Sprint Lets Go Customer Service Reps

When it comes to the big providers of cell phone service there are a lot of things that they may be known for: high-speed data plans, having exclusive contracts for the current must have device or maybe even a new type of service that their competitors do not have. Few, if any, of them are known for their customer service. If you have never had the occasion to call a customer service line for yourself just do a quick Google. You’ll see that all of the major carriers have sites created by frustrated customers to vent their frustration. Many of them are communities where multiple end users can tell their horror stories.

It looks like the companies, or at least one company, know that so they have decided to cut where people are likely to notice least, customer service. Late on Friday Sprint let go of 60 of its customer service reps. Those representatives dealt primarily in the set up of new customers and helping people acclimate to new phones.

The company is attributing the loss not to the poor economy or bad sales numbers, but to an overall change in the organizational structure of the company. The workers tasks will be outsourced to other employees in different facilities the company uses for service.

At the current moment the company is not giving out any information about the terms of the layoff. They have not mentioned the amount of notice that the workers are getting, or what severance they may be offering to the workers.
Sprint is, of course, not the only cell phone service providers to cut back on workers in order to make ends meet. For those of you who missed out on some of our earlier coverage here is a look at some of the truly massive job cuts that were made earlier in this year by the management of T-mobile. This excerpt will get you up to speed on the severity of industry in no time at all:

“You may not know this but the world of cell phone providers can be fiercely competitive, that is when the companies are not busy trying to make sweetheart deals. After all for all intents are purposes once you get past the hype they are all providing a new identical service, the ability to make a call on your cell phone and get internet access if you want it. Unless they have a really coveted piece of hardware as an exclusive, such as when AT&T was the only carrier for the iPhone, convincing customers to come to your service is the major issue. When that does not work the companies are bound to layoff.

That is the case for T-Mobile currently. Today, the company announced that it would be letting go of just shy of 2,000 workers in order to cut back on its costs. The 1,900 workers who are being cut from company’s call centers are being called part of an effort to restructure, though at the current moment there have been no more announcements related to this restructure….

Sadly, this is only the beginning of the layoffs for workers at T-Mobile’s call centers. It looks like the company maybe planning to consolidate call centers and cut down its current 24 centers to 17 over an undisclosed amount of time. Some people are estimating that the company will shed more than 3,000 jobs by the time all is said and done.”