Sometimes it’s not just about what you do, but how you do it. Call it attitude, panache or just listening to the voice of the customer, #DigitalTelco T-Mobile USA has engagement down to a ‘T’. The #DigitalTelco is something different and therefore it needs to shed ties to its ultra-corporate past. No other Telco has done this better the T-Mobile with its very pink Uncarrier strategy. It has turned a distant no.4 laggard into the fastest growing wireless operator in the USA. Talk about engagement! This is an operator of the people, by the people for the people. Don’t believe me, just check out the Uncarrier “Bill of Rights”.
Uncarrier 1.0 – Freedom trail!! T-Mobile announced it would do away with contracts, moving to phone leasing instead. This way, the customer could opt out at any time and either give up the phone or pay for the remaining balance on it. More than two years before Verizon moved to match suit.
Uncarrier 2.0 – Live the Dream! T-Mobile once again took on the establishment with its new JUMP program. Customers could now pay a little extra to be able to upgrade to a newer model faster than every two years.
Uncarrier 3.0 – Roaming freedom! T-Mobile customers enjoy unlimited data and texting worldwide — at no extra. T-Mobile began offering international travelers a boon: a plan that did away with international data roaming charges in over 100 countries. T-Mobile also threw in 200Mb free for life for tablet users for the life of your device
Uncarrier 4.0: Freeing the Oppressed! T-Mobile vowed freedom for families locked in to contract with other operators by paying off their early termination fees. Talk about sticking a finger in the eye!
Uncarrier 5.0 & 6.0 Free da Music! Music Freedom announcement – T-Mobile’s Simple Choice customers will now be able to stream all the music they want from all the most popular streaming services, including Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, and Spotify – without ever hitting their high-speed 4G LTE data cap. T-Mobile customers access to a free (and ad-free) music streaming service. They also announced Wideband LTE and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) coverage, meaning better voice quality and data transfer over the newer LTE networks.
Uncarrier 7.0 Wi-Fi Un-Leashed! T-Mobile customer “to call and text over any Wi-Fi connection for seamless coverage where no carrier network reaches — even at 30,000 feet.”
Uncarrier 8.0 Protecting your Rights! Your carrier tricked you into buying too much data to avoid overage charges. Sounds familiar, right? And on top of that, at the end of the month they snatched back all the data you didn’t use, even though you already paid for it. Data Stash™ lets you roll the extra unused 4G LTE data you paid for into the next month
Uncarrier 9.0 Business Freedom! T-Mobile brings its simplicity an attitude to SMEs.
Simple and 100% transparent pricing puts an end to the pricing shell game perpetuated by the carriers. Every line comes with unlimited talk, text and up to 1 GB of data on America’s fastest nationwide 4G LTE network.
The Uncarrier is not just razzmatazz
When the outspoken Legere joined T-Mobile in September 2012, the unit of Deutsche Telekom had just 33.16 million customers, well below Sprint’s 56.38 million connections, according to data from industry tracker GSMA Intelligence. T-Mobile was also leaking customers at the time. A few months before Legere took over, T-Mobile reported 33.16 million customers, down from 33.58 million a year earlier — and 33.62 million the year before that, according to GSMA.
At the end of the quarter 2015, Sprint says that it had 56.8 million total connections. T-Mobile ended its Q2 2015 — which also wrapped on June 30 — with 58.9 million total subscribers.
“Overall, we’ve done nine ‘uncarrier moves.’ An uncarrier move is a move intended to change a stupid, broken arrogant industry, and it’s intended to be permanent, and we want everybody to change [to] no contracts, anytime upgrades and international data roaming,” Legere
Engaging your audience on their terms is not only smart business, it’s critical for #DigitalTelco success. Next up in the #DigitalTelco series, we zoom in on the Philippines’ Smart and Globe to see Digital Lifestyle Providers in action.
This article was first published here and is reproduced with kind permission.
Recent Comments