Sprint offering customers tickets to All-Star events

Sprint is trying to shake its reputation for subpar customer service with an unprecedented giveaway of tickets to NASCAR's All-Star race and pit-crew competition this week in Charlotte, N.C.

The title sponsor of NASCAR's top series bought 20,000 tickets to the Sprint All-Star Challenge and 10,500 tickets to the Sprint Pit Crew Challenge and made them available to Sprint subscribers who claimed them from the company's Web site.

The tickets and other behind-the-scenes experiences from Sprint -- part of what it's calling "Customer Celebration Week" -- were nabbed within two weeks in April. The company wasn't certain how many customers took advantage of the offer, but Sprint officials believe it's between 5,000 and 10,000.

The 20,000 tickets purchased by Sprint represent the largest single order at the speedway, which has 160,000 permanent seats. The largest order previously was 6,000 by the Norton Co. several years ago, track officials said.

If the program is deemed successful, meaning the customers show up at the events this week and collect their tickets, a similar model could be applied to Sprint's NFL sponsorship on a lesser scale, said Steve Gaffney, Sprint's director of sports marketing.

While Sprint wants its customers engaged with its Web site and logging on to conduct account business, that was not the impetus for this program, Gaffney said. Instead, it was simply to show Sprint customers they are the company's top priority.

It's all part of an effort to upgrade Sprint's reputation for customer service at retail and through billing and customer-care calls. A recent J.D. Power and Associates study on wireless customer service ranked Sprint behind rivals Verizon, AT&T, Alltel and T-Mobile.

New CEO and president Dan Hesse has called customer service the company's No. 1 priority and has even changed the goals for call centers by placing less emphasis on how quickly an issue is resolved and more emphasis on the resolution itself.

Sprint's activation around its NASCAR events this week, Gaffney said, is the sports marketing department's way of keeping in step with the company's priority on customers.

"This is the biggest thing we've ever done for our customers," Gaffney said. "We have customer rewards, but we've never done anything on this scale. We've been challenged [by Hesse] to take a major step toward improving customer service, and the assets we have through Sprint Cup are levers we can pull to demonstrate how much we care about our customers, beyond our services and products."

Sprint will put its program in play this week with the Pit Crew Challenge on Thursday at Time Warner Cable Arena and the All-Star Challenge on Saturday at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

How much Sprint spent on the promotion was not released, but the All-Star tickets have a face value of $40 each and the Pit Crew tickets are $10 apiece, although Sprint was given a volume discount, the speedway said.

All-Star Race

SPEED will again broadcast the Sprint Showdown and All-Star Race. Tune in at 7 p.m. ET on May 17 to watch rivals race for $1 million -- and the fireworks!

• All-Star coverage

All of the Pit Crew tickets are earmarked for the upper arena, which will be branded with Sprint signage and treated as a special access area for Sprint customers. They'll receive T-shirts and other giveaways, while also enjoying question-and-answer sessions with drivers such as Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch, who will make their way to the upper arena during the event.

The Pit Crew Challenge, in its third year, typically draws about 5,000 to 6,000 fans, but Sprint's ticket buy could lead to the first sellout of the 15,000 available seats.

In addition to giving away the event tickets, Sprint offered its subscribers 1,000 tickets for lunch and a chartered bus ride to Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing, where they'll go on shop tours Friday.

Other giveaways include pit tours before the All-Star Challenge and a select number of opportunities to be in front of the stage for pre-race introductions and Victory Lane.

Even the honorary grand marshal and national anthem singer were chosen from a pool of Sprint subscribers.

"Sprint has taken activation by a title sponsor to a completely different level," said Dan Farrell, senior vice president of corporate sales at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Sprint customers were notified of the offers in early April with a message when they logged into their account at Sprint.com. Each customer had the opportunity to choose four options from a menu of tickets and race experiences. Some of the race experiences, such as shop tours and pre-race pit tours, sold out in as quickly as a day, while the tickets were gone within 14 days.

"We've been overwhelmed with the response," Gaffney said. "We've had some amazing e-mails from customers, saying that they never expected to receive something like this from a cell-phone provider."

Sprint will have branded areas with signage, racecar simulators and other entertainment outside the arena and speedway, where Sprint customers will pick up their tickets.

At the track, Lowe's Motor Speedway allowed Sprint to take over the entrance to the nearby dirt track, which sits adjacent to the main parking lot. Not only does it provide Sprint customers an easily accessible spot to pick up tickets, it gives Sprint an opportunity for heavy branding with banners and other signage in an area where thousands of fans pass by.

Gaffney said Sprint did not have to pay extra for use of the site.

Assuming all goes well this week with ticket redemption by the subscribers, Sprint's marketing team will look for similar opportunities during the NFL season.

October is the company's customer appreciation month and Gaffney said Sprint might then choose a weekend for a customer celebration at NFL games, even if it couldn't be offered on the same scale.

Sprint also is considering an every-weekend giveaway of NASCAR tickets to its subscribers, Gaffney said.