On April 5, 2012 T-Mobile will change the amount of data that a subscriber may consume while roaming off the parent network. Users on a standard data plan allowing for 5 GB of use will only be able to roam with up to 100 MB of data. This change can have a more severe impact than you might imagine because if T-Mobile does not have coverage in your town you may be roaming to another carrier and in that case you could find starting 4/5/12 that your data limits are sharply curtailed.

Some eager eyed deal hunters spotted this change (which T-Mobile have also posted online here) and have been calling T-Mobile asking to be released from their contracts ETF (Early Termination Fee) free.

In most cases if your cell phone provider materially changes the terms of your contract you will have a chance to exit the contract – even if you are in the middle or beginning of its term.

If this change applies to you – and you want to exit your contract early – then call T-Mobile to request the termination without fees due to this change. Depending upon the representative who answers the phone this process may be easy — or it may require several calls. In the past with similar changes those who called early in the process (before word spreads on the Internet) seem to have an easier time.

You are likely to encounter resistance if you have not used data roaming on your account in the past – though sometimes this can be overcome by calling repeatedly or also filing a Better Business Bureau complaint.

Fatwallet via Wayne Schulz

Please if you do nothing else to improve your company’s service – train your employees to take ownership of problems.

Have you ever called in for a question about a customer service issue and the representatives, while helpful, seemed like they couldn’t transfer your phone call quick enough to another department.

I bet those experiences are mis-managed by companies who measure “success” by how quickly a representative can “fix” a problem (aka – get you off the phone or pass you to someone else). These customer service experiences are like one big game of hot potato.

A phone transfer or handoff of the problem to another employee is not a fix for a problem. In some cases it will cause you to lose customers – who leave based on not much more than the poor service that they just experienced.

This recently happened to me at T-Mobile.

I was looking to re-connect a line of service. This should have been a 5 minute slam-dunk for T-Mobile. They would have added another subscribers (since I was a former subscriber it’s even better and they term it a “win back”).

Instead what happened? I was passed from one representative to another — in a circular motion.

Customer