An Open Letter to my fellow Sprint Agents

An Open Letter to my fellow Sprint Agents, Worldwide:

I realize that you have an ever decreasing and limited amount of time to interact with each customer, and the fact that it's a phone conversation make it no less challenging; I'm well aware. However if you are going to make a promise to a customer, please... please... please... for the sake of my sanity, and your own job security (or soon to be lack-thereof), please follow through on  your promise. I personally do not care if it takes you the rest of the day or your supervisor's lunch hour. If you promise, you need to have to deliver.  Do not promise the customer something, notate the account accordingly, then end the call and assume your job is complete because you want to lower your call handle time, or it's time for your next break. It is NOT done until you have followed through on whatever (probably too extravagent) promise you made, and most likely even do a callback to confirm with the customer that the resolution is complete. 

 

What you may, or may not, know - is that each and every time you document a promise to a customer in their account, and that customer calls back to find out why we haven't lived up to their expections, two things happen: (1)We have to live up to that promise, often at a considerable cost to the company, and our own team/bonus bottom line; and (2)Your lovely name and ID number along with the promise you failed to live up to, AND the dollor amout it cost the company to make good on, all get forwarded to a back office team that spend their day dealing with customers and unfulfilled promises (among many other things). And while it's not an instantaneous thing, your information is logged into the database and then on the (daily?weekly?monthly?) report that gets sent to your site manager your name is made prominent on the list list of issues to be 'dealt with'.

Yep, you did notice that one of the security guards was not at post when you came down the elevator to have your smoke break, right? You guessed it, that'd because they're busy awaiting your return to your cube so that you can be walked out (the long way around, I might add; a short parade, of sorts) of the building and escorted to your car. I do hope you enjoy your extended vacation, of sorts, just as much as I will enjoy cleaning up your messes that have yet to surface.

In closing, PLEASE deliver on your promises. If you're telling a customer something just to get them off your phone, then I personally will assist that customer in telling you something, and the only thing that will be getting off anything will be you getting off the bus at the unemployment line, it's that simple, and we take it that seriously. In the past week I've had no less than five promises made to customers (and documented in their accounts, I might add) that no sane person would have ever made, and nor did their curcumstances warrant such crazy promised. If it was customer satisfaction scores you were seeking, then you were successful, because anyone would be thrilled with some of the offers and discounts you promised, and I'm sure at the time they were surveyed they were still overjoyed at the thought of their newfound 'friendly' rep with a pockful of gold at the end of the rainbow. You may have gotten your CSAT scores from them, and they may have gotten what you promised, but was your job really worth it? This IS Sprint, you know your actions are all logged. So quit being stupid before you're caught, and save your job, and me some headaches.

 

--From Somewhere deep within Sprint Customer Care.