Sprint is looking for any way possible to add customers to their network. After hemorrhaging customers every quarter for years, Sprint is starting to stay positive, and they want to gain more and more customers. Ideally, they’d like to overtake T-Mobile again and be the third largest carrier in the country (since AT&T and Verizon are so far ahead of both T-Mobile and Sprint). Sprint’s CFO, Tarek Robbiati was speaking at UBS in New York City today, and stated that the company is looking to reduce churn by converting their prepaid customers into postpaid customers, thus keeping them long-term. “The market is highly penetrated. It’s almost saturated here in the United States,” Robbiati said of the US wireless industry.
Robbiati also mentioned that prepaid users are usually in a category, which is either those that will always choose prepaid, those with credit problems and those that are young and hoping to establish a credit history. Robbiati also noted that Sprint has tightened their credit policies in the last 12-15 months. Robbiati also added that the way to keep prepaid customers and transfer them to postpaid is to target the right customers. And offer them customized offers to bring them into the more lucrative plans and having them spend more money with Sprint. “This is very scientific, and you cannot treat every customer on an indiscriminate basis. You really have to look at every customer and develop programs to upsell them over time” Robbiati added. Building a relationship with the customer is important, usually the longer that a customer is with a carrier, the less likely they are to jump ship.
As expected, Sprint’s CFO also continued to talk about how is looking to reduce Sprint’s spending. Something he talks about every chance he gets. And the fact that the company is looking to reduce costs any where and everywhere. Not just in one or two areas. The plan is to reduce costs, so they can stop bleeding money and instead start turning a profit. Something that isn’t too familiar with Sprint in recent years. SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son has been investing more and more into Sprint and buying more and more of the company. So he desperately wants the company to turn itself around, with Claure and Robbiati running the ship, that should happen. But it won’t happen overnight.