Chris Malone dives into one of Dan’s most firmly held tenets of corporate leadership in this piece published to Fidelum Partners…
How did Dan Hesse engineer such a rapid turnaround of a publicly-traded behemoth with $30 billion in revenue and over 40,000 employees? I had the opportunity to speak with Dan recently and he shared a number of insights on his experiences at Sprint.
Key Insight from Dan Hesse
“It may seem counter-intuitive, but in my experience, considering all the costs, providing excellent customer service costs less than providing poor service. When I arrived at Sprint at the end of 2007, we were very cash constrained. Part of the problem stemmed from reducing customer care resources to the point that customers began to leave. Improving care and service was one of the few things cash-strapped Sprint could afford to do in 2008. We focused relentlessly on identifying and eliminating the primary causes of customer frustration and complaints. As a result, we were then able to eliminate $2 billion per year in customer services expenses, while going from last place to first place in overall customer satisfaction in the U.S. wireless industry. The issue of customer churn might apply to every industry. Once you’ve invested in acquiring customers, it’s a lot cheaper to keep them than to go find new ones.”