Sprint has a new CEO, and, you know, it’s a tough job being “the new guy” and being charged with turning around a poorly performing company. So we thought we’d give Dan Hesse a hand and tell him what’s wrong with their phone-based customer service, seen as being one of their major weaknesses. We asked our readers for their thoughts and they had lots of neat ideas why Sprint customer service sucks. Some of them even have worked on the call center side of Sprint; their insights are especially revealing/frightening…

“Poorly paid reps, little actual training, supervisors that really want you to take a long walk off a short pier, and disturbing work environments, actually. And G-d forbid you wanted to give a customer a credit they deserved! I worked for Teleperformance USA taking Sprint calls my freshman year of college, and they hired anyone that could type twenty-five words per minute, had no drug testing policies and a heck of a lot of people doing a lot of drugs, and the one thing that really made me quit was the employee that monthly painted the bathroom with her… monthlies.” – Pinkpuppet

“CSRs not empowered to make decisions and solve problems…they end up worshiping rules to keep their jobs.” – Comopuedeser

“They need for the Consumerist Hotline people to train the front line guys and actually empower them to help the customer and something might be better.” – Missdona

“One of their managers during a call with them told me that “yes we are ripping you off but that doesn’t mean that I have to refund you the money”…Sounds like a couple people hate their jobs…” – Coder4Life

“I spoke to dozens of CSRs, and I don’t think more than 1/4 of them knew the difference between roaming and making a long-distance call.” – Noquarter

[ed. comment below found on RipOffReport.com]
“I worked for Teleperformance USA on the Sprint PCS account. After the constant all day every day push and shove to make sales, I became a top sales agent within 3-4 short months. I even won a drawing for and X-Box with the other 9 of 10 top agents!!! First they cheat you out of most of your top sales, saying that they broke for one reason or another, resulting in the loss of sales to the agent in hundreds of dollars, then they accuse you of falsifying a sale, that was worth 3 cents, so that they can fire you, because policy is, if you do not work up through the ‘pay day’ of the sales pay out, you do not get your sales bonus!! And they keep that money!!! My last sales check should have been at least $300, that’s after all the other sales they said didn’t make it, which they did, but you can’t prove it, so you don’t get paid for them, which would have made the $300 sales check more like $400. They are robbers and cheaters!! There were several other people let go for the same reasons all around the same time I was last July. I hope all those people see this web site and vent their frustration at being ripped off too!!!” – Debbie

“The only time I have ever had sprint work on my problem was when I would threaten to leave sprint.” – AMARAIN824

“All these people are trained to do is read a script off of the screen. They do this very badly.” – BDGBILL

“The core problem is derived from the nextel merger. they are foolishly converting millions of accounts at a time to a broken nextel billing system called ensemble. Ensemble is sprint’s cancer. The system is crippled, fragile, and was rushed into the field without proper testing of all elements. when you cant find a simple code to say block texting, or sometimes you cant even swap a device, you have to pick up a phone and call someone. the most basic of tasks often requires a call to someone else. the operational costs and the terrible slow down to actually helping a customer that this creates is outrageous. worst of all you have no idea if the changes are done correctly and if the bill will be right. not to mention that sales reps cannot be assured that they will receive a commission on any sale they created with an ensemble customer, thus killing the motivation to actually generate revenue for the company. If these issues were resolved, Sprint would be a powerhouse to be reckoned with. good luck sprint, and good luck to your new CEO.” – Bugmenot2

“Getting bitched at all day does not do much for your company morale and makes you less likely to want to help anyone. Follow that up with incentive plans based on the number of calls per day you handle, and BOOM….the anti CSR is born.” – CRAZYFLANGER

“1) The first-tier reps can’t do anything except read off a script. With 51%, that means you either need better scripts, or need to empower tier 1 to deviate from the script. 2) Even the second- and third-tier reps are often hamstrung by a terrible back end that’s often down entirely, or just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Sprint’s computers are awful.” – Dotyoureyes

“i work in retail and sell sprint wireless, att wireless, and have sold verizon wireless…i think the biggest disadvantage sprint has is there computer systems…not even so much the poor people that aren’t very good at communicating the problems to the customer. when you have a problem with verizon or att and you call the person helping you doesn’t have to figure out what billing system your in (sprint has 2), work with a code system that often puts your charges on many different screens (verizon and att reps can see pretty much what you see and work from there), or work with a system that requires codes to charge any of these charges or services. the other obvious issue is that they have too many people that all do different things on the account, and no one person that knows all of the systems. the only way sprint will ever fix there problems is to take there best reps train them in all area, lay off the rest and simplify there computer systems.” – Ibelieveinsteve

“My wife considered a job running one of their call centers a couple years ago…The one thing that got emphasized over and over again was that she’d be assessed based on how much her unit sold services, not on how well calls were resolved.” – Guevera

“A friend recently got hired for outsourced company that has a new contract with Sprint to do customer service. Seems like Sprint let go 80% of their inhouse CSRs because of their bad rap. The problem with the new plan is the want 1500 new people in 3 – 4 months. The outsourced company is hiring anybody left and right (even w/o high school diploma) just to meet the 1500 requirement. I think this means that customer service will actually get worse. Sprint will probably just move on to a new company next year with another unrealistic plan.” – Ncboxer

“The Sprint created training is entirely online. You can just keep hitting “next” if you like, and as long as you’ve gone through it – it’s all good.” – Avengelist

“Well, the most obvious improvement they could make to customer service would be to get rid of their convoluted billing system – the fact that your balance due changes from one minute to the next so they can disconnect you the nano-second you hover anywhere near your maximum minutes or credit makes it impossible for most Sprint customers (who I know) to navigate their account on their own. I have documented at least a dozen instances where my balance shows as zero due on the current invoice just minutes before my phone has been shut off for not paying the bill! Just a plain, old fashioned monthly balance that stays that way til the next billing cycle would probably cut calls to the CSR’s down by half.” – Hypebreaker

“I have spent literally collective days on the phone with sprint Customer service.” -Ivealwaysgotmail10

PREVIOUSLY: Sprint Fixes Only 53% Of Problems On First Call
(Photo: Getty)

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