Depends on how many months, and exactly what the issue you're calling over was.
But yes. While I can think of a degenerate case that might allow 40 calls in one month (GAH STUPID DELL YOU MUST ALL DIE), I can't see 1200 people consistently needing that.
That was my thought - on a few-cases basis, I'd lean toward the phone company's angle, at least without any evidence that the calls were really valid, but *1200* people who have had such problems that they've been calling on an average of once per day? That tells me the problem ain't with the customers.
Mhm. I suspect it's less than that; the article words it (awkwardly) as calling forty or fifty times as often as the average customer, who calls *less* than once per month.
Average customer calls once every six weeks, then it's one call a day. Average customer calls once every two months, it's one every day and a half. Average customer calls once every four months, than these horrible harassing problem customers are calling just over twice a week.
(I am trying at this point to think of all the people I know who own cellphones, and how often I've seen them call customer service. I realize anecdote != data, but I don't think their average is anything close to once a month.)
I'm on the phone with Rogers at least once a month, usually because after a YEAR AND A HALF they still haven't grasped the concept of amalgamating my billing despite the fact that it was THEIR IDEA to do so.
How many calls did John make to Verizon with regards to ringtones?
John and I are *educated* consumers, willing and able to solve our own problems whenever we can. After years in support, I can reliably say that we don't represent the 'average' customer by any stretch of the imagination. It's probably fair to say that'd apply to most of the people you hang out with.
I've dealt with the sorts of people who really do generate 50 times as much call volume as other customers. These are the people who call every time an error message comes up in windows, certain they have some virus - when in reality it's just that they used End Task and Microsoft kindly offered to send details back to the home office. These are people who seem to take petty joy in being able to yell at support and make people jump through hoops for them, who are never going to be happy because 'fixing their problem' is not what they want - they just want attention, or to feel powerful. These are people who irrecoverably delete all their email, then call ten times in the hopes of getting a different agent who will fix it rather than accepting the first person's assertion that 'you really did irrecoverably delete your email, I'm sorry'.
For a company the size of Sprint to have 1,200 of these does not surprise me in the slightest.
No idea. I have a vague impression of three, so triple that. But that was for ringtones, as you note. Sprint's doing it for billing.
If you're on the phone with Rogers at least once a month, then you're on the phone with Rogers more than an average Sprint customer is with Sprint.
I was on the phone with Sympatico maybe once every six months, and I think I've called Rogers at most ten times--that I got through, there were a few disconnects--in all the time I've been dealing with them. I think I had to call each company about billing once when the serve was set up, and once more for Sympatico when I cancelled it.
Yes, you and John (and arguably me) are more informed than most about computers. At the same time, none of the anecdotes I've experienced or heard--from CSRs, including you and John, no less--suggest that CSRs are always professional, responsible, or efficient. That alone is going to hike the number of calls if you have to make them.
Poking around, the letter specifies that it's for calls about billing and the account balance. I am guessing if you have no problems with accounting, you call the carrier considerably less than once a month. If you do have problems with it, and if you want to avoid reloading your phone when you don't have to, calling repeatedly seems more than reasonable.
(Or quitting. On that note, I have no idea if losing 1% of your customer base in the last quarter (for the the third quarter in a row to get "substantial losses") and having 2.7% churn is high, and perhaps the C|Net article noting that they traditionally have bad customer service has an axe to grind.)
Add in to that that apparently Sprint CSRs get a hard time if they adjust an account more than an average of $3/call, and that occasionally people are fired by going out on break and not having their badge work when they try to come back in, and I am going to suspect that at least in some places you're getting people who won't make customers happy for fear of making the company unhappy.
See "yet more calls".
> These are the people who call every time an error > message comes up in windows, certain they have some > virus - when in reality it's just that they used End > Task and Microsoft kindly offered to send details back > to the home office. > These are people who irrecoverably delete all their > email, then call ten times in the hopes of getting a > different agent who will fix it rather than accepting > the first person's assertion that 'you really did > irrecoverably delete your email, I'm sorry'.
What, on their cell phones?
Having had to call Rogers six or seven times in the space of three days because I *did* need to find a different agent, one who wouldn't just tell me to turn things on and off and then give up or schedule a call from someone else who *also* had no clue[1], I am completely sympathetic to the idea of people trying repeatedly in the hopes of getting through to someone who doesn't read answers that *don't work* off a script.
