Sprint Confirms Customer Service Outsourcing Deal with IBM

Sprint announced a five-year, multi-billion dollar customer-service outsourcing deal with IBM Business Consulting Services. IBM will help Sprint improve its customer-service experience through better customer segmentation, more efficient call routing, reduced average call handle time and a higher rate of first call resolution. IBM will also help Sprint implement user-friendly interactive voice response systems and web-based services.


IBM will also take over management of Sprint's existing vendor-operated call centers and will assume management of the Sprint-owned Nashville, Tenn., call center. Sprint will continue to operate its remaining customer service centers. In addition, the Dallas center serving long-distance customers will be consolidated into the existing Fort Worth, Texas, service center.


Sprint will also adopt IBM's Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE), making it the first U.S.-based telecommunications provider to adopt SPDE on a large scale. IBM's SPDE helps enterprise customers port their desktop environments to a mobile communications environment.


The new initiatives include a long-term business alliance that designates Sprint as a key IBM vendor for integrated wireless and wireline services and enables IBM to incorporate Sprint's national PCS wireless services and its global voice and data products and services into customized on-demand solutions for IBM customers.


Separately, Convergys announced that it had been selected by IBM to assume responsibility for about 1,100 current Sprint employees at Sprint's Nashville contact center. http://www.sprint.comhttp://www.ibm.com