits (which are actually technically no longer allowed), billing corrections, etc; There are specialists [customer service representatives] right now who literally are scared to go outside for break because they are worried their badge won't work when it's time to come back. I see it happen every week.
benpopken: is that how they fire people? just deactivating their badge?
philip: Depends on how many people have to be let go that day and for what issue
benpopken: crikey
benpopken: climate of fear is no way to run a place
philip: If its an attendance-related issue then we make every effort to sit the specialist down and advise them that we have to sever their employment and what not. But in some cases it happens that they go out for a smoke break and their badge doesn't work when they try to go back inside.
philip: There is a lady who is on four Level 3 warnings. Any day now she is going to be terminated for not meeting goal. She is the only specialist I have ever met that has never, ever failed a Customer Satisfaction call. It's a shame because she is so wonderful at what she does and you see her break down and cry at lunch because she is going to lose her job for doing her job without regards to bureaucracy
philip: But definitely many people who come to work and really do live in fear of not being able to keep their call time at goal (usually below 7 minutes, again depending on line of business) or keep their adjustments at goal... And then at the same time, they are held accountable for CSAT Surveys (which is when a third-party company calls the customer back a couple of days later and asks them about their experience). It's a very difficult job and Sprint really does not give specialists the support they need to take care of customers realistically.
benpopken: hm 7 minutes
benpopken: that stinks for them
philip: It's hard to pull that off when a lot of people are calling in for the 7th time desperately trying to get that valid adjustment.
benpopken: so maybe if they gave more leeway on the valid adjustments they could save a lot of grief
philip: And here's the thing- metrics exist in every occupation and industry and are extremely necessary to operate a business. But I have never seen any company enforce them as strictly as Sprint and truly give no consideration to impacting factors either.
benpopken: where did the metric obsession come from?
benpopken: gary forsee loves metrics?
philip: Gary could care less.

— BEN POPKEN

Previous leaks from our Sprint moles

He doesn't pretend to read them all but he does read some of them in staff, especially when we look especially bad. That makes my day.

We had a very interesting conversation with Philip that we'll be parceling out pieces of in discrete posts. For now, everyone wave hello to Gary!

The ghosts are gate-crashing the consumer party... spooky!

— BEN POPKEN

Hurrah! And after they do that, that's when we upload the Gary Forsee sex tape! — BEN POPKEN

Previously:
Open Letter To SonicWALL: We Are Not Porn
Consumerist = pr0n

You see, Jason didn't just complain, he analyzed the weaknesses of Sprint's business. He wrote to a CEO in a manner that a CEO would understand. As a result, Sprint canceled his account (at his request), zeroed his balance, and all was well. Not a year early or anything, but it's something, and it saved him some money. Good job, Jason! —MEGHANN MARCO

Read Jason's emails inside.

First, Jason wrote:

20-Apr-2006 00:02:05,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The purpose of this letter is to explain my recent experiences with Sprint. I feel that by conveying this information to you all, I can help Sprint become a better company in regards to customer service. First off, please let me introduce myself. My name is Jason XXXXX, and I have been a Sprint customer for 4 years.
In the time that I've been a customer, I've had to call various departments within Sprint, well over 100 (one hundred) times - with the bulk of them being to customer care - in order to resolve many, many different issues. In many of the cases, one of several things would happen when I called.

1)I would explain my problem to the first level representative, and after some time discussing the issue, I would be transferred to a second level supervisor.

2) During the aforementioned transfer to the supervisor, the call would be disconnected, or incorrectly routed, and I would end up back at a first level representative.

3) The representative would purposely disconnect the call.

4) The representative would refuse to transfer my call to a supervisor.

5) The call would get correctly transferred to the supervisor, who, often after an hour (There was at least one instance, where it took nearly three hours), would eventually find and fix the problem.

Sadly, it almost always resorts to #5 before the issue is resolved. There have been very few cases where a first level representative has managed to a) fix the problem, and b) not incorrectly enter information (such as the mailing address I had updated last night...which I had to do again today - but I digress).
Let us elaborate on the 5 previously mentioned call flows. The most common scenario involves #1, #3, #1, #2, #1, then finally #5, or some combination thereof - that is 3 calls, with a usual minimum of 15 minutes for each of the first two calls, and at least 30 minutes for the final call, which adds up to at least one hour per issue, half of which is to a level 2 supervisor.

I'd like to break these figures down for you. Assuming that a first level representative earns $10/hour (which is perhaps a little high, until you include benefits, etc) and that a supervisor earns $20/hour, we can estimate that each issue will cost Sprint a minimum of $15 in salary costs. I have at least one issue every two months that results in the above scenario. If even a small percentage of other customers have the same experiences that I do, it doesn't take a business major to realize that this doesn't make financial sense. On top of, and due to that, I've been highly considering canceling my account once the contract period expires. I'd also like to explain my most recent issue. Last night, at about 8:00pm, I attempted to pay my bill online at sprint.com, as I do every other month. There were technical difficulties with the website, so I called customer care to pay the bill instead.

Since the difficulties were technical in nature, the representative was nice enough to waive the normal fee that is charged when customers pay their bill with that method. I also asked the representative to change the mailing address on my account (which I had changed several months ago), and after several questions like "How do you spell 'South'?", he assured me that the change was made successfully. This afternoon, I received a call from Sprint, to tell me that I was close to my spending limit (of $300), and that if I did not pay my bill immediately, I risked being shut off. There are two problems with this.

1) My bill as of yesterday, was only $83.07, and even if another bill of ~$83 were to post, that would only put me at just over half the $300 spending limit.

