Sunday, September 14, 2008

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse talks to Forbes

Forbes' website has an interview with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. Here are a few highlights:

"Sprint's customer service ratings have lagged those of competitors. Where do you want to be in those rankings?
No. 1, absolutely. In some of our care centers, you'll see banners on the walls with respect to wanting to become No. 1 in J.D. Power [rankings]. If you don't have your eye on the gold medal, you aren't going to win. There's no reason we can't do it, especially by making these bold, dramatic moves. I think people will finally start to realize this is a very different company from a year ago.


Speaking about data brings to mind Sprint's flat-rate "Simply Everything" plan. Are other simplified plans in the cards?
We are definitely moving to a more simplified fee structure. This year, we've eliminated 85% of the combinations that we were selling to customers. It's making things simpler for our customers and internally for our care reps and salespeople. They could do a much better job if we didn't make their job so complicated.



Sprint introduced a number of new phones at CTIA. Are there any likely successors to the Samsung Instinct, your flagship phone?
We feel very excited about our new phones. They're all newsworthy in their own right. We think the HTC devices [the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro] will be considered iconic and [will] do very well. The Instinct will continue for quite some time, perhaps with improved versions of it. Samsung is making as many as they can, but they still sell out. Our employees still can't get them.


With all your new data-enabled, 3G phones, are you worried your network will have capacity issues like some say AT&T has with the iPhone 3G?
Absolutely not. I give my predecessors credit for building a really strong data network and we have continued that work. Our data loads, because of things like "Simply Everything," have increased significantly. But we manage the network to deal with it. "

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