T-Mobile's rumored all-hands meeting next Sunday might lead to a big change
According to a Redditor who appears to be a T-Mobile employee, next Sunday, February 16th, the carrier will have an all-hands meeting. This means that a significant percentage of employees will be involved which also hints at the importance of whatever is going to be discussed. According to the original post in the thread, T-Mobile is expected to announce that Tapestry, the carrier's in-house customer relationship management (CRM) system will be replaced by the T-Life app.
Is T-Mobile considering moving customers away from retail stores to conduct business using the T-Life app?
Tapestry integrates customer data and gives T-Mobile employees a unified view of subscriber accounts. T-Life is the app that replaced the T-Mobile app and is the go-to app for T-Mobile subscribers and employees. If you're a T-Mobile subscriber, you would use the T-Life app to get an issue resolved instead of visiting a nearby T-Mobile store. This will be the start of layoffs that will eliminate thousands of jobs according to Reddit subscriber Connect_Corner_2089 who started the thread and seems to work for T-Mobile.
Will T-Mobile move customer transactions from stores to the T-Life app? | Image credit-T-Mobile
What Connect_Corner_2089 hints at in his posts is a lot more scary to T-Mobile employees than simply replacing the use of one CRM system for an app. He writes, "If you’re not in an Experience store you probably want to start applying to other jobs." T-Mobile Experience stores are designed to maximize customer interaction with highly trained "Mobile Experts." These stores feature interactive displays, demo centers, and certain areas of the stores are reserved for testing out phones and other devices.
Why are T-Mobile care reps supposedly getting $5 for each customer who opens a T-Life account?
In other words, it sounds as though T-Mobile is planning on phasing out a large percentage of its retail stores and plans on moving customers online to make device purchases and manage their accounts. As much sense as this makes, not everyone agrees. Another Redditor who appears to be a T-Mobile employee says that the meeting next Sunday is probably to announce to employees the new Magenta Welcome plan which will allow T-Mobile subscribers to check in at a T-Mobile store and view the line in the store remotely.
Another possibility to be discussed next Sunday is T-Mobile's new BOWIS (buy online while in-store) process. It does appear that T-Mobile is getting things lined up for a big announcement. Another Reddit user who appears to have knowledge indicating that he is a T-Mobile employee writes that care reps are getting $5 for each T-Mobile subscriber that they get to sign up for the T-Life app during a call.
Other responses to the thread were posted to bring down the level of fear and worry that T-Mobile reps reading it might feel. Most said that T-Mobile is not going to close its Neighborhood Stores that focus on making things convenient for customers. Still, getting customers to buy their new phones and manage their accounts online through an app makes plenty of sense for T-Mobile after the last few years when the company's reps have been accused of charging customers for accessories that they didn't consent to purchasing, or refused to sell new phones to customers unless they also purchased accessories (more on that below).
The T-Life app seems to be at the center of Sunday's all-hands meeting
Subscriber android1510, who is one of the top 1% commenters on Reddit, might have the most accurate response about the February 16th hands-on meeting. "There’s a training that’s supposed to launch on Monday 2/10 with more info about the T-Life in retail system, so we’ll likely be able to get a good amount of info before the meeting."
So depending on who is correct, T-Mobile's upcoming all-hands meeting will result in some major changes to its retail stores and usher in a new era of online service, or some minor new capabilities are being added to the T-Life app. Either way, as soon as we hear something we will update this story. Reducing the use of human reps might benefit T-Mobile since many of the complaints about the carrier that we've written about over the last few years were about reps doing bad things.
For example, we wrote several stories about T-Mobile reps who were accused of adding accessories to orders without the customer's consent, reps unwilling to sell a new phone to a customer without the purchase of a case, a charger, screen protector and insurance, and more. Most of these reps were trying to meet the performance goals placed on them by T-Mobile; those who fail to meet their metrics can end up losing their jobs.
With fewer reps handling customer transactions, T-Mobile could start the process of dismantling the metrics program which is something we've implored the carrier to do often. Of course, Sunday's rumored meeting might end up having nothing to do with transitioning customers away from retail stores.
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