Poetic justice to villains of Sprint 1,000 - Tim Kelly the marketing brains, also fired

We've been following the Sprint 1,000 fiasco (where last July Sprint Nextel sent letters to 1,000 of its customers disconnecting them supposedly because they complained too much). The damage to Sprint Nextel's image has been devastating the past 6 months, as customers are deserting the company and its share price has lost more than half.

The first to be booted last Autumn was the CEO Gary Forsee, who had approved the moronic move. He was replaced by Dan Hesse who came from Embarq. The new CEO announced last week that they are firing 4,000 staff and closing 125 stores. I was very critical of the new moves in my blog posting reacting to the news, pointing out that the true culprit of the scandal, Chief Marketing Officer Timothy E Kelly (aka Tim Kelly) was the real source of the loss of all the customers - and a massive 2.3 billion dollars of Sprint Nextel revenues (definitely one of the costliest errors of a single marketing communication ever, as well).

So this is welcome news. While yes, it is a shame 3,999 other Sprint Nextel staff will be cut, at least those who remain, will see that the unprofessional management of their marketing, and the misguided head of it, Tim Kelly, is justly punished.

There was also the announcement that Chief Financial Officer, Paul Saleh is also fired. Paul Saleh obviously must have been involved at least superficially in the boneheaded decision to terminate customers (who accounted for less than one half of one percent of all calling center calls - thus a totally  meaningless act when considered from a financial and accounting point of view to the company).

Yes, I applaud these actions by new CEO Dan Hesse. It is not a big surprise, however, as Hesse has had a history of understanding both marketing and finance, and if so, he will have seen immediately that Sprint Nextel was on the wrong track.

I do hope he, or perhaps his new (permanent) Chief Marketing Officer, soon make a public commitment to bring Sprint Nextel back from the wilderness beyond caveman marketing, where the customer comes last. Sprint Nextel has over 53 million customers and a history in both parts of the combined company, Sprint, and Nextel, of innovation and customer satisfaction in the past. There is nothing to stop this company from becoming great again.

Certainly for any Sprint Nextel customers (or shareholders) out there - I'd say - give this new guy a chance. At least Hesse swiftly observed where the problems were, and got rid of the true culprits of the scandal, Forsee, Kelly and Saleh.

Comments

[Former SN Employee]

Let me just say, as a former nextel employee who was with the company when it mergered, you were able to see what was going to happen. Sprint came abroad and RUINED EVERYTHING. It's so funny now that I think about all the meetings we had, and we had the #'s in front of us. There were big problems, but the new management(sprint folks) didn't want to hear it, everything was peachy. Dealers weren't getting paid on time, nobody cared. As a rep who actually grew to care for these people, when they didn't get paid on time, I escalated the issue as I should of, and was given a response of "well at least we are getting paid right!!!!". That right there is when I knew I had to get out. When upper management is ignorning the fact there dealer base is crumbling because of them, and NOT EVEN CARING, get out and get out fast!!

Nextel was the best company I ever worked for! I worked for sprint pre merger as well, and it was a mess back then. The sprint name is GARABAGE, and now the nextel name is too. THe only hope the company has is to completely change it's name and hope it can regain the faith of the people!

'

[area code lookup]

It puzzles me that someone at that level could even THINK that was a good move. I guess the CEO must have BSed his way to the top.

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Former SN Employee and area code lookup

Thanks for writing

Former - good insights, thanks. Yes we heard a lot of that also on the grapevine and from some contacts near the matter. That was quite a disasterous merger.

area - I agree that was puzzling, that any top manager would entertain such thoughts (Bill Gates says you learn the most from the customers who complain; Sprint-Nextel didn't clearly want to learn..). But the sad truth is, that I've spent enough time with telecoms senior management around the world, to find it not at all unusual for a "comprehensive lack of knowledge" about modern marketing. It is sad, really. Which is why I flew off the handle so much when it happened initially - I felf that for an industry which is trying to learn to do the right thing, the last thing we need now (or back then, a year ago) was to have "one of us", a major carrier launch such an "anti-customer" innovation. Like our friend David Cushman wrote in his blog at Faster Future when he commented on it, this was the exact diametrical opposite of what we preach here at Communities Dominate. It was not engagement marketing, it was dis-engagement marketing. If you complain, you are disconnected..

Yes, so happy this "experiment" in marketing ended as a clear failure, else we might see other CMO's around the world attempting it as well no doubt..

Thanks for writing

Tomi :-)