Nearly 40% of Sprint’s customers plan to switch when their contract is up
Sprint needs to run a few extra laps, to catch up with the carrier pack. While Skydeck research shows that overall the majority of consumers (68%) are positive about their carrier’s performance, Sprint is consistently lagging behind Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Here are four supporting examples from our research:
1) General satisfaction: Is my carrier fair and honest? Are bills predictable? Would I recommend them… or switch?
For these questions, Verizon fairs the best, receiving positive feedback from 75% of its customers and negative feedback from only 9%. T-Mobile and AT&T receive negative marks from 12% of their customers, while Sprint’s customers were unsatisfied 19% of the time.
2) Heading for the exits: Sprint customers are significantly more likely to say that they will leave their carrier. Twelve percent plan to switch before their contract expires, and 38% after it expires. Across all of the carriers 9% of people intend to switch before their contract is up, and it 26% when it expires.
3) Do you have a problem? Overall, 90% of people reported that they have had a problem with their cell phone service. Sprint’s customers are the most likely to have had a problem at some point. Verizon’s customers are the least likely.
4) Surprise, surprise.
Twenty-three percent of Sprint’s customers regularly receive surprise bills. In contrast, this drops to 18% for T-Mobile and 15% for AT&T and Verizon.
Sprint has had a troubling run recently. With subscriber losses, a new CEO, and a dissolved Clearwire partnership, the company needs to make a 180 and re-focus its efforts on gaining back customers. We hope that they will follow through on their plans for an open WiMax network, but if all else fails, they can just sell out to Google.
So why is Sprint trailing with customers? There is no one answer to this question, but we’ve heard a lot of anecdotes about lackluster customer service at Sprint: poorly trained phone reps, inconsistent website pricing and plan descriptions, and a habit of only honoring their promises when reminded. We’ve had some personal experience too. An employee of Skydeck applied for a rebate on a Sprint phone and was turned down. A store rep told him “rebates are always denied the first time they are submitted”. We hope that was a joke. The same employee had to follow-up with Sprint multiple times so that they would honor their original in-store promises (e.g., waiving the activation fee.)
Our study was conducted in August 2007 over the Internet (not by telephone). The base was 1,000 US adults. The research was for our own service so we won’t be publishing all the results, but stay tuned for more.