Customer woes continuing to plague Sprint
NEW YORK - Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-largest US mobile-phone company, ranked last in a customer-satisfaction survey for a second straight year, even after attempts to shore up service.
The study polled customers in six regions about call quality, brand image, cost and billing, customer service, and plan options, according to J.D. Power & Associates, which released the survey yesterday.
The results suggest that Sprint's efforts to placate users aren't yet paying off. The company has lost more than 3.5 million contract subscribers in the past two years. To help stem the exodus, chief executive Dan Hesse has tied employee bonuses to customer turnover and has increased the number of users' calls that are answered in 30 seconds or less.
"Customer experience is clearly number one," Hesse, who took the CEO job in December, said last month. "That is probably the most important determinant of success in a lot of industries, but clearly in ours, and it has historically been our weakest point."
Sprint has addressed complaints by adding simplified calling plans and a bigger choice of phones, said spokeswoman Roni Singleton.
Sprint fell 51 cents, or 7.8 percent, to $6.03 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has lost more than half its value this year.
The company struggled to integrate different network technologies after the 2005 acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc. Sprint wrote down $29.7 billion of the $36 billion purchase last year. 