Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

December 17, 2009

Sprint Expanding Virginia Contact Center

By Brendan B. Read

Senior Contributing Editor

There is great news for the Norfolk, Va.-metro economy: Sprint (News - Alert) Nextel is adding approximately 100 new positions at its Hampton contact center. The jobs are an economic boom for the city during a time when some other contact centers in the surrounding areas have been cutting back staff or closing altogether.

The new hires will be offered competitive salaries and benefits. These include medical, dental, 401K, performance bonuses of up to $3,000 a month, flexible schedules and participation in Sprint’s employee wireless phone program.

Sprint already employs over 750 at the Hampton contact center: 70 of which came from a hiring push earlier this year. The center, which celebrated its 10^th anniversary in the local community this year, is also routinely one of the highest performing contact centers in the company. The center and its employees are actively engaged in a variety of community service activities, such as United Way, Relay for Life, March of Dimes and the Ocean Conservancy Clean Up Project. In addition, this holiday season many employees are providing gifts for senior citizens in the Hampton area.

“These are increasingly difficult times for job-seekers throughout our country, so with that said, Sprint is thrilled to be able to provide opportunities for many families in Hampton Roads and the surrounding areas,” Gayle Chong, general manager of the Hampton Contact Center, said. “We are exceptionally pleased that we’re also able to positively impact the local economy by expanding our center, all while servicing our customers with talented and qualified working professionals from the seven cities.”

Driving the added hiring appears to be strengthening demand for Sprint’s services amidst a highly competitive market in a tough economy. The firm reported in its latest financial report that its customer churn has shrank: its year-over-year post-paid gross addition and the sequential improvement was the best in more than five years. Moreover, net post-paid subscriber losses have improved by approximately 20 percent in each of the second and third quarters of 2009. Sprint Nextel (News - Alert) has two wireless networks serving more than 48 million customers at the end of third quarter 2009. It has the first and – so far – only 4G service from a U.S. national carrier.

What makes the Hampton expansions, both earlier this year and currently all the more significant is that they have been occurring in the wake of a company-wide cost reduction campaign aimed at slicing $350 million annually. The actions include the elimination of 2,000 to 2,500 positions internally within plus cuts in contractor and other outside labor.

Sprint says it is taking this action carefully to ensure that there is no impact on the improved customer experience that has been reflected in much higher levels of satisfaction in customer surveys and in independent performance tests. It has pledged to not waver on the company’s commitment to quality service and products.

Sprint has seen a notable reduction in calls per subscriber to customer care and increased customer satisfaction resulting from customer service improvements for seven sequential quarters. With this it has ended the use of 27 contact centers as volume has decreased in the wake of service improvements. Furthermore, the company’s networks continue to operate with current best-ever metrics.

“Sprint achieved its best net retail subscriber results in more than two years and improvement in both post-paid and prepaid gross subscriber additions in the third quarter,” Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel CEO said. “Sprint is beginning to attract more customers with the industry’s best device line-up and the clarity and simplicity of our offers, and seven sequential quarters of improvement in customer care satisfaction, a network declared to be most reliable by PC World magazine, and recognition from Newsweek magazine which ranked Sprint 15^th of 500 companies on its 2009 Green Ratings list -- the only telecom company in the Top 100.”

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Kelly McGuire

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