T-Mobile’s recent first quarter results revealed that they are doing better than ever with businesses, now providing wireless services to twice as many customers than they did during the same period in 2015. This corresponds with the rollout of their Un-carrier for Business initiative at Un-carrier 9.0, which brought all of Magenta’s past and future customer-side initiatives to businesses. According to a study of 600 small businesses provided by F’inn Group, many businesses have issues with things like price, transparency, and customer service when it comes to wireless. Thanks to all of these being exactly the sort of pain points T-Mobile addressed with Un-carrier 9.0, T-Mobile has seen massive growth in the business segment since that unveiling.
Some of the biggest wireless pain points that T-Mobile made sure to address are things like haggling, overages, loyalty initiatives, and 24/7 customer support. As examples of how the competition stacks up, T-Mobile took time in their press release to detail the results of the study. It was found that 40% of businesses surveyed had seen overages from their carrier within the last year. This was highlighted by the story of Felix’s Famous Cookies, a business that racked up a shocking $800 monthly bill from Verizon because their business plan did not qualify for Verizon’s overage protection system. 60% of respondents said that they had been forced to haggle in order to net what they felt was a fair price for service. Almost 70% of surveyed businesses felt that their carriers didn’t show them enough appreciation for their long-term business. Finally, about half of survey respondents were not happy with their customer service.
T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert was the one who penned the press release, and at the tail end of it, he vowed to stop “the Carrier Double Standard,” denoting the difference in how carriers deal with normal consumers compared to business customers. He pointed out reasons besides those pain points to switch to T-Mobile, including LTE speed and coverage on par with competitors, then said that Un-carrier for Business was “just getting started.” T-Mobile’s huge reserve of 600MHz spectrum from the recent FCC auction ensures that they could keep their network competitive well into the 5G era, meaning that the continued growth of their business sector depends upon continuing to address business customer pain points the same way that they’ve addressed consumer ones with their many other Un-carrier initiatives.