Vision - November/December 2008 - (Page 10)

visionary CE’s Cutting EdgE LEadErs ] • [ by Cindy LoffLEr stEvEns sprint ceo sprinting to Mobile 4g Dan Hesse I t’s been nearly a year since Dan Hesse left his top position as chairman, president and CEO at Embarq to become the turn-around guru at Sprint. The 55-year-old Sprint CEO also has held executive positions at Terabeam Corp. and spent 23 years at AT&T, including a stint as president and CEO of AT&T Wireless from 1997–2000. When he came onboard, Sprint was struggling with a churn rate of 2.45 percent, losing customers to its chief rivals, AT&T and Verizon. Today the churn rate has dropped to two percent and Sprint advanced from last place to first in customer satisfaction according to the 6th Survey of Wireless Customer Care conducted by Pali Research. Early on, Hesse established that the company had three priorities—improving the customer experience, rebuilding and differentiating the Sprint brand from its competitors and improving profitability. It looks like his plans are working. He established the Now Network as part of his initial positioning. Sprint joined its competitors, AT&T and Verizon by offering a $99 flat rate but went a step further—in addition to unlimited voice, Sprint also includes data, text, Sprint TV and GPS, calling it “Simply Everything”. The plan is available to both CDMA and iDEN customers. It also rolled out the Samsung Instinct to appeal to fans of the iPhone and launched a massive advertising campaign to promote it. Hesse moved the headquarters back to Overland Park, KS, in the Kansas City metro area. The executives had been located in Reston, Va. and the operational crew was in Kansas. He believed that was not a collaborative environment where team members could move rapidly. Bringing employees to the Sprint campus improved morale. What’s more, Sprint is a green company that strives to be environmentally friendly, including its Kansas City campus where a local wind farm provides 75 percent of the power needed to run the campus. Further differentiating from its competitors, in early October Sprint launched mobile WiMax in Baltimore using an open Internet business model. The service dubbed XOHM (rhymes with Roam) is based on the WiMax 802.16e standard and backed by Intel. XOHM delivers broadband speeds to laptops, smartphones, home security systems and even mobile products in the car. According to one blog, it’s the equivalent of a home DSL or cable broadband connection while you’re mobile and can deliver download speeds between 3Mbit/sec. and 5Mbit/ sec., or about three times what the current 3G networks deliver. There are no service contracts, no activation fees and you can use any device. Sprint is in the process of spinning off its WiMax assets into the Clearwire venture in which it will own a stake. Dan Hesse sat down with Vision to explain what the new direction for Sprint and 4G will mean to consumers. Do you get recognized now from the Sprint commercials? Well, last night I was getting e-mails from my old college buddies because they were running on the World Series apparently. has 30 things on it—everything from setting up your voice mails to how to set up texting. We are branding our company around data. We started with “Simply Everything” which took the complexity out of pricing. People are not going to try everything if every time they hit a button, they get charged. It’s all included—everything you can do on the phone. Knock yourself out. One commercial shows how applications can be customized. Is that strategy working with customers? It is a big change. No one else does anything like it. Last year around Christmas time, a report came out that said the most returned item in America was the PDA or smartphone because it was too complicated. We did some segmentation research that shows Americans are interested in what we call “wireless data” but it’s really Sprint TV, NASCAR, NFL, texting, e-mails, GPS and navigation. It sounds cool, but they don’t know how to do it. They are intimidated by it and don’t want to ask. We think we have hit a chord. We will personalize your phone and teach you anything you want to know. There is a check list that Is there a renewed focus on the customer? Yes, what was missing for many people is how to get started. That is what our new campaign, “Ready Now”, is all about. The response that we have been getting from our customers is phenomenal. We have hired additional sales people and put them through extensive training. The focus all year has been around the customer experience. It’s not only improving the customer experience, it’s also making sure the network is performing—making sure the CDMA networks are performing at their best levels ever. In fact we just got the J.D. Power award for call quality for the Southwest U.S. Some research also just came out from Pali Research which said that Sprint has moved from last place to first place in terms of how quickly calls were answered. In their www.ce.org 10 november/December 2008 http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - November/December 2008

Vision - November/December 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In this Issue The Economist C4 Trends Going Global Visionary CES Unveiled Eco-Intelligence Is Vital in a Sustainable Global Market XGP— A Game Changer Enhancing the Tech Experience High-Definition Decade Public-Private Partnerships CEA Newsline Tech Speak Tech Policy Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - November/December 2008

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