Excerpt: Wisdom from the Top with Guy Raz | Luminary Podcast Episode

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.

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Excerpt: ‘Great To Good’ New Business Model Affirmed By Dan Hesse

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.”

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Why Excellent Customer Service Costs Less

Reposted coverage from Dan's career-spanning conversation with Fidelum Partners. topics focused on customer service goals for business. The following was published January 1, 2017.

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When Dan Hesse joined AT&T as a 23-year-old management trainee 1977, he never imagined he was embarking on a career journey that would eventually lead Fierce Wireless to name him one of the five “Best Turnaround CEO’s of All Time“.  In addition, Entrepreneur magazine would recognize him as one of “10 Inspirational Leaders who Turned Around Their Companies“.  While his accomplishments at AT&T were substantial, including launching the Digital One Rate service plan in 1998, it was the remarkable turnaround Hesse led as CEO of Sprint that left an indelible mark on the wireless industry and business world more broadly.

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Great Customer Service Costs Less

Reposted from Dan Hesse's LinkedIn series on Executive Leadership and Corporate Responsibility. The following was published September 10, 2015. 

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There’s a widely-held belief that it’s expensive to provide customers with superior service. In my experience, the opposite is true. In fact, Sprint spent $2 billion less per year for customer care when it reached the top of its industry’s overall customer satisfaction rankings than it did when it was at the bottom of the rankings.

Companies owe it to their customers and employees to provide great customer service.  A strong service culture can create a virtuous circle between employees and customers, engaging everyone in the firm in customer service improvement, not only the people on the front lines.

In this brief article entitled Great Customer Service Costs Less running in the current CEO Forum magazine, I discuss the six-point plan that took Sprint from “worst-to-first.”  According to the prestigious American Customer Satisfaction Index, when Sprint reached the #1 spot, Sprint was the only company that they had seen go from last place to first place in its industry, and Sprint was the most improved U.S. company in overall customer satisfaction across all 43 industries studied from 2008-2014.

The six steps Sprint relentlessly followed were to:

1. Align Compensation and Rewards: Sprint aligned the compensation of every employee in the company around the same metrics, which included customer turnover (churn) and the number of calls to customer care.  
2. Place the customer experience first on the agenda: The agenda of every Operations Team meeting began with churn and the number of calls to customer care.
3. Perform root cause analysis: Sprint collected and analyzed data from customer calls to identify the root causes of customer dissatisfaction.
4. Hold the right organizations and people accountable: The customer care organization is usually not the cause of customer dissatisfaction, but often, inappropriately, they’re held accountable for customer experiences they don’t control.
5. Assign strong project leaders: If you don’t assign strong people to lead the projects, the organization won’t think customer service is important.
6. Simplify the business: It is not simple to simplify, but customers crave, and they’ll pay a premium, for simplicity.  Complexity creates more reasons for customers to call care, and complexity makes it more difficult for care reps to solve problems.

If you’re so inclined, please clickthrough to read more on these six steps and key factors in providing great customer service. I invite you to share your ideas on this important subject with me.

Great Customer Service Costs Less - CEO Forum, Volume IV, Issue 2, 2015