Former colleague points out that Sprint has launched a user community to fight the perception the company doesn’t listen. Interesting format — semi-blog, semi-forum, definite community. Cingular has had a more traditional threaded forum for some time, using users to help users and promoting the more prolific and helpful to the status of “cell tower.”
Interesting developments — part of a trifecta as Mark Hopkins in our proactive support team would put it.
- Monitoring — the listening post that seeks cries for help and aggravation.
- Forums — a company hosted facility for users to help themselves and seek guidance from other users … as well as company expertise.
- Blogs — the company’s communication channel for presenting its story, but also permitting customers to freely comment.
Tristan at Sprint writes in the welcome post at Buzz About Wireless:
“I have been with Sprint Nextel for almost three years. In that time I have learned a lot, both directly and anecdotally, about what our customers think of us via other boards, in our retail stores, reading emails, the list is pretty long…not all the stories are good.
Here are some of the weaknesses I have heard from you:
• We don’t listen.
• We have lost the human side.
• We haven’t really helped you.To prove we are listening we have taken on launching this community to open an honest dialogue about wireless technology and service. I believe, along with many other folks here at Sprint, this community will be an excellent place to start having conversations that are meaningful to you and us.”
And guess who is powering their platform? Bottom right corner: http://forums.buzzaboutwireless.com/
I’m sorry, but I have to laugh at this. I have never had a worse customer support experience than what I have had with Sprint in the last 6 months. Not only do they not listen, but each representative I have spoken with seems to be reading from a script, and worse, seems woefully unprepared to answer even the simplest questions. I would love to see how they pull out of this, but from my perspective, they have a very long way to pull. (If I didn’t have to pay the enormous cancellation fees, I would have been gone long ago.)
I applaud and even marvel at what you have done at Lenovo. But for Sprint to pull this off is going to take a whole lot more than posting a forum and saying that “we’re listening now.” Aside from just listening, they need to get their support mechanism to perform what they promise. I have had products shipped incorrectly several times (even got extra phones by accident once), been overcharged three times, had services discontinued without my knowledge, and tried in vain to add new services. And each time I had to communicate with them I spent sometimes an hour on hold before speaking with someone, and then found them to be, well, let’s be nice and say under trained.
Listening is great, but if they can’t execute, they’re doomed … as they should be. But hey, good luck to them.
Looks like people are actually reading Naked Conversations.
Strangely I find the “wailing wall” reference culturally insensitive, like Avinash’s Trinity. Religious allusions have no little to no place in business, schools, or government.
Or we could just call these types of business blogs “Solutions for Christian Guilt and corporations that fail to practice the Notion of the Golden Rule.”
Nah.
Oy vey.
Judah — good point. Wailing Wall is insensitive.
David,
I didn’t realize you wrote it. I know you are a very culturally sensitive, aware, and hip dude. Thank you for being cool about it.
Judah
btw: I wrote both Deval and Kennedy about the “bag” pollution. The Cape is for lovers to play, not Capitalists to sway…. They just live there! 8^)
Golden rule I will cite however.
The bags are doomed.
Yes. And Karma.
bags are evil incarnate.