T-Mobile changes up leadership roles to focus on customer care

T-Mobile is making leadership and organizational changes that shift its customer care and business teams to different executives, as the operator looks to improve its customer experience. 

Consumer customer care, previously led by Callie Field, is now part of the T-Mobile consumer group under the direct purview of consumer president Jon Freier. Field, who held the role of chief customer experience officer, is moving to take over as president of T-Mobile Business Group from Mike Katz. T-Mobile has revived the role of chief marketing officer, now held by Katz, who also had been in charge of T-Mobile’s fledgling enterprise business. 

Freier, Field and Katz confirmed the changes on Twitter Tuesday and Wednesday:

 

 

The news was first reported by T-Mo Report, based on company emails sent by T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and Freier to employees. According to the report, Field is now leading the T-Mobile for Business side of company. Katz is also taking over responsibility for Dow Draper’s emerging products unit, with Draper leaving the carrier in April, according to the emails published by T-Mo Report.

Another change is for the digital team led by chief digital officer Marcus East, which now falls under the marketing group led by Katz. With the changes, East is now part of the T-Mobile Senior Leadership Team.

Meanwhile communications chief Janice Kapner will expand her role to lead the Communications, Community and Events team.

According to the email obtained by T-Mo Report, Sievert said the changes are to align with “the new era of the un-Carrier,” with the T-Mobile chief saying “I’m making it my priority to align our team around the best customer experiences we can create, and that’s what these moves are about.”

T-Mobile had not responded to questions from Fierce as of the time of publication.

The T-Mo news report indicated there were challenges on the customer care side of the business – a focus that T-Mobile has prided itself on as it regularly announced new efforts to address customer pain points with its “Un-Carrier” moves.

It made customer care a priority when it launched Team of Experts back in 2018 and one year later it appeared to be paying off; a J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey ranked T-Mobile highest among the big three carriers. However, after the 2020 Sprint merger, its high level of customer satisfaction started to slip, according to a December Bloomberg report.

The report cited interviews with consumers and complaints on social media about customers being put on hold, getting service calls transferred overseas and issues not being resolved quickly.

At the time, Field told Bloomberg that the dual whammy of the Sprint merger integration and the onset of the pandemic, which saw more remote work for customer service teams, had a bigger impact than expected with a lot of staff leaving and more work for those that remained.

Freier’s recent email to employees said the new organizational changes are about unleashing potential for customer experience, bringing retail, customer care, marketing, finance, network and other enterprise functions together to accelerate the customer experiences.

"I absolutely LOVE what our frontline teams are all about, but let's be honest, we have tools, processes, and other resources that need to be improved upon in a significant way to put our Customer-facing teams in a better position to serve," Freier wrote.

His email noted two difficult years as T-Mobile navigated the pandemic while also working to integrate Sprint, and declared a new strategic imperative "to recharge our Customer-obsessed and frontline-enabled culture to energize the Un-carrier and take our company to new heights." 

Freier also signaled there has been a lack of communication between retail and customer support teams, and the new moves unify leadership for those groups into one team.

“We will restlessly identify and fix process opportunities in an effort to perennially stamp out Customer pain points that perfects the Customer experience - and do so without creating new ones,” Freier told employees in the email, published by T-Mo Reports.“Where we have challenges between our Retail and Care teams communicating and solving problems on behalf of our Customers, we're going to take bold steps to bring our Customer-facing teams much closer together so that we're operating as one Company - not two. And where we have cultural opportunities with leaders primarily commanding and controlling, I'm asking us to pivot, where necessary, to supporting and enabling you because our leaders are servant leaders.”