Newsletter 
Summary: T-Mobile’s aggressive push for its T-Life app is causing chaos. T-Mobile is forcing employees to onboard customers, even in uncomfortable situations like using store demo phones. Once known as the industry rebel, T-Mobile now risks alienating both staff and customers with these heavy-handed tactics.
T-Mobile, we get it. You want more customers to sign up and use the T-Life app. Unfortunately, the carrier is going about it in the worst ways possible. According to anecdotal evidence by T-Mobile employees on Reddit, forcing customers to use the T-Life app is causing chaos and uncomfortable situations in its stores.
T-Life being forced onto customers
According to one T-Mobile employee, it seems that T-Mobile expects customers to use its T-Life app. It also expects its employees to onboard customers, “100% no excuses.” So much so that employees working in T-Mobile’s stores have to sign in customers on demo phones even in the event they just bring a device for repair.
“Now we’re expected to use our demo phones to sign in customers who have broken devices so that we don’t miss any opportunities. It’s such an uncomfortable and frankly anti customer experience. Customers definitely don’t feel comfortable doing that, even if we assure them we sign them out. I don’t blame them, but if not we’re walking them so we don’t get a 0 on reporting.”
In fact, failure to do so will result in employees getting “coaching conversations” about it. “If we don’t then we’re getting documented coaching conversations about it on workday.” The employee claims that this comes from upper management, so even store managers have no choice but to go along with it. “I don’t feel comfortable and have brought it up to my manager but its coming down from our Market Manager so we don’t have an option , there just pointing to other stores in our district that are at 100% as examples.”
T-Mobile, what happened to you?
People once knew T-Mobile as the rebel in the carrier industry. The company came up with all sorts of radical ways to attract customers by challenging industry norms. However, ever since its merger with Sprint, T-Mobile has been going in an entirely different direction.
The carrier, which once prided itself on promising to never raise its prices, broke its word. It walked back on deals, like the one it had with Wingstop, due to poor planning and anticipation. Behind the scenes, T-Mobile has no problems putting its employees in awkward situations.
This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about the chaos that the T-Mobile T-Life app is causing for store employees and customers. Unless the C-suite implements drastic changes, the Un-carrier’s current practices are likely to persist.