Archive for July 8th, 2007

What Happens If You Call Customer Service Too Often?

Published by Babar Bhatti on July 8, 2007 under Mobile Companies, Telecommunications

Well, if you are a customer of Sprint you could lose your service. In a first of its kind step, Sprint Nextel, third largest wireless company in US, has decided to disconnect about 1,000 customers who called customer service excessively.  “The amount of time being spent to resolve the same issues again and again was affecting our ability to service other customers,” a spokesperson said.

If you call us too much, we don’t want you. Could this happen in Pakistan, may be a few years down the road? I doubt it. For one it is easy to switch providers, companies are still sensitive to customer needs and cost of customer service is not as high as in US or Europe. But too much competition in telecom and the price wars can lead to a change in behavior of the companies. We already have quality issues in Pakistan so I hope it does not come to this level of confrontation. In general customer service is something we all expect but lets admit there are some customers who can be excessively demanding and unreasonable.

Some more details about the unusual Sprint case. In the US mobile phone companies often have contracts with customers. Sprint has decided to terminate the contracts of the above mentioned customers and gave them a month to find a new provider. The terminated subscribers called an average of 25 times a month, a rate 40 times higher than average customers. “The number of inquiries you have made to us … has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs,” the letter states. Most calls were billing related.

Sprint, which has been losing market share to the other carriers, has been trying to add more high-spending customers while keeping a lid on costs. The company also has been imposing stricter credit requirements on new customers.

In the case of Sprint, the number of customers is not too large to warrant any concerns - at least for now.  I am not a Sprint customer but I’ll remind myself to be careful next time I call any other customer service.