2) When I pressed "6" to speak to a representative, I was assured that my current balance was, in fact, $0, and that I should also speak to customer care to verify that. After much effort (see #2 and #4 above), I was finally informed that the call was made in error, and that I should simply disregard it.

When prompted, the supervisor also informed me that my address had not, in fact, been changed.


In short, there are a few places where Sprint may have some room for improvement.


I would appreciate a call at your earliest convenience, so that we may discuss this more fully. I can be reached by telephone at XXXXXXXX.


Thank you for your time,
Jason

I apologize for any inconvenience you may have encountered and thank you
for contacting me. I've asked a member of my team to get in touch with
you to resolve your issue. We appreciate the chance to earn and keep
your business.

Sincerely,
Gary Forsee
Chairman and CEO

Mr. Forsee,

You may recall my emailing you in the past, detailing the experiences I have had in my nearly 4 years as a Sprint customer. At this time, I would like to bring new issues to your attention. Ignore me again if you choose, but I would like to state that this has now lost you a long time customer.

I must note however, that if you ignore me (I would like to see a personalized reply email or phone call from you), I will be detailing the same information I have provided to you in the past, and currently, to be publicly available on my weblog - which has a very high concentration of Internet traffic from the telephony community (ie; cellular phone makers, PBX companies, other cellular phone company executives, Sprint shareholders, etc).
So, now the issues. I called in today, to find out the exact dates my contract expired, and I was told that even though my lines were both activated at the same time, that one expired one month after the other. Obviously, this is an issue.

Now let me detail each of the SIX calls I made this afternoon.

1) I called in, navigated through the automated system, and before being connected to a representative, I was disconnected.

2)I called in, navigated through the automated system, and was transferred to a representative who while looking up the account, complained to me about how bad her day has been going so far! She eventually transferred me to another department, and the representative was looking into the issue, and asked to put my on hold. While putting me on hold, we were disconnected.

3) I called in, navigated through the automated system, asked to speak to a supervisor, and after several minutes of explaining why I needed to, and how I had been hung up on twice previously, I was transferred to an Audix voicemail box, where I left a message, and was then disconnected from the system.

4) I called in, navigated through the automated system, asked to speak to a supervisor, and was hung up on during the transfer.

5) I called in, navigated through the automated system, asked to speak to a supervisor, and at this point, I was very upset, and refused to give her my account information. She said that since I could/would not provide that information, that the supervisor would not talk to me.

I'd like to comment on this one a little.. Have you ever had to call through the aforementioned automated system? When you call *2 from your mobile phone, you are greeted by "Claire" which is the automated response feature. Before you are transferred to a representative, she prompts you for the last 4 digits of your Social Security number, and validates it. You may recall that in my previous email to you, I mentioned that I had a few ideas to stop pissing off customers - this is one of them. "Claire" is horrible, and so is the queue system your representatives use.

6) I called in, navigated through the automated system, and finally talked to a representative who had enough brains to go back to August of 2004, and see why the contract was renewed on the account. She said that Sprint would honor the original contract expiration date of August 29th 2006 instead of September 21st 2006, and that she would put in a high priority note stating this fact. I asked if she could mail me something that states this, and she said she could not. I asked to speak with a supervisor, and I asked the supervisor the same question. She explained to me that the note could not be deleted from the system, and I attempted to explain to her that I have been a customer for 4 years and that I know sometimes (THAT, is an understatement) representatives make mistakes, and I would prefer if I had this statement in writing. During this explanation, I was hung up on, yet again.

Gary, you must understand that customer service is the primary part of any company, that people make a judgment on. You stick people with 2 year contracts (which is just fine) which cannot be broken, even if there is an issue with Sprint (which is not fine).

If you truly believed in the company you lead, you would have looked into these issues personally the first time I emailed you.

Please see the link below, which was recorded by a person who called AOL to cancel his account. I highly recommend you take a lesson from the great amount of media coverage that this got.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13447232/

Thank you,
Jason

Dear Mr. [Jason]:

To completely resolve your billing concerns, I applied a credit of $77.79 to your account to offset the final balance. As a result, your account is closed and reflects a zero balance.


If you have any questions, you may contact our office by calling
1-877-875-7505. (UPDATE: 5/06/07: number has been disconnected) We are available Monday through Friday between 7 a.m.
and 5 p.m., Central Time.


Sincerely,

/Claudia Poe/
VIP Executive Analyst
Sprint Nextel Corporation

This info is handy if you're trying to attain executive customer service. Like if you want your complaint letter read and handled by someone who graduated college.

This is not a way to become a penpals with these cellular CEOs. They will most likely never know you exist. Rather, this is a way to get in contact with these company's executive customer service teams. (If you don't know what that is, read this first).

Sexy contact info, inside!

For numbers that are corporate switchboards, simply and politely ask for the offices of Mr. So and so. Put on your best professionals business voice and you will go far.

Cingular
Stanley T. Sigman - President, Chief Executive Officer
3051 Bienville Blvd
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
1-866-220-8446 - President's Office

Verizon
Ivan G. Seidenberg - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
140 West St
New York, NY 10007
(212)-395-1000 - Corporate Switchboard

T-Mobile
Robert P. Dotson - President, CEO, and Director
12920 SE 38th St.
Bellevue, WASHINGTON 98006
1-425-378-4000 - Corporate Switchboard

Sprint
Gary D. Forsee - President, CEO, Director
2001 Edmund Halley Drive
Reston, VA 20191
1-877-875-7505 - Executive switchboard