Giving Out Your CEO’s E-mail

From the perspective of soliciting feedback, how many companies post their CEO’s or anybody’s real e-mail these days? Sometimes you can’t even find a number to call on the website. You simply get some generic form to fill out and get feedback. You sent it into the black hole and wonder if you’ll ever hear.

So, given Sprint’s challenges over the years, I think it was (is) a bold move to post the new CEO’s (Dan Hesse) e-mail (dan@sprint.com) at the end of some of their television commercials. I have been using Sprint as a great example of a company building loyalty because they reached out to me recently to move me to a better plan which reduced their revenue in ½. So, to test this e-mail address, I just sent the following. I will let you know what happens.

Dan (or whoever answers these for you):

I have been a loyal customer for 15 years now with Sprint PCS. I am not sure if that puts me in a minority, but I bet it does.

I was recently impressed when you guys called me to make sure I knew about the all inclusive plan (not sure of the actual name) which was something like $99 per month. Especially, since I was spending about $200 per month before. I work for a healthcare technology company and have been using that as an example about how to build loyalty.

I would be very interested (if you can share) how you guys made the decision to “down-sell” people and whether it has had the desired effect (which I assume is less churn).

The NY Times had an article about this on 6/9/08. Apparently, the initial response is an automated reply from Sprint, but most people then hear from someone on his staff (or likely a group of dedicated customer service agents) to address their questions.

“Yeah, we were worried,” said Mike Goff, vice president of advertising and marketing communications for Sprint. The company had a reputation for poor customer service, and soliciting critiques for the new chief to read was a risk. But, Mr. Goff said, Sprint wanted to “show we were serious about our intent to improve our customer service. We knew this was happening at a time when the perception of our customer service in the market was poor, so this is a chance for Dan to hear back from the market.”

The question is whether bold tactics like this can work to help change their image. If so, maybe health plans and PBMs should start posting their Chief Medical Officer, SVP of Customer Service, and CEO’s e-mails and see what happens. I can only image the look on some of their faces of doing something like this. Even though I am sure the reality is that he has a confidential e-mail address that gets used for internal purposes and personal purposes. As the Times article says, I am sure shareholders don’t want to think that the CEO sits in front of his PC all day answering questions.