And again, it's a billing thing, not a "happy boopy computer did something I don't understand" thing. --- [1] IIRC, the code used to identify the connection had somehow gotten corrupted.
Caller: Why won't my phone work? You better give me free stuff to make up for it! I need to call my mom and I can't remember her name to look it up so I need my speed dial!
This is a good move... but it isn't an original one. Companies have been discreetly flagging the persistently aggravating customers for years, and refusing to help them.
Certainly companies have been putting bad customers in a position where they've taken their business elsewhere -- and those companies weren't sad to see them go, by any means -- but announcing to the general masses that they've "terminated" their relationship with a great big chunk of people isn't something you see a business do every day.
Note that stuff like this leads to a call center's downsizing, too. Less customers means less need for reps.
Might explain why Sprint lost 1% of their monthly post-paid customers in the last quarter, then.
(Seriously, my sympathy dropped right through the floor as soon as I noticed the letters were for "frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information". That's the kind of thing people never call about if there's no problem and (reasonably) call repeatedly about if their is; at that point, forty or fifty times as often as the average customer means a hell of a lot less.)
Companies have been discreetly flagging the persistently aggravating customers for years, and refusing to help them.
A lot of customers really don't seem to realize that companies generally keep written troubleshooting logs for every call. I get your name first thing, and by the time you're done explaining your problem, I have a list of every time you called, who you spoke to, and what was done. If I see that you've called us twice a week every week for six months, I know that either 1) You have some serious problem that I need to find and FIX so that you'll stop calling, or 2) You have no problem at all, and you're just calling to annoy me. And I don't feel at all bad about stonewalling people in group 2. Is it bad customer service? No. I have people with real issues to help.
I don't think this was necessarily a bad thing on Sprint's part. I especially liked their take on the matter: clearly, with the number of calls these disgruntled complainers were making, they were unhappy. And Sprint felt it couldn't make them happy. So it released the consumer of their obligation to stay with Sprint and allowed them go elsewhere, in the hopes that they'll be happy.
If they were giving the customers the freedom to terminate their contract without penalty, then I would agree that it is win-win. But unilaterally tearing up a contract without negotiation is ethically questionable, particularly if the customers weren't in violation of the TOS. Especially if the plans that these customers have to jump to wind up being more expensive, I wouldn't be surprised if they were entitled to additional compensation.
The amusing thing to me is that now all Sprint customers know how to get out of their two-year contracts -- by incessently needling the CSR's. One suspects that this is not the lesson that Sprint wanted its customers to learn.
"Terminate contracts with customers who call accounts/billing a lot, so we need less CSRs who get in shit for actually refunding money and occasionally find out they're fired when they try to come in from break and discover their passes were deactived"?
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 02:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 05:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 05:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 03:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 03:24 am (UTC)But yes. While I can think of a degenerate case that might allow 40 calls in one month (GAH STUPID DELL YOU MUST ALL DIE), I can't see 1200 people consistently needing that.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 01:55 pm (UTC)Average customer calls once every six weeks, then it's one call a day. Average customer calls once every two months, it's one every day and a half. Average customer calls once every four months, than these horrible harassing problem customers are calling just over twice a week.
(I am trying at this point to think of all the people I know who own cellphones, and how often I've seen them call customer service. I realize anecdote != data, but I don't think their average is anything close to once a month.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 02:20 pm (UTC)How many calls did John make to Verizon with regards to ringtones?
John and I are *educated* consumers, willing and able to solve our own problems whenever we can. After years in support, I can reliably say that we don't represent the 'average' customer by any stretch of the imagination. It's probably fair to say that'd apply to most of the people you hang out with.
I've dealt with the sorts of people who really do generate 50 times as much call volume as other customers. These are the people who call every time an error message comes up in windows, certain they have some virus - when in reality it's just that they used End Task and Microsoft kindly offered to send details back to the home office. These are people who seem to take petty joy in being able to yell at support and make people jump through hoops for them, who are never going to be happy because 'fixing their problem' is not what they want - they just want attention, or to feel powerful. These are people who irrecoverably delete all their email, then call ten times in the hopes of getting a different agent who will fix it rather than accepting the first person's assertion that 'you really did irrecoverably delete your email, I'm sorry'.
