PegaWorld iNspire 2024: T-Mobile keynote - Dialing up the innovation: T-Mobile's journey to customer centricity

As you heard, my name is Jeff Frantz and I am the Vice President of Data and AI at T-Mobile. I wanted to pack more buzzwords into my title, but T-Mobile Limited me to two, so data and AI made the cut. I have a really interesting role at T-Mobile. I get to understand all the different data assets that we have at the organization. As you can imagine, T-Mobile is a very large place. I sort of feel like I'm data spelunking. Any given day, you see me walking through the halls of T-Mobile, I got my miner's hat and my light on and show me the data. Where's the data? But that's just one part of my role.

The other part of my role is understanding the value of that data. Are we maximizing the value of it? Are we leveraging it in ways to service our customers better and to push our organization forward? Now, a little bit about T-Mobile, just in case you've been living under a rock, we are one of the largest communication companies on the planet. We offer messaging, voice and data services to millions of consumers across the US. Now, since the inception in 1994, originally as Voicestream Wireless, we've been on an incredible journey, an incredible transformation. We've seen a lot of growth in that time. We've had our fair share of mergers and acquisitions. For example MetroPCS.

Who can forget Sprint? That was a pretty big one. And then most recently with Mint Mobile. Thanks, Ryan Reynolds. Now all of these changes have shaped the modern-day T-Mobile. It's had a massive impact on our culture. Think about all these different organizations coming together under the T-Mobile brand. They all had their unique cultures, their unique way of doing things and bringing all of that together under T-Mobile. That's a massive undertaking.

Think about IT systems. Maybe not the sexy thing to talk about, but all of them have their own IT systems, their own way of managing and leveraging data. How do we bring all of that together, all these disparate systems so that we can operate as one company? That's a huge undertaking, and it's a journey that we're on and will continue to be on. Clearly, T-Mobile is very acquisitive, so we'll continue to go through this journey and this transformation. But in this journey, it's seen us go from lagging to a challenger brand, and now ultimately a leader in our industry. I want to talk to you a little bit about that journey, so let's start with where we were. And I was honestly shocked when it was approved that I could put this slide up here and tout the fact that we were the fastest declining wireless company in 2012. And I'm pretty sure JD Power didn't hand us any award for this accolade, but if they had won, we would have won it.

But we were notoriously bad. We weren't just bad, but we were heading in the wrong direction faster than anyone. We were losing 2 million customers a year, roughly 10% of our base. But all was not lost. We had a goal in mind and we had a plan. We were developing a plan to get there. But our goal is to become the best in class. But we didn't want to stop there. We wanted to become world class.

We want to become a world-class brand that was mentioned along brands like Nike and Apple. How are we going to do this? It wasn't going to be easy given our position. And frankly, the industry we were in -- the wireless industry -- not necessarily known for being customer-centric back then. We had to gain back the trust of our customers. We had to offer them more personalized experiences. We had to find new ways to engage them. We launched something called T-Mobile Tuesdays in 2016, a perk for being a T-Mobile customer. What we were ultimately trying to do is show customer love.

Now, love is not a word you hear often in the corporate world, but at T-Mobile, it's a principle. It's something we live by. Now, our plan involved putting the customer at the center of everything that we do, and Pega was a big part of that journey for us. It helped us become more customer-centric, helped us become more personalized to the consumer experience. It helped us show customer love. And ultimately, we were on a journey to become the Un-carrier. I'm sure all of you have heard Un-carrier before. It's been part of our brand for about over a decade. It's one thing to have a nice catch phrase "Un-carrier", but we actually live that.

that, and it's putting the customer at the heart of everything that we do. And it wasn't just a passing fad or a rallying cry and something we put up on a banner or marketing campaign. We still practice this today. If you walk the halls of T-Mobile, you'll hear people talk. How can we be more Un-carrier? We're going to do something. Is that Un-carrier enough? So we think about this all the time. So how has this been working out for us as an organization?

Well, as of Q1, we have 121 million customers across the US. It's working pretty well, but we're still changing. We're still evolving as an organization. That's one constant inside of T-Mobile is change. This is a journey for us, and we'll never reach our destination because we keep pushing it out even further. Now, how did we start this journey? Where did we begin? Well, for starters, we shut up. That's right.

Shut up. Stop talking. We started listening to our customers. We didn't want to be the arrogant carrier. We had a CEO that crisscrossed the country talking to all of our customers. Well, not all of them, but all types of customers. That would take a long time. He also met with our frontline employees that service those customers. The entire goal was to identify what are the pain points to quality customer care.

Then how do we remove those barriers so that we can better service our customers and be world-class at customer care? This was the start of our journey to bring T-Mobile closer to the customer. This is how we started showing customer love. We wanted to anticipate our customer's needs better and faster. We wanted their experiences to become more personalized and more consistent. And again, because we're T-Mobile, we had to do this at scale. Pega was a big reason why we could scale this across the organization. But again, it's a journey. We're not done.

