Sprint readies retail swat team to improve customer service

Sprint, which has a shaky customer service record, wants to improve its standing with its subscribers by using its reps to deliver personalized tips. Sprint's retail swat team aims to give you such good service that you'll forget its previous transgressions.

The effort sounds like it's modeled after Apple's genius bar, but we'll see if Sprint's plan--dubbed Ready Now--will make improve the wireless carrier's customer service reputation. Sprint is trying to keep customers, but has an uphill climb after cutting off customers, issuing larger than expected bills and becoming fodder for horror stories.

Sprint's statement is downright flowery:

Imagine this: You buy a new wireless phone with all the latest, high-tech applications, and then someone actually sits with you and helps you unlock its potential on the day you buy it. Not your techie cousin, not the Ph.D. next door, but a person who knows wireless phones and explains them in simple words. Someone who can help you really get your money’s worth – all the applications – which icons to touch for Instant Messaging, which buttons to click for Bluetooth. Someone who listens to you ask, “So, how do I get NFL scores?” And then – patiently – gives you the answer.

Phew I'm so glad Sprint stepped up here. I was just saying the other day how I needed a wireless technology confidant.

Sprint's newly trained retail reps are ready to "to work one-on-one with customers to personalize phones, set up features and demonstrate how phones work – before customers leave the store." You'd think that would be standard practice, but guess not.

Perhaps Sprint's plan will work. And it's great if Sprint can configure phones before a customer leaves. But given Sprint's track record color me skeptical on this one.