T-Mobile has built its business by putting customers first. This included forcing its main competitor, AT&T (t) – Get a free report and Verizon (VZ) – Get a free reportTo change many policies that benefit the company, not the consumer.
You can thank T-Mobile (TMUS) – Get a free report For the end of overage charges and not having to track how much data you use. Back in the day, before un-carriers forced AT&T and Verizon to make changes, consumers used to be stuck between two plans.
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You can choose a conservative plan and end up paying excessive fees if you use too much data. Conversely, you may end up choosing a plan that has more data than you actually use and end up paying extra for no reason.
T-Mobile made all of its plans unlimited and forced AT&T and Verizon to do the same. It also ended deceptive practices involving device bundling and made it much easier for people to leave their carriers while taking their phone numbers with them.
That’s good for consumers but bad for T-Mobile because while it has the lowest turnover rate — customer turnover — in the industry, the company still lost 0.89% of its customers last quarter.
That’s an improvement from 0.93% in the previous quarter, making it the only carrier to improve. But when you have roughly 150 million postpaid customers (people who get billed instead of paying upfront), losing less than a percentage point from that customer base each quarter is still a lot of people.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Seifert has a workaround for that, and some people aren’t going to like it.
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T-Mobile plans to use artificial intelligence
When you hear the CEO of a wireless carrier talk about using artificial intelligence, most people immediately assume that means unreasonable chatbots designed to lower labor costs. But these efforts, which often only frustrate clients, aren’t what Seifert planned.
He spoke about his company’s turbulence problem at the Technology Alliance’s annual State of Technology luncheon on May 25 in Seattle, Geekware mentioned. He noted that he was affected by his company’s momentum of less than 1%.
“It’s very good,” he said. “But still, because we’re such a big company, we left millions of people last year. And that just gnaws at us. Each one of them left a string of statements before finally raising their hands and abandoning us. Something was wrong, something in the network, something in the interaction.” customers.”
He believes AI can help T-Mobile learn more about why people are leaving and help identify problems before they lead to a customer’s decision to go elsewhere. He believes AI can help the company process its existing data, if not at least solve it, to reduce the disruption problem.
“So that’s now a big focus for our company, and that’s what you can expect,” he said. “Nothing will change about who we are…but now this next era is going to have to be rethought in a very profound way,” he said.
He admitted that this would not be a quick fix.
“It will simultaneously be larger than most people expect, and it will take a little longer than the hype cycle would suggest,” he said.
“The world won’t be different as we know it in 18 months…but it will be very different in ways you can’t even imagine in a decade.”
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