Sprint Leaps Into Home Delivery And Digits-On Smartphone Tutorials

In another indication that he’s taking Sprint in a different direction than his predecessor was driving, CEO Marcelo Claure has come up with the idea of having a technician hand-deliver smartphone upgrades to eligible customers and then help them transfer their data and figure out the unfamiliar features of the new phone and software at no extra charge.

Direct 2 You kicks off in Sprint’s hometown area of Kansas City today and will head to Miami and Chicago next week before spreading to other areas of the country throughout the year. It expects to have 5,000 cars and experts tooling round major metropolitan areas — and meeting exact appointment times, not windows between, say, 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. like some utilities we know — by the end of the year.

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“It’s as if we are adding 5,000 additional stores,” Claure says in a statement. “However, these mobile stores will be continuously on the move based on customer demand.” 

“What make this unique is that we will deliver pretty much anywhere: Starbucks, work, home, at the gym — we can do all those different things, and it’s an exact-on-time delivery,” Sprint VP Rod Millar, who heads the new delivery program and Sprint’s device-leasing effort, tells The Verge’s Josh Lowensohn. “You can tell us ‘6:45, and meet me at McDonald’s.’”

The company is “using a third-party partner to do the legwork, though the people who come to your house will appear to be from Sprint, right down to the vehicle they’re driving,” Lowensohn reports.

The service is neutral about which device and operating system the customer chooses — in fact, the release makes a particular point that the experts are “particularly skilled” in helping customers switch from a phone using the Android operating system to one running on Apple’s iOS, or vice versa.

“We take for granted that it is easy to switch between different types of phones, but it actually is very complex,” Claure says. “By bringing the in-store experience directly to customers, we can make that change painless, worry-free and do it in the comfort of a location where the customer wants it.”

“We said we will make Sprint the easiest company to deal with,” Claure tells Bloomberg’s Scott Moritz. “This addresses most people’s concerns and transforms the way they can buy a new phone.”

Claure, the founder of wireless distributor Brightstar who has been at the reins at Sprint since last August, is initiating a customer service strategy that “runs counter to ones taken by his predecessor, Dan Hesse,” points out Ryan Knutson in the Wall Street Journal. “Last year, Sprint said it was able to close several call centers in part because subscribers had become more accustomed to smartphones and were calling in with fewer questions about how to use them.”

But Claure said many customers are still having a hard time — as has Sprint itself.

“T-Mobile says it recently passed Sprint as the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier,” writesUSA Today’s Edward C. Baig — “a claim Claure dismisses.”

“T-Mobile (is) always jumping ahead of the facts,” Claure tells Baig. “I feel quite strongly that at the end of this quarter we will remain in our position as No. 3.”

“Sprint has lost millions of customers in the past few years as it lurched through a difficult network overhaul,” the WSJ’s Knutson observes before pointing out that some analysts have echoed T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere’s boast in advance of the release of first-quarter results for both companies. But Sprint “has said the bulk of the work is complete, and third-party network tests have shown its quality has been improving.”

Meanwhile, Direct 2 You “transforms a pain point into a ‘wow’ moment,” Millar, the executive running it, tells Re/code’s Ina Fried — while admitting that it’s “not for everybody” and some people will prefer do things the old-fashioned way by heading to a Sprint retail outlet.

There will be a lot more of those around, too, with Sprint’s co-branding with Radio Shack at nearly 1,500 retail outsets getting underway Friday.

“Sprint will have a larger logo and marketing presence than RadioShack at the co-branded storefronts, though the telecom will occupy about one-third of the retail space at each location,” reports Tom Huddleston, Jr. for Fortune.

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