For a company the size of Sprint to have 1,200 of these does not surprise me in the slightest.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 05:28 pm (UTC)If you're on the phone with Rogers at least once a month, then you're on the phone with Rogers more than an average Sprint customer is with Sprint.
I was on the phone with Sympatico maybe once every six months, and I think I've called Rogers at most ten times--that I got through, there were a few disconnects--in all the time I've been dealing with them. I think I had to call each company about billing once when the serve was set up, and once more for Sympatico when I cancelled it.
Yes, you and John (and arguably me) are more informed than most about computers. At the same time, none of the anecdotes I've experienced or heard--from CSRs, including you and John, no less--suggest that CSRs are always professional, responsible, or efficient. That alone is going to hike the number of calls if you have to make them.
Poking around, the letter specifies that it's for calls about billing and the account balance. I am guessing if you have no problems with accounting, you call the carrier considerably less than once a month. If you do have problems with it, and if you want to avoid reloading your phone when you don't have to, calling repeatedly seems more than reasonable.
(Or quitting. On that note, I have no idea if losing 1% of your customer base in the last quarter (for the the third quarter in a row to get "substantial losses") and having 2.7% churn is high, and perhaps the C|Net article noting that they traditionally have bad customer service has an axe to grind.)
Add in to that that apparently Sprint CSRs get a hard time if they adjust an account more than an average of $3/call, and that occasionally people are fired by going out on break and not having their badge work when they try to come back in, and I am going to suspect that at least in some places you're getting people who won't make customers happy for fear of making the company unhappy.
See "yet more calls".
> These are the people who call every time an error
> message comes up in windows, certain they have some
> virus - when in reality it's just that they used End
> Task and Microsoft kindly offered to send details back
> to the home office.
> These are people who irrecoverably delete all their
> email, then call ten times in the hopes of getting a
> different agent who will fix it rather than accepting
> the first person's assertion that 'you really did
> irrecoverably delete your email, I'm sorry'.
What, on their cell phones?
Having had to call Rogers six or seven times in the space of three days because I *did* need to find a different agent, one who wouldn't just tell me to turn things on and off and then give up or schedule a call from someone else who *also* had no clue[1], I am completely sympathetic to the idea of people trying repeatedly in the hopes of getting through to someone who doesn't read answers that *don't work* off a script.
And again, it's a billing thing, not a "happy boopy computer did something I don't understand" thing.
---
[1] IIRC, the code used to identify the connection had somehow gotten corrupted.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 04:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 01:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 07:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 11:16 am (UTC)CSR: *headdesk*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 01:17 pm (UTC)Certainly companies have been putting bad customers in a position where they've taken their business elsewhere -- and those companies weren't sad to see them go, by any means -- but announcing to the general masses that they've "terminated" their relationship with a great big chunk of people isn't something you see a business do every day.
Note that stuff like this leads to a call center's downsizing, too. Less customers means less need for reps.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 01:57 pm (UTC)> aggravating customers for years, and refusing to help them.
...wouldn't that kind of thing result in more calls from the customer?
(I am reserving judgement until I know how often the average customer calls.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 02:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 05:33 pm (UTC)(Seriously, my sympathy dropped right through the floor as soon as I noticed the letters were for "frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information". That's the kind of thing people never call about if there's no problem and (reasonably) call repeatedly about if their is; at that point, forty or fifty times as often as the average customer means a hell of a lot less.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 02:25 pm (UTC)A lot of customers really don't seem to realize that companies generally keep written troubleshooting logs for every call. I get your name first thing, and by the time you're done explaining your problem, I have a list of every time you called, who you spoke to, and what was done. If I see that you've called us twice a week every week for six months, I know that either 1) You have some serious problem that I need to find and FIX so that you'll stop calling, or 2) You have no problem at all, and you're just calling to annoy me. And I don't feel at all bad about stonewalling people in group 2. Is it bad customer service? No. I have people with real issues to help.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 03:32 pm (UTC)It's win-win.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 06:42 pm (UTC)The amusing thing to me is that now all Sprint customers know how to get out of their two-year contracts -- by incessently needling the CSR's. One suspects that this is not the lesson that Sprint wanted its customers to learn.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-11 06:43 pm (UTC)