From September 2012 through April 2020,
T-Mobile was led by CEO John Legere. The executive’s unconventional business style which put customers first propelled the carrier from being a lagging, sleepy fourth major wireless provider (out of four major players) to become the most dynamic, innovative, and fastest-growing wireless carrier in the U.S.
T-Mobile became the second-largest firm among the four majors behind only
Verizon.
After
T-Mobile closed on its $26 billion acquisition of Sprint, Legere stepped down. The deal was all about acquiring Sprint’s hoard of 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum which ended up helping
T-Mobile become the early 5G leader in the U.S. forcing
Verizon and
AT&T to change their focus from mmWave to mid-band. When Legere left, he was replaced by Mike Sievert who had been Legere’s right-hand man.
Former T-Mobile CEO John Legere. | Image credit-T-Mobile
While no one expected any major changes under Sievert, T-Mobile employees I’ve spoken with have told me that there has been a change and it is affecting reps in the most sensitive place-their wallets. And it is also having an impact on the carrier’s former customer-first practice. It all starts with the metrics that corporate pushes on their reps and the ridiculous commission schedule that requires that a rep sell a new phone with a new line, insurance, a case, and accessories in order to get a wage that the rep can live on.
But apparently, it’s worse than that. One Mobile Expert (ME) at a
T-Mobile Experience store (which are company-owned stores) with 15 years in the business
wrote on Reddit. At these locations, reps can do many of the things that the company’s CARE team can do such as cancel lines, award bill credits, and more. Some corporate stores have apparently turned into Experience stores although this has come with a hike in hourly pay to make up for the added responsibilities.
Overall, this move has led to a greater than $1,000 per month decline in monthly pay. And since there is a team concept to getting paid at these stores, if a customer upgrades multiple phones without the rep convincing him to add accessories, and insurance, and move to a higher-priced plan, the pay of all of the Mobile Experts working in the store suffers.
“Exactly this new commission structure literally incentivizes you to convince people not upgrade and make you not want to help them.. You are literally losing money if you don’t make them switch to the higher plan and hit every metric the company expects from you. Yesterday I did multiple upgrades. Customer had essentials and switching plan to 5g plus would increase monthly by $100. No trade ins so made absolutely no sense for customer to switch. And customer didn’t want insurance or accessories. They said the typical “I will buy it online/amazon” I spent over an hour helping them. Obviously trying to with the best attitude.
Everyone was mad at me because I made everyone “lose money” with that transaction and it’s crazy to think I’m losing money while doing the right thing. And then there’s people who I see literally not trying to help upgrades or convincing them not to.
Literally their numbers are higher than mine. But literally pushing people away. Rewarding bad behaviors.”-Reddit subscriber LoudIndustry6928
Pressured not only by corporate to maintain certain metrics, T-Mobile Mobile Experts can also feel the wrath of their colleagues when they write up multiple upgrades without accessories. The bottom line is that this is not putting the customer first since it increases the pressure on the Mobile Experts to sell pricey extras that the customer may not want, or cannot afford. And this can lead reps to add new lines and accessories to an account without the customer’s permission or knowledge.
As we’ve written before, what
T-Mobile needs to do is hold an Un-carrier event and announce that they are revamping the compensation program to give reps an incentive to sell consumers only the products that they want to buy. The Legre-era
T-Mobile might have made such a move. But as
T-Mobile is currently run, the main focus is on the stockholders and the stock instead of the customers.
