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Sprint's Two Year Improvement in American Customer Satisfaction Index Survey Largest Across All Industries
[June 17, 2010]

Sprint's Two Year Improvement in American Customer Satisfaction Index Survey Largest Across All Industries


OVERLAND PARK, Kan. --(Business Wire)--

Sprint (NYSE: S) is the most improved company in customer satisfaction, across all industries, over the last two years, according to results from the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index.

"Sprint has made improving the customer experience our top priority, and the ACSI index improvement is one more validation that we are achieving this goal," said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. "We have focused on improving customer care, enhancing the value of the retail experience by introducing our "Ready Now" device set-up and education service, and by simplifying our rate plans through innovations like Simply Everything and Any Mobile, Anytime."

Sprint's improvement was driven in part by substantial gains in two aspects of the survey. In the area of customers' perceptions of value, Sprint now leads both AT&T (News - Alert) and Verizon. The company also achieved an impressive improvement in the area of customer loyalty. With these gains, the company's overall ACSI score jumped 14 points over the last two years. In the last six years of the ACSI survey, no other company has improved its satisfaction score by that many points in a two-year period.

"With Sprint reducing its operational costs, improving customer satisfaction, and differentiating itself in its marketing, we believe that it will rebound this year more strongly than most people expect," said Carl Howe, director of Consumer Research at Yankee Group (News - Alert). "In addition to its offerings of 4G services an iconic handsets such as the new HTC EVO 4G, we see consumers returning to Sprint for one very old-fashioned reason: Sprint's working hard to earn their business."



The improvements in the ACSI survey come as Sprint has seen nine consecutive quarters of improved customer satisfaction and first call resolution. The company's improvements have also been recognized by other independent third-parties, including Sprint winning the #1 spot for both overall satisfaction for wireless voice service providers and wireless data service providers in a Yankee Group and Mobile Enterprise magazine survey of large business decision makers. Sprint also ranked high in small and medium business customer satisfaction. Also noteworthy was Sprint's two-year Reputation Pulse (News - Alert)™ score increase in Reputation Institute's 2010 U.S. Most Reputable Companies Study (published annually in Forbes). Sprint's 18.22 percent gain puts its improvement in the top 10 percent of the 150 largest U.S. companies, ahead of both AT&T and Verizon (News - Alert).

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. The overall ACSI score factors in scores from more than 200 companies in 44 industries and from government agencies over the previous four quarters. The Index was founded at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and is produced by ACSI LLC. ACSI can be found on the Web at www.theacsi.org.


About Sprint Nextel (News - Alert)

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel served more than 48 million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2010 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, and is the first and only wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; offering industry-leading mobile data services, leading prepaid brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, Common Cents Mobile and Assurance Wireless and instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. With its customer-focused strategy, you can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.


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