T-Mobile metrics leak reveals why reps feel pressure to get you to add accessories and lines
Over the last few months, we have told you about T-Mobile reps who allegedly refuse to sell a new phone to a customer unless the purchase included accessories such as a charger, insurance, a phone case, and and a screen protector. In some cases, a customer would find these items added to his invoice without giving the rep permission to include them on his bill. According to T-Mobile reps I have spoken with, they feel the pressure to meet certain sales and performance metrics to keep their jobs.
A former rep who worked at a T-Mobile third-party retail store has a friend who still works at a corporate-owned T-Mobile location and he sent what he claims are the performance indicators his particular store needs to hit for this month. The document was shared on Reddit. The TFB store attainment of 100% by November 15th means that whatever this particular store's monthly goal for opening new T-Mobile for Business accounts, it should be reached by the middle of the month. Each Mobile Expert should have signed up at least one new TFB account.
At the bottom of the document is the accessory attach rate which is the minimum number of accessories that the suits at T-Mobile want to see reps tacking on to the purchase of a phone. You'll see that the company is telling reps to "Strive for 3.0 per phone. In other words, the company wants its reps to sell three additional accessories for each phone sold.
Key Performance Indicators that a T-Mobile Mobile Expert at an unknown corporate store needs to meet for November. | Image credit-Reddit
This is why reps will lie and say that they are out of the model a customer asks for and say that the phone must be ordered. If the customer agrees to add three accessories, all of a sudden the rep finds the phone exactly the way the customer wants it sitting on a shelf in the back office. Even more nefarious, some customers who agreed to buy a phone will discover three accessories that they didn't ask for added to their account. If this happened to you, now you know why!
According to the shared document, T-Mobile Mobile Experts at this unnamed store have a goal of getting 15% of the people they interact with at a T-Mobile store on a given day to sign up as a new customer or to upgrade their existing plan. T-Mobile also wants 15% of the consumers and customers that MEs interact with each day to add an additional line to a voice and "Beyond the Smartphone" (BTS) plan that includes using the T-Mobile network for non-traditional smartphone usage.
Another high-pressure metric is the one that tells Mobile Experts to have each BAN (Billing Account Number) maintain a minimum of 2.5 lines. The BAN is a unique identifier attached to a customer account. All of these metrics have T-Mobile reps ABC-Always Be Closing. This store also expects its reps to each close eight new Home Internet accounts per month. Each Mobile Expert at this location has a quota to sell 20 (for full time reps) or 15 (for part time reps) wearable devices, like a smartwatch, per month.
As for adding insurance, this store has a goal of signing two existing customers per Mobile Expert to the P360 plan every week! The goal is to sign up 60% of customers adding a new line to the insurance plan while only half that goal is targeted for customers who subscribe to a T-Mobile plan but bring their own device.
We've made the suggestion that to eliminate the incentive for reps to do illegal things to meet or beat their metrics, T-Mobile should revamp the compensation system and eliminate the metrics. This could be done as a big Un-carrier move that would get rid of a customer pain point and return T-Mobile to its former status as the most innovative U.S. wireless provider.
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