Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (
More info?)
Eric wrote:
> (Thomas T. Veldhouse) wrote:
> <<Look at Verizon Wireless for instance. They have separate brochures
> for local plans, America's Choice plans, Single Rate plans, Mobile to
> Mobile, Data, etc. None of these refer to other plans. It is unfair to
> characterize Sprint PCS in the manner to which you did, in my opinion.>>
>
> But Verizon Wireless also makes sure that most (if not all) of their
> different pricing brochures are available and easy to find. In three
> places I was at last night (Radio Shack, Best Buy and Wal-Mart), the
> *only* Sprint PCS brochures that were in easy-to-view plain sight was
> the F&F ones. With the absence of the regular fixed pricing plans, it
> does indeed make Sprint look highly expensive... as evidenced by the
> Wal-Mart rep whom I overheard talking to a customer about Sprint's new
> plans, and how they are so expensive, thus directing the customer to
> sign up with T-Mobile instead.
>
> You could say that the rep was mistrained (as probably was the case),
> and that the customer was whitewashed without doing appropriate
> research. But the net result was a customer lost by Sprint PCS because
> the new F&F brochures are taking front and center stage, and taking
> space away from the regular plans that are more competitive to the
> average joe. If this does become widespread, Sprint will lose potential
> customers more often than not.
>
> Eric
>
I agree, somewhat. These days, training is an expensive luxury for many
businesses. It's hard for most laypersons to realize the breadth of
information needed by a person that sells wireless. In a week, I might
get asked a number of questions, and many times, I'll be asked questions
that don't make sense.
CUST: "I had Sprint before. The coverage was good, but it didn't work at
the Home Depot in Dothan, AL. Anywhere in the store, or even standing in
front of the store, the phone was just dead. Now, if you walk fifty feet
into the parking lot, it would work fine. Did Sprint fix that?"
ME: "Dothan, AL is probably five hundred miles from here. I've never been."
CUST: "Is there anyone here that would know?"
ME: "No."
or:
CUST: "Do you have a case for a Sprint phone?"
ME: "What kind of Sprint phone?"
CUST: "A SPRINT phone!"
ME: "What model?"
CUST: "Hell, I don't know! What's the difference?!"
ME: "I think you should bring me your cell phone so we can make sure it
fits."
or:
CUST: "Do you have a wire to hook my cell phone to my satellite dish?"
ME: "What?"
CUST: Do you have a wire to hook my cell phone to my Dish Network
satellite dish?"
ME: "Why would you do that?"
CUST: "Look, I don't want to sound rude here, but I'm just trying to
find out, do you have that wire or not?"
ME: "No."
CUST: "Alright."
And in each of these situations, the customers left thinking I didn't
know anything about my products. Still want to know what the guy with
the tv dish wanted to achieve.
Some bigger retailers have taken the stance that training can be done by
building a training team guided in part by the marketing department and
in part by the buyers. This results in a person that knows the wording
in the advertising brochures and how to use the register. Because
wireless is more complicated than most of the products sold in these
stores, retailers have taken a "throw it on the shelf, put out shiny
brochures, see what sells" approach to wireless. I doubt anyone out
there has enough knowledge of their job to answer any question about it
in the sort of time constraints needed when dealing with the public.
I'm getting the feeling, between ReadyLink (Nextel) and Fair and
Flexible (Cingular) that Sprint allowing themselves to be driven by
their competition, rather than innovate like they did with Vision.
The retailer I work for had a regular conference call two weeks ago
where it was announced that we weren't going to promote Fair and
Flexible to our customers. It results in lower average plans
(companywide, our average plan cost hovers a little over $70) and
doesn't match with our customer. Same goes for area-wide plans. I'll
write one if it is a match, but it'd be crazy for me to do that to my
customers.
-mike
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