Without customers, your company won’t exist.

As a CEO, I see an opportunity every time we interact with a customer. Are we going to frustrate and disappoint them? Or wow them? I probably spend more time thinking about this than anything I do. If you are disappointing customers more than you are making them happy, you won’t have your customers for very long.

It’s been fascinating to me to get a report card directly from wireless consumers on how Sprint and the other carriers are doing. I am continuing my national listening tour, visiting with customers of Sprint, as well as our competitors, to find out firsthand what they want from their providers. I have spent time with small groups in Seattle and Kansas City, and recently I met with a new group in the Marina district of San Francisco.

Something I like to ask during these stops is for the people to rank the relationship they have with their wireless carrier from 1 to 10. Sometimes I call it the Love-Hate game. A “10” means they love their carrier and would recommend it to other people. A “5” means they don’t really care that much. Anything below a “5” basically means they straight up dislike the carrier. They are likely to leave, and they won’t be shy about telling their friends to stay away, too.

When I asked the San Francisco group, I got 6’s, 7’s and 8’s, one 9 and quite a few 5’s. Those grades aren’t that good. I was curious to learn more about why the customers felt that way. So I asked Erin, a Sprint customer, why she gave us a 7.

Erin didn’t have a problem with Sprint service. Her calls never drop. She likes our iPhone Forever plan that allows her to upgrade whenever a new iPhone is released. So why a 7 and not a 9 or 10? She had a disappointing experience at one of our stores. When she came in to upgrade her mom’s phone, they kept her waiting more than an hour. And then they told her that her mom wasn’t eligible for an upgrade. That would have ticked me off if I had been treated that way, and it helped me understand why Erin wasn’t the greatest fan of Sprint.

I also found it interesting to follow up with others who gave their carriers high scores and others who gave low marks. Something common to nearly all of them is that they really don’t expect much from any carrier. In fact, they expect to be disappointed in one way or another.

That told me we need to focus even more at my company on fixing the things that frustrate our customers. And when we do, it will provide us a tremendous competitive advantage because no wireless carrier is consistently fantastic at this right now. This same opportunity is there in many industries for all companies that really are willing to look at the customer experience they deliver and work on making it better.

At Sprint we are tackling this by examining each stop along a customer’s journey – from when they first consider our company, to when they walk into our stores, to when they sign up for service, to when they get their first bill or reach out to us for help. We’ve found many areas where we are doing well and others that need attention because we are too frequently disappointing more than we are “wow”-ing our customers.

With our customer experience team, we’ve created a vision of where we want to be in the future. We’re coming up with new approaches, new services and considering how we can let more customers know about things we already are doing that can provide them a great experience.

Our customers can buy their phones in our stores, online or have them delivered right to their doorstep through our Direct 2 You service, along with an expert who will set up their new phone. They can pay their wireless bill, manage their account and find a store by using our Sprint Zone app. If they need urgent attention, they can go on Twitter and send their tweet to @sprintcare. The can even connect with me at @marceloclaure. I’m truly committed to helping our customers, but I believe it’s also critical that I set an example for all the employees at Sprint.

Consistently delivering an amazing customer experience requires every employee at my company – whether they work directly with customers or not – to be dedicated to making it happen.

I could not agree more with Donald Porter, former VP of British Airways, who said, “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”

We will make mistakes, but my goal is for customers to give us a chance to make it right. And we will.