Fake Customer Connection?

Posted by Nick Hollomon on March 26, 2008 Share

I was watching TV the other night and saw this new commercial from Sprint featuring their new CEO Dan Hesse. At the end of the commercial instead of the standard url "www.sprint.com" they had their new CEO's email address, dan@sprint.com. At first I thought this was great but on second look I wasn't so sure. I sent an email to Dan stating that I loved cookies to see what kind of response I got. No less than 10 seconds after my email was sent I received a response from Dan telling me thanks a lot for taking the time to write him, etc… Apparently I took the time to write him but the auto-reply on "his" email was the only one who had the time to write me back. Obviously the CEO of Sprint has a lot going on and can't be expected to respond to every email he gets because his email address was put on a commercial, but that brings up the point of why would they put it on a commercial? It made them seem more personal when I first saw it, but once I interacted with it Sprint seems even more impersonal to me. Sometimes doing nothing at all is better than trying to fake it. Look below for the commercial…


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3 Comments

"I sent this email to dan@sprint.com -
"if anyone really reads these. if so, what is your name? no way in hell
dan reads this."

and got this reply a day later...

Dear Mr. Johnson,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us at Dan@Sprint.com. We
appreciate your interest in Sprint. While I can understand your
concern, please rest assured that all emails sent to Dan@Sprint.com are,
in fact, read by someone. All suggestions and requests are forwarded to
the appropriate departments, including Mr. Hesse should he be the
necessary recipient of the information.

I hope this helps clear up your question.

Thank you again for your continued support.

Sincerely,
Yolanda S.
Sprint

Impressive!"

- craig

"I'm still waiting on a real response to my declaration for my love of cookies... That response you recieved was better than nothing, but I still stand by the fact that I feel tricked with the email address being "dan@sprint.com" the bottom line is they wanted you to think you were emailing the new CEO when in all actuality its just a generic customer support email. Why not just put support@sprint.com?"

- nick

"This was my reply minutes later after sending my email.

Thank you for taking the time to write. To truly revolutionize wireless, we need your input. It’s people like you who are using our services everyday that can provide the best perspective. We'll be looking through all the ideas and feedback we receive.

This will, of course, take some time. I appreciate your patience until we can get you a response. A representative from my office will be contacting you in about a week.

In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about our new Simply Everything plan, you can find the details at www.sprint.com/everything.

Once again, from all of us at Sprint, thank you.

Dan Hesse
President and CEO – Sprint"

- Dot

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