Guy Raz is a journalist, and current NPR correspondent and radio host. Having been described by The New York Times as "one of the most popular podcasters in history," Dan was excited to join his “Wisdom from the Top” podcast in June 2019 and discuss the lessons gleaned from the early days in his career.
Customers crave simplicity, Dan Hesse figured out early in his career, as he streamlined phone bills at Sprint. He saved 2 billion dollars, just by taking better care of customers in a few key ways. Plus, just how hard Sprint had to work to get the iPhone on its network, and the movie he hoped would change the company culture.
Robert Reis interviewed Dan as part of his CEO and Leadership focus for Forbes. The conversation was published August 5, 2020 and delves into the evidence support Dan’s long-held belief that corporate responsibility is good for all involved in the business - stakeholders, customers, and employees.
In thinking about which CEO was right to shed important light on Great to Good, I wanted someone who was an early adopter of being a good corporate citizen and also wasn’t currently at the helm so they could speak more freely. I immediately thought of Dan Hesse who during our first conversation had so impressed me with his passion for being a truly good company through stakeholder capitalism.
Key Insight from Dan Hesse
“I’ve long believed that doing ‘good’ for all stakeholders, especially employees and customers, is in the long-term interests of shareholders, but we didn’t have the data to prove it. That’s no longer the case. Now we know that companies that serve all stakeholders – employees, customers, communities, the planet, and shareholders provide higher returns for investors than their peers who don’t.”
“Mad Money” host Jim Cramer sat down with Just Capital’s Dan Hesse, the former CEO of Sprint, to get an inside look at consumers’ opinions about corporate America. Watch the full video below and read the full article on CNBC.com.
“What we’ve seen from a financial performance point of view is that you have ... [a] higher return on equity of these companies that do good things,” Hesse, the former CEO of Sprint, told “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer.
Chris Malone dives into one of Dan’s most firmly held tenets of corporate leadership in this piece published to Fidelum Partners…
How did Dan Hesse engineer such a rapid turnaround of a publicly-traded behemoth with $30 billion in revenue and over 40,000 employees? I had the opportunity to speak with Dan recently and he shared a number of insights on his experiences at Sprint.
Key Insight from Dan Hesse
“It may seem counter-intuitive, but in my experience, considering all the costs, providing excellent customer service costs less than providing poor service. When I arrived at Sprint at the end of 2007, we were very cash constrained. Part of the problem stemmed from reducing customer care resources to the point that customers began to leave. Improving care and service was one of the few things cash-strapped Sprint could afford to do in 2008. We focused relentlessly on identifying and eliminating the primary causes of customer frustration and complaints. As a result, we were then able to eliminate $2 billion per year in customer services expenses, while going from last place to first place in overall customer satisfaction in the U.S. wireless industry. The issue of customer churn might apply to every industry. Once you’ve invested in acquiring customers, it’s a lot cheaper to keep them than to go find new ones.”
