Verizon wireless - Behind T-Mobile's customer service success

Author

Behind T-Mobile's customer service success

Mike

2007-09-22, 12:33 pm

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fort...10/01/100398840
/index.htm

Behind T-Mobile's customer service success
She's blunt. She's flashy. And customer-service chief Sue Nokes is
T-Mobile's secret weapon in a cutthroat industry.
By Jennifer Reingold, Fortune senior writer
September 21 2007: 11:57 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- Marry me, Sue!" We've just pulled into the parking
lot of Albuquerque's Jefferson Commons call center, home to 800 T-Mobile
USA customer-service representatives, and outside there's mayhem. Hundreds
of screaming, chanting people are standing in front of the building,
bedecked in a wild array of hot-pink clothing (T-Mobile's signature color)
ranging from T-shirts to cowboy hats to feather boas. They're waving signs,
holding up camera phones, and generally acting like starstruck teenagers.
One guy's wearing a fuchsia bathrobe; another, in a fluorescent-pink wig,
is screaming, "We love you!" over and over.

All this booty shaking and flag waving might seem a bit extreme, given that
technically today's event features a middle-aged woman on a routine visit
from headquarters. But this isn't just any suit: It's Sue Nokes. She's the
flashy, feisty spark plug of a woman who runs sales and customer service at
T-Mobile USA, the fast-growing $17 billion subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

In that capacity she's in charge of more than 15,000 employees around the
U.S. Why the rousing welcome? Well, it has something to do with her
outsized personality, an inspiring, wacky combination of Rosie O'Donnell,
Evita Perón, and Auntie Mame.

But mostly it's a result of her lifelong belief that making the customer
happy is a lot easier to do when employees actually like their jobs and
feel that what they do matters. "Sue's zeal for always putting the customer
first is absolutely infectious," says René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche
Telekom.

Serving a hot lunch to your employees, as Nokes usually does on her site
visits - or repeating, like a mantra, "You are No. 1, and the customer is
why" - could easily come across as meaningless corporate doublespeak. But
not only does Nokes pull it off, she seems to have a blast doing it. "I'm
just a kid from downstate Michigan who knows where I come from," she says.
"I didn't start out wanting to be Sue Nokes, SVP of anything. It just
happened because I did what I loved."

Customers seem to love what she does too. À la Southwest Airlines or
Nordstrom, T-Mobile's heavy service focus, led by CEO Robert Dotson, has
become a key differentiating strategy, along with an emphasis on the "young
and social" and smart branding.

Though T-Mobile is ranked fourth, with 11% of the U.S. market, behind
Verizon (Charts, Fortune 500), AT&T (Charts), and Sprint Nextel (Charts,
Fortune 500), since the end of 2002 it has gained more than five share
points, according to Mark Cardwell of Sanford C. Bernstein.

Even more impressive, within two years of Nokes's arrival in 2002, the
company catapulted to the top of J.D. Power's rankings of customer care in
the wireless industry. It has now won the biannual title six times in a
row. "It's pretty amazing, actually," says Kirk Parsons, senior director of
wireless services at J.D. Power. "They have great customer care, they
handle the folks they do have, and they're growing at a pretty good clip."

That's a huge turnaround from 2002, when T-Mobile ranked dead last
according to internal surveys. (J.D. Power started its national wireless
surveys in 2003.) Dotson, who had just been named CEO, reached out to
Nokes, then at Wal-Mart.com, telling her that the company's customer
organization needed a complete overhaul.

Before committing to the job, Nokes visited a few call centers and was
horrified by what she saw. Absenteeism averaged 12% daily; turnover was a
staggering 100%-plus annually. The company used "neighborhood seating," a
common technique at call centers in which employees don't have desks but
instead drag their stuff from cubicle to cubicle.

"I asked [managers], 'Are you losing any good people?' They said, 'Yeah,'"
Nokes says. "I said, 'Anybody feeling bad about that?'" Karen Viola,
general manager of the Menaul call center, also in Albuquerque, describes
what happened next. "She walked up to the board and wrote sue nokes. Then
she sat back down, put her feet up on the desk, and said, 'There's a new
sheriff in town.'"

Although Nokes loves to talk, she actually spends much of her day
listening. In a focus group in the Menaul center, dressed in a natty black
jacket with white trim, tons of gold jewelry, and funky
black-and-white-checked glasses to match, Nokes, 52, says what she says at
virtually every such meeting (after, that is, making a bunch of wisecracks
about her weight, age, and declining mental functions). "I have two
questions: What's going well, and what's broken?"

One rep suggests a feature that lets customers turn off incoming text
messages so that they don't have to be charged; another, Sergio Juardo,
wonders why T-Mobile.com has no web page in Spanish. Nokes listens
carefully, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Juardo's cheek is painted
with the words I HEART SUE NOKES.

In the focus groups and in the larger town hall meetings, Nokes is brutally
honest, telling the group, for instance, that the company erred by not
adding enough service reps to support T-Mobile's new pay-as-you-go service.
Responding to a complaint that it's too time-consuming to log in to the
system, she tells employees that a quick fix is impossible given the
company's other technological priorities. "It's important that we build an
environment where you can tell me my baby is ugly," Nokes says, her hard
A's revealing her Midwestern roots. "And when you ask what's wrong, you'd
better fix some stuff."

One reason Nokes is so good at communicating with her reps is that - unlike
most senior executives - she has sat in their chair. After starting at
Michigan Bell as an engineering clerk out of high school (she never
finished college), she was promoted to customer-service rep.

She spent 26 years in the Bell system, moving up to director of quality and
then, by 1998, to regional director of customer service for what became
Ameritech. She moved on to Ameritech subsidiary Tele Danmark, in
Copenhagen, where she attracted attention walking the halls in a Santa suit
at Christmas - and still managed to straighten out the back office and
boost customer satisfaction by 25% in less than a year.

Some up-by-the-bootstraps executives, when they succeed, try desperately to
escape the world they came from. Nokes, by contrast, embraces it. She
constantly brings up her factory-worker parents, Vivian (Vi) and Lewie: "Vi
is still my No. 1 coach," Nokes says. "She says, 'Put on a little lipstick
- you'll feel better.'"

Connecting to everyday workers was particularly important when Nokes landed
at Wal-Mart.com, working for then-CEO Jeanne Jackson to build a
customer-service organization nearly from scratch. "Sue, to me, is the
world's perfect executive," says Jackson, now with MSP Capital. "You don't
have to go to sleep at night worrying about her decisions. And on the other
hand she makes you feel like a brilliant boss - not by sucking up but by
giving you honest feedback."

Jackson recalls Nokes "reading me the riot act" one day. "I was spending
most of my time with the engineering staff, and she said [I needed to] get
out there and show my face to call-center employees. She was absolutely
right."

Indeed, once in the door at T-Mobile, Nokes immediately launched a
listening campaign, asking what customers were complaining about - and what
employees needed improved in their workplace. "I remember the first focus
group," says call-center manager Viola. "Everybody came out crying. The
people said they had never felt so inspired in their lives, and that they
had never met with any leader at that level who [they felt] cared."

Nokes quickly gave workers their own seats and asked for $17 million to
bring salaries up to the 50th percentile. She also overhauled the training
process (reps now go through 132 hours of training and team meetings each
year) and began hiring based more on attitude than experience. She also
created a standard set of metrics to measure reps on, tracking call
quality, attendance, and schedule reliability along with the speed of the
call resolution.

"I will never hold you accountable for things that don't matter to your
customer or to fellow employees," Nokes tells her Albuquerque acolytes
before explaining - in her own inimitable way - what she's looking for.
Absenteeism ("pimping your peers," she calls it) is bad. Solving problems
in one phone call (one-call resolution, or OCR), she says, is critical. "We
have frigged up [our customers'] day," she says. "They need to go to the
john and do other things."

To motivate employees in what has long been considered a dead-end job,
Nokes promised when she joined that 80% of promotions would eventually go
to existing employees. By August 2007 that number had hit 82%. Her team
also created a new "rewards and recognition system " in which high
performers - using the new metrics - were rewarded with trips to Las Vegas
or Hawaii and prizes. Today absenteeism is at 3% annually and attrition is
at 42%. Employee satisfaction - at 80% - is the highest it's ever been.

In addition to her fans from below, Nokes has found plenty of support from
above. Dotson requires that all director-level executives travel to local
markets quarterly, where they visit some of the 20 call centers (all in the
U.S.) or retail stores. They must complete retail sales training and work
in a retail store several days a year as well.

For the past year Nokes has also been running a large chunk of T-Mobile's
sales organization, which includes the company's vast network of dealers,
outside retailers, e-commerce operations, and B-to-B reps. That means more
problems to solve.

Will the iPhone cut into T-Mobile's hip, young audience? Will the retooled
retail stores be a success? Will other players catch on to some of her
customer-service tricks? Nokes brushes back a piece of her hair that has
turned pink from hugging so many magenta-hued reps. "I am the head of the
department of worry," she says. Then she breaks into a huge grin.

Agent_C

2007-09-22, 3:33 pm

On 22 Sep 2007 17:00:55 -0000, mike@ssssss.com (Mike) wrote:

>Behind T-Mobile's customer service success

Oh isn't that just fine... They think blowing sunshine and daises up
your XXX will make up for substandard coverage and poor call quality.

Not!

A_C

SMS

2007-09-22, 3:33 pm

Mike wrote:

<snip>

Interesting stuff. Now if they could just do something about their coverage.

Steve Sobol

2007-09-22, 3:33 pm

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.cellular.verizon.]
On 2007-09-22, Agent_C <Agent-C-hates-spam@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2007 17:00:55 -0000, mike@ssssss.com (Mike) wrote:
>
>
> Oh isn't that just fine... They think blowing sunshine and daises up
> your XXX will make up for substandard coverage and poor call quality.

Ummmm, my coverage is just fine. Different carriers have different
strong and weak spots. Besides, I'd rather be a T-Mo customer, which I
am, than be a Verizon customer and *have* coverage and then have the
network break and be lied to about it for six months, which did happen
to me back in 2004.

--
Steve Sobol, Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED
"Drench yourself in words unspoken / Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins / The rest is still unwritten"
- Natasha Beddingfield

Shawn Hirn

2007-09-22, 3:33 pm

In article < 46f55cff$0$27179$742
ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

> Mike wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> Interesting stuff. Now if they could just do something about their coverage.

I agree. A close friend of mine lived within direct line of sight of a
T-Mobile cell antenna and his reception at home was terrible. I also had
T-Mobile for a year, and that was enough to tell me to switch.

B'ichela

2007-09-22, 10:33 pm

In article < 46f55cff$0$27179$742
ec2ed@news.sonic.net>, SMS wrote:
> Mike wrote:
>
><snip>
>
> Interesting stuff. Now if they could just do something about their coverage.
They are working to add more coverage. The problem is that the
NIMBY's who don't want more towers in their towns! If the NIMBY's and
the NIMFY's (Not In My Front Yard) groups would just stop making a
stink of new tower contruction you would begin to see faster Coverage
expansion. and Yes, I am a T-mobile customer as well. No problems with
it in Torrington Connecticut, But In Winsted.... Umm sorry No tower ==
No signal.

--

From the Desk of the Sysop of:
Planet Maca's Opus, a Free open BBS system. telnet://pinkrose.dhis.org
Web Site: http://pinkrose.dhis.org, Dialup 860-618-3091 300-33600 bps
The New Cnews maintainer
B'ichela

SMS

2007-09-22, 10:33 pm

B'ichela wrote:

> They are working to add more coverage. The problem is that the
> NIMBY's who don't want more towers in their towns!

It's partly a technical issues as well. 1900 MHz doesn't work as well as
800 MHz (what is mainly used by AT&T and Cingular). Sprint and T-Mobile
are constantly put into the position of having explain to planning
commissions why AT&T and Cingular have no problem covering a specific
area without needing towers in residential areas.

It isn't just T-Mobile with coverage issues. I was in several areas over
the summer with no GSM coverage at all, including most of the Crater
Lake area. If you don't travel outside of the T-Mobile coverage area
it's a great deal, especially their prepaid service. Plus they are very
honest at the stores, and they check coverage for you and will not lie
to you when there is no coverage at your house (at least that's been the
experience of people I know that have tried to sign up for T-Mobile).

"http://i14.tinypic.com/4yaf89h.jpg"
"http://i17.tinypic.com/67ex5x5.jpg"

B'ichela

2007-09-23, 10:33 pm

In article < 46f5b2e7$0$27178$742
ec2ed@news.sonic.net>, SMS wrote:
> It's partly a technical issues as well. 1900 MHz doesn't work as well as
> 800 MHz (what is mainly used by AT&T and Cingular). Sprint and T-Mobile
> are constantly put into the position of having explain to planning
> commissions why AT&T and Cingular have no problem covering a specific
> area without needing towers in residential areas.
Thats true. Since most in the PZC (Planning and Zoning
Commission) are not familiar with radio
frequencies. You may get luckiy and find a few PZC officials that are
amature radio operators (hams), but most are not, they would not know
about signal propgation. In Short: for 1900 MHZ (U.S)
and 1800 MHZ (rest of the world) the higher frequencies get absorbed
by many materials that 800 (U.S) 900 MHZ (rest of world) pass through
with very little signal loss.

--

From the Desk of the Sysop of:
Planet Maca's Opus, a Free open BBS system. telnet://pinkrose.dhis.org
Web Site: http://pinkrose.dhis.org, Dialup 860-618-3091 300-33600 bps
The New Cnews maintainer
B'ichela

SMS

2007-09-23, 10:33 pm

SMS wrote:
> B'ichela wrote:
>
>
> It's partly a technical issues as well. 1900 MHz doesn't work as well as
> 800 MHz (what is mainly used by AT&T and Cingular). Sprint and T-Mobile
> are constantly put into the position of having explain to planning
> commissions why AT&T and Cingular have no problem covering a specific
> area without needing towers in residential areas.

Oops, I meant "AT&T & Verizon," not "AT&T & Cingular."

Bill

2007-09-23, 10:33 pm

B'ichela wrote:
>

> They are working to add more coverage. The problem is that the
> NIMBY's who don't want more towers in their towns! If the NIMBY's and
> the NIMFY's (Not In My Front Yard) groups would just stop making a
> stink of new tower contruction you would begin to see faster Coverage
> expansion.

A local high school signed a deal with Sprint a few years ago to
put a cellular tower on the school's pole of some sort. The
NIMBY's made them cancel it over health fears. Of course, all
the kids in the school put their cell phones up to their heads
all day (and then complain about the lousy signal, I am sure).

Bill

LinkBot