Reference no: EM133240283

AACSB Standards: Teamwork

Wireless telephone service providers are ranked #5 from the bottom in terms of the most hated industries in the U.S. Surveys show there are three major areas for where improvement is needed. First, customers feel call center staff members can be rude and unhelpful. Second, customers are not happy with the speed of store service or center transactions. Third, customers are not satisfied with the range of wireless voice and/or data plans available.

T-Mobile with 51,000 employees, 73 million customers, and over $40 billion in annual revenue is the third largest wireless provider in the U.S. It recognizes that it must take strong action to eliminate customer pain points. Some recent changes include elimination of two-year service contracts, doing away with data buckets, abolishing unpredictable international roaming charges, and including taxes and fees in the rates quoted customers. These are all part of T-Mobile's "un-carrier strategy" aimed at putting people first and improving the overall customer experience.

Customers' biggest complaint about their wireless telephone service provider is the poor service they receive when contacting the service center-long wait times on hold, curt and impatient service reps, and ambiguous answers to their questions. T-Mobile is making use of a commercial Enterprise 2.0 collaboration and knowledge management tool to improve the overall customer experience when customers contact the call center. The Enterprise 2.0 solution helps T-Mobile customers and enables the organization to achieve major increases in productivity, employee teamwork, and customer satisfaction. T-Mobile used Enterprise 2.0 software as the basis to build its "T-Community" which serves as the central knowledge source for customer service and support. The new platform has been well received by customers and has also dramatically improved productivity. The effort required to publish content compared to previous means was cut by 70 percent thus saving $8 million over a three-year period. T-Mobile saves an additional $3 million each year in call handling costs by providing call center reps with easy access to current and more complete information. This cuts down the time spent searching for answers and reduces customer call time.

T-Mobile also used Enterprise 2.0 technology to create a company intranet to enable employees to connect, communicate, and work together as a team. This collaboration platform provides a central place for people to collaborate securely and openly across organizations, geographies, systems, and devices. It brings together all the people, information, and tools needed to move the business forward. The intranet provides a single platform for company communications, team collaboration, employee engagement and onboarding, knowledge sharing, enterprise search, and organizational analytics. It enables employees to business wikis, support social networking, perform blogging, and social bookmarks to quickly find information. The intranet is accessible via browsers and a mobile intranet app that enables employees to work from anywhere. With the Enterprise 2.0 intranet, getting work done across departments- or time zones-is easier, more efficient, and more transparent. Decisions are made quickly, and projects are finished faster.

Respond to the following Critical Thinking Questions:

Question 1: What complaints do you have in dealing with your wireless service provider? How might Enterprise 2.0 help improve this relationship?

Question 2: Can you identify any innovative ideas to enable T-Mobile to improve the speed and/or quality of in-store service? Briefly outline your thoughts.

Question 3: Should T-Mobile consider allowing access to its intranet to customers, suppliers, or other parties? What might be the value in doing this? What potential issues does this raise?