Quick 6 With Jerry Adriano, Sprint

In this new feature on the Customer Experience Matters blog, we ask 6 questions of different customer experience leaders. The first up: Jerry Adriano from Sprint.

• Name: Jerry Adriano
• Title: VP, Customer Experience
• Company: Sprint Nextel
• Length of time on the job: 4 years
• Previous position: VP, Integration

1) What do you most like about your role?

The opportunity to engage with groups and influence across the entire enterprise while staying engaged with the feedback our customers give us every day. It’s rewarding to see how the improvements we’re making in products, pricing and policies are changing the customer experience in a positive way.

2) What are you most proud of accomplishing?

As a result of all employees rallying around customer experience as a top priority, Sprint has realized dramatic improvements across all touch points during the past three years. These kinds of improvements led to Sprint being recognized earlier this year for the most improvement of any company across all industries during the past two years by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

3) What has been the most surprising challenge?

The impact of perceptual issues and the lag time between making improvements and seeing the change in customer metrics.

4) How would you describe where your company is on its customer experience journey?

We started in a position where we lagged our competitors and prioritized pain points in order to close the gaps. Our focus was on meeting expectations and satisfying our customers. We are now in the midst of the most challenging part of the journey which is moving from a satisfaction focus to a loyalty focus where we will differentiate the experience for targeted segments of customers. The ultimate goal of the journey is to move these targeted segments to be advocates of Sprint.

5) What initiatives are you currently most excited about?

I am excited about identifying and implementing actions that will allow us to further differentiate the experience of being a Sprint customer. Two areas that have great potential are improving the device experience and optimizing cross-channel transactions and interactions. Device experience includes setting customer expectations, educating customers and assisting customers with device issues. Optimizing cross-channel transactions includes understanding how customers are interacting across channels so we can more purposefully design and improve that experience.

6) What advice do you have for someone who is about to take on a similar role?

Start with the understanding that it’s a journey, so develop a multi-year plan that allows you to prioritize and register some early wins, gain executive support, evangelize at all levels, identify a way to engage all employees in the customer experience improvement and don’t be shy about being the voice of the customer.