When T-Mobile branded themselves as the "un-carrier" in 2013, it was a game-changing moment in the telecommunications industry. Suddenly, customers were no longer bound by long-term contracts and pricing had been simplified. Finally, a global brand was listening to its customers and easing their pain.
It wasn't the first time T-Mobile had made such a bold move. When their customers first started contacting them on social media, T-Mobile listened and created a social customer service department.
From March 2012 to May 2012, T-Mobile received 2,541 questions or comments on their social media accounts and responded to 86 percent of them, making them the second most socially devoted global brand at the time. But as their social customer base grew, so did the realization that the well-known social customer service platform they were using wasn't working. With their old platform:
Every customer issue required 8-10 clicks to resolve
- They were taking over an hour to connect with customers
- The system was unreliable and had inconsistent performance
- Maintenance took up to 48 hours
- There was very limited support when things went wrong
After three years struggling with the same platform, T-Mobile realized they needed to make a drastic change. Determined not to make the same mistake again, they decided to test out the most popular social customer service platforms on the market.
Following months of extensive trials, T-Mobile determined Sparkcentral to be the winner. Within months of starting with Sparkcentral, T-Mobile increased their volume of customer interactions from 12,000 per month to 50,000 across all channels and they reduced the number of clicks from 8-10 to just 1 per customer.
Now T-Mobile is leveraging Sparkcentral's analytics and reporting features to create an even more powerful customer experience. Sparkcentral helps them with customer pain points and enables them to deliver proactive social customer service by seeing what tweets are going out and resolving potential problems before the customer even asks. They've even been able to piggyback off of the experiences they've had on social media to improve other departments.
T-Mobile attributes their success on social media to the fact that they monitor customer sentiment, keep their promises, allow tough conversations and respond to customers in real-time. With the help of Sparkcentral, T-Mobile is continuing to transform the telecommunications industry by really listening to what their customers are saying.
About the Author: Davy Kestens is the Founder & CEO of Sparkcentral – a company based in San Francisco, CA that enables customer-centric enterprises to efficiently manage customer service over social media.
Edited by
Dominick Sorrentino
