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Ideas, tips and techniques for new generation selling and customer support.
03/06
2009
2009
Sprint boosts customer service via online appointment scheduling
As we noted last week, Sprint picked up on Apple’s Genius Bar idea and has been exploiting convenient web self-service appointment scheduling to improve customer satisfaction.
A new story Extended Coverage Area, just out today in Stores magazine, gives additional details that we didn’t realize were public. Excerpts:
- Sprint’s online appointment platform from TimeTrade Systems is helping to transform the company’s stores from product-oriented to customer-oriented.
- If the call center representative can’t diagnose the defect over the phone, he can use the system to make a store appointment for the customer or recommend the customer go to the website and make an appointment himself.
- The system bases appointments on the availability of store employees and on the consumer’s reason for visiting, which can include making a purchase, having a device repaired or receiving instruction in using a phone or service. The customer’s needs determine which employee to assign — a salesperson or technician — and how much time to allot for the appointment.
- Dixon concurs. “We got it implemented faster…than any system I’ve ever seen implemented at Sprint. We were able to get it up and running pretty flawlessly right out of the gate.” [Kim Dixon, Sprint's senior vice president of consumer sales]
- Customer surveys show that all of these measures have boosted the company’s image, Dixon says. The number of customers categorizing themselves as being “extremely satisfied” rose from 80 percent in early 2008 to 90 percent this year. “We are really moving the needle in the stores, which is what we hoped,” Dixon says.
- These and other improvements have also helped Sprint raise its results 50% between August and February in a J.D. Power satisfaction study.
Congratulations to Sprint for their vigorous approach to customer satisfaction — and especially for the great results they’ve already racked up. There is real value in making it easier for customers to get what you’re offering, and this is a great case in point.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, customer experience, customer satisfaction, retail
2 Comments
Jason Stewart
Posted March 6, 2009 at 12:23 pm | Permalink
So happy to see more retailers and businesses adopting this sort of approach…one caveat though…be conscious of your capabilities! I remember booking the appointment with Apple once and still having to wait for 20 minutes. Turned a positive into a negative.
Dave deBronkart
Posted March 6, 2009 at 12:35 pm | Permalink
Jason,
Yes, this is something users have to manage, the same as if the appointment is taken by phone. The priority has to be on good customer service, not the tool itself.
Our enterprise systems (like the one Sprint uses) can be configured to build in padding around the actual appointment time – setup time, downtime between appointments (important for some kinds of work, for the equipment or the person), or just to allow a margin of error.