We're still leveraging data in new and creative ways. And then we're plugging it into systems like Pega that can leverage that data and make it actionable when we need it. Now where are we today? I think the only reason T-Mobile is okay with the first slide is because this was the next one. Now we're the fastest growing carrier. We're the world's most valuable telco. That's pretty incredible given where we were. And I said, this is a journey. We're not stopping at 121 million.

We have aspirations to push beyond that. We're continuing to learn what's working, what's not. We're evolving. We continue to adapt and ultimately change. We continue to find new ways to unlock the value of our data, whether it's breaking down silos that existed from legacy systems or companies that we've acquired, or reducing customer churn. Here's a fun fact. Last year, we lost fewer customers than at any other point in our company's history. That's huge given where we were in 2012. But we still lost customers.

We still failed customers in some way. So we can improve. We want to focus on our channels. We have so many different touchpoints with our customers. We have retail, we have call centers, we have social app, all the digital channels, the list goes on. The experience in those channels is good, but we know it can be better and we will get better. We continue to improve. Upselling is another focus. I'll call it relevant upselling.

We don't want to just sell you something for the sake of selling it. We want to sell you something that you need, something that's relevant based on your journey as a T-Mobile customer. Now that could be you have a kid that's ready for their first cell phone. How do we know that? How do we present that offer at the right time? Now if you're me, I have four kids. My oldest is 11, my youngest is four, and I've got a few smashed in between. I'm not getting any of my kids a phone until they're 16. About none of my friends, including ...

Thank you. I wasn't expecting applause at that point, but I'm glad that some are with me. But in all seriousness none of my friends think I'll be able to hold out, especially given where I work. But it just feels me. I'm a very stubborn person, so. But regardless of my personal situation, we want to know yours and offer the right thing at the right time. We want T-Mobile customers to feel like they're part of a community. How can we offer unique experiences? I mentioned T-Mobile Tuesdays, which is now part of T Life but we also offer Wi-Fi -- free Wi-Fi -- on certain airlines, and I've had a few people say, "Oh yeah, I used that.

I love that service." But again, this is how we are Un-carrier. This is how we show customer love. Now where are we going? I think I've mentioned customer love a few times. I'm not done. I'll continue to talk about it. But we want to continue to scale that, continue to find more unique experiences that we can offer T-Mobile customers. Continue to personalize those experiences. And we want to do it at scale.

And we want to do it omnichannel. All those different touch points. We want all of those touch points to be data- informed, AI-enabled and where possible, digital. Now how far can we stretch our capabilities? What do you think the best customer care call is? It's the one that never happens. How do we anticipate our customers' needs and reach out to them before they reach out to us? Say for example, you had a bad network experience. How can we detect that?

How can we reach out to the customer and acknowledge that experience and contextualize it? "Hey, you had a bad network experience. We're doing maintenance in that area. We'll be done in a couple of days. Your service will actually be better than it was before. By the way, here's a discount on your next billing cycle." Wouldn't that be amazing? Instead of having to call in and complain, wait for a treatment, waste your time. Of course, that's where we want to be. And this is why Pega is so critical to where we are and ultimately where we want to go.

And that's the magic behind Customer Decision Hub, or as we call it, inside of T-Mobile NBA not the basketball league. Next Best Action. When I talk about personalization at scale, putting the customers at the heart of everything that we do or customer love, we do not get there without NBA. What does it do for T-Mobile? What does it do for our customers? It improves the customer journey. It helps us make better, more informed decisions on behalf of our customers. Now fueled with the right data, NBA understands so much about a customer when they call into our care centers. I'll talk about this channel.

It understands their behavior. It understands their profile. Like what products have they purchased from us? How many lines do they have? What devices do they have? It also understands the context of the call. Why might the user be calling in? Maybe they had a bad network experience. It can detect that.

Maybe they have bill shock. Their bill is higher than they thought it was. Also understands the propensity or how the customer responds to things. Whether that's negatively or positively in the past. Armed with all of this data, NBA starts to go to work. It starts to offer the care agent treatments, context around those treatments. And this all happens in less than 200 milliseconds, incredibly fast and incredibly important. Our customers' time is valuable. We don't want them on the phone explaining a million things to us.

We want to anticipate. And as I mentioned, we have multiple touch points with our customers and it's important to have NBA in our care centers, but we need to have it in all of our channels and we're going through that journey currently. We do that, we'll improve our company's KPIs across the board, and customers will have a better experience with T-Mobile. We want to have more real-time decisioning for our frontline employees. Consumers are dynamic. They call in, maybe they're calling in for bill shock, but they introduce something else in the call. How can we detect that? How can we use data to respond and arm our frontline employees with better, more informed decisions and treatments for that customer? We also want feedback loops.

Super simple. What's working? What's not? Data. Do more of what's working. Do less of what's not or don't do any of what's not. Data can help us make better, more informed decisions that are more relevant to the customer. And again, what about consistency and relevance across digital channels? A customer shows up to the the website.

They have an iPhone. Let's not show them Android accessories. Show them something relevant. Now, better personalization for our customers across all channels is again how we practice and show customer love. We need to know you as a customer. Now you don't get to where we're at and where we want to go without a plan. Data is super critical, not just because it's in my title, but it is a little self-serving to say that. I'll take it. But also the systems that can best leverage that data.

And that's why Pega is so important. Then you need to integrate it into the tools of your frontline employees, so they have access to that data and those decisions when they need to make those decisions at critical moments. And then lastly, but probably most importantly, define your outcomes as a business. What are you trying to achieve? Then you need to learn how well you're delivering those outcomes. Measure. Improve. Change. Data.

It's in my title. So how is this hitting our customers? Are they feeling the customer love? I'd say based on our growth, yes, but we know we can improve and we know we will. Our experiences will continue to get more personalized, more engaging, more relevant. As I mentioned in our call centers that care starts sooner, customers aren't calling in and getting a million different questions of what's going on. Why are you calling us? Who are you? We know all of that.

How many times have we called in to a company that we do business with and have a bad customer care experience? Never with T-Mobile. It's always another brand. But you get passed on to different folks. Depending on who you're talking to, you're told different things. You have to call back multiple times. It sucks. It's not fun. We want our messaging to become more consistent and relevant and omnichannel, and we've rolled some of those things out.

Customers are seeing that. They're experiencing that. What about proactive care? I mentioned that with the network experience example. Here's another one. Customer leaves the country. We don't want them to come back and see that, Hey, I used data in another country, now I have bill shock. Let's notify them. We see you're out of the country, add this data plan.

Add this international data plan. You're going to need it. Or go one step further. We have a customer that's constantly traveling out of the country. How do we come up with a customized, tailor-made plan for them that accounts for that travel? Again, customer love. Personalization. Talked a lot about customers. What about prospects?

Prospect love. Maybe that'll catch on in the halls of T-Mobile. We should really love our AT&T and Verizon customers. How can we communicate to them better? How do we understand their journey as a consumer? How can we let them feel what our customers feel, even though they're not part of our community yet? Super important. How is this impacting our business? Well, we've seen a material increase in our first call resolution.

I can't share specifics. I was told not to, so I'll just give anecdotes. SEC and everything. First call resolution. It's super important. Customer doesn't have to call back multiple times for the same issue. Nobody wants to do that. I've got four kids. I have much better things to do.

It's also freeing up our customer care agents to handle more customers. They're not handling the same issue over and over. We've seen an increase in our Net Promoter Score. This might be the most important metric when I think about are we successful in showing customer love? This is their voice. This is the customer telling us directly how they think we're doing. We've seen customer churn decrease. Customer churn might be the most important business metric we have. The name of the game in wireless is growth.

How do you grow? Here's a hint -- it's not by losing customers, right? Adding customers. Net adds every quarter. The street's looking at it. Every time we lose a customer, we have to run twice as hard to replace them and continue to grow. It's so important for our business. And then lastly, we've seen an improvement in our agent performance. This shows that we're getting the right tools, the right data, the right information in the hands of our frontline employees at the time they need to make decisions, customer care decisions.

This has another benefit. Everybody wants to be successful. I don't think anyone in this room, is like, "Hey, do you want to be successful at your job? He's like, nah, I don't really want to." Everyone does. And our agents are feeling that. They're more successful. That increases their retention. Now we have more experienced employees staying with the company longer, servicing our customers better. Now, what lessons have we learned on this journey?

There's a few. Data is important. Anybody shocked that I was going to say that? How about bring knowledge in-house? If you're good at something, don't outsource it. Invest in it. It's your core competency. We're good at customer care, we know that. So we invest in the tools and the people to continue that.

All right. As I wrap up, three things to think about. Is anyone shocked that customer love is the first one? If you are, you have not been paying attention. But customer love. I know it's weird. It was super weird for me at first. "Oh, customer love. I'd say love in corporate settings." But I promise you, you'll get used to it.

I did. Here I am standing in front of all of you, saying it 100 times. If you practice this and you do it right, just maybe your customers will love you back. Second, learn. Should never stop learning as an organization and as people. It's how we grow. It's how we understand what's working, what's not. Let's make that data-driven. And that ultimately informs how we change.

We should always be open to change. Just think about it. If T-Mobile in 2012 was like, "You know what? We don't need to change. We're doing things, we're going to get out of this nosedive. Let's just keep doing what we're doing." I'll tell you what. I wouldn't be up on this stage. Certainly we wouldn't be telling you a story like this. And all of these things are related.

How do you change? Is that improving your customer love? What are you learning? What do you change next?