T-Mobile US Prepaid Wireless.
The customer is king – the old age classic sales mantra rings through the entire T-Mobile USA backbone. Winners of no less then 11 JD Power awards, including best in breed services for customer care, call quality, and general customer satisfaction. JD Power and Associates are an independent survey from who have established themselves as the premier customer satisfaction and product quality surveyor. Like anything in life however many companies whom have not won JD awards have leveled criticism at their practices. Be that as it may T-Mobile is one of the top companies in the USA when it comes to servicing their customers.
T-Mobile in the UK is also know for excellent customer service and low churn.
The story of T-Mobile USA starts with a wireless company called Voicestream Wireless who were acquired by Deutsche Telekom in 2001. Deutsche Telekom is the parent company of T-Mobile.Voicestream was known to be a super star in the wireless industry – taking aggressive and giant leaps to acquire 7 million wireless subscribers at the time they were acquired to form T-Mobile. The deal was done at $24 Billion and in 2004 Voicestream got a name change to T-Mobile. The acquisition was the start of Deutsche Telekom's foray into the US market. They decided to get even more aggressive then Voicestream and budget large amounts of advertising dollars to create a unique marketing position in the market. If you were living in either the USA or Europe during this time, there is no forgetting the massive advertising campaign that T-Mobile undertook by employing Catherine Zeta Jones as their global spokesperson.
Always trying to push forward, T-Mobile USA has the largest GSM network in the USA and were the first network to launch the now world famous Blackberry phone with integrated voice and email functionality. It was also the first to launch video phone messaging in the USA.T-Mobile have always followed pop culture trends and in doing so created and marketed many products that have appealed to a younger consumer. The Sidekick became famous amongst the MTV crowd and young adults. Famous Side Kick users include Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.Snoop Dogg was the official spokesperson for the sidekick and T-Mobile also partnered with fashion brands and sports start alike.
10 years post acquisition of Voicestream, T-Mobile had doubled their customer base to 10 million strong – impressive growth by any standards.
T-Mobile has a very strong prepaid presence. It is generally accepted that T-Mobile has the easiest prepaid plan to understand and overall cheapest plan. For these reasons – they are a serious player within the prepaid, pay as you go sector. The T-Mobile prepaid offering is branded To GO which was launched in 2005 with an emphasis on no hidden fees and no contracts in terms of rate plans. Their prepaid loyalty program is called Gold Rewards which rewards customers by giving them a bonus if 15% more prepaid minutes every time a customer buys more minutes. To qualify for the loyalty program prepaid customers need to buy $100 of prepaid airtime minutes.
T-Mobile prepaid customers (To Go customers) can access all their details on a dedicated page. especially for prepaid customers. Customers can refill airtimes, check minutes used, ask questions, buy enhanced features for their phones, download ringtones and other entertainment applications and manage their Gold Rewards.
Call waiting, caller Id and customer care are all included in the prepaid option.
Financially, T-Mobile is showing strong growth coming from the prepaid side of the business- approximately 35% of T-Mobile USA's net additions the second half of 2007 were prepaid customers, sharp increases compared to just 4% in the second half of 2006.
The future looks good – prepaid is driving growth – no doubt T-Mobile will be launching more innovative features together with great pop culture trend tie ins.
T-Mobile brings a distinctly European flavor to the USA carrier industry and by the looks of things its working.
