If you’ve been thinking of cancelling your contract with Sprint, expect it to get much harder for the rest of the year. In an attempt to staunch the flow of customers away from the network, Sprint has doubled the performance target for cancellations (known within the industry as “churn”) by which employee bonuses are calculated. Details of the change were found in a short-term incentives plan filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week: while in February churn was weighted at 20-percent of the target, this recent plan sets it at 40-percent.
Other targets in the plan have similarly been altered: two measures of cash flow and earnings have been set at 20-percent each, and customer care calls were weighted at 20-percent. In February, 30-percent of the target was placed on customer care calls, 20-percent on subscriber additions and 30-percent on a further measure of operating income. The plan details employee incentives for the remaining three quarters of the year.
Sprint has estimated subscriber losses totalling 1.2m in Q1 2008, three times the figure analysts had predicted, and the carrier believes there will be little turnaround in that downward trend during Q2.
The author of this article is reading these facts incorrectly. Yes, it is true that Sprint has put significantly more focus on keeping customers, but it is doing so by putting more focus on improving customer service. Since the merger in 2005 with Nextel, Sprint put focus on how quickly the c.s. agents processed calls. Essentially the idea was to get the customer off the phone and move on. Now the emphasis has been (correctly) placed on resolving the issue and keeping the customer by keeping them happy. In short, this is a GOOD THING.