Sprint: Give us time to turn this thing around
Posted by Joe P on May 14, 2008
It’s the oldest line in the book: Give me time, I can change. Sometimes it’s a sincere overture, sometimes it’s a crock. So what does it mean when Sprint says it? I’m not quite sure. But CEO Dan Hesse has said that turning the ship around won’t happen today, tomorrow, next month, or even next quarter. So what are shareholders to think of this? Essentially, Hesse is saying that they’ll be losing money until (at least) the end of this year. But please, keep your money with us, because it’ll pay off in the long run. With so much at stake, it’s tough to decide what to believe.
There’s plenty working against Sprint. They lost another million customers in the first quarter of 2007, while their competitors gained. They face tough times, as they have to abandon a portion of their network by June 26, which one exec says will “cripple the network” (though that’s probably an exaggeration).
Plus, they’re playing the blame game. From Chairman James Hance Jr.:
“Over the course of merging Sprint and Nextel, we lost our focus on how we attract, serve and retain our customers,” Hance said. “As a result, we lost ground to our competitors. Too many good customers have walked out the door unhappy with us.”
Hesse did mention that they need to improve customer service, which, personally, I think should be their No. 1 priority. You’ll get nowhere if you don’t treat your customers right.
They will treat their customers a certain way, though:
Sprint also continues to weed out subscribers who have trouble paying their bills and don’t spend much on lucrative data services such as Internet surfing or video.
Wait. They’re going to dump customers who don’t have data plans? That seems a bit…wrong. Then again, as more and more people adopt data plans, they can probably afford to do it. The solution for those people, most likely, is prepaid cell phones. Sprint is in that business, too, as the owner of Boost Mobile.
While we wait to see what Sprint will do, you can check out Unstrung’s Ten Reasons To Love Sprint. My favorite: “Think of Sprint as the Jamiacan bobsled team of the U.S. cellular market. See? You like them better already…”
Subscribe to the Going Cellular RSS Feed
Add to De.licio.us | 
Digg This! | 
Technorati
Filed under : Sprint
Related Posts:
-Sprint might be doing…well?-The benefits of having a cell phone with GPS
-Sprint finds their new CEO
-Sprint still lagging on prorated ETFs
-Sprint offers 500 minutes, unlimited everything
1 Comment ↓
[...] the past few months, Sprint has made it clear that turning the company around won’t happen overnight. In fact, just over a month ago they were saying that the turnaround was in the “third [...]
Leave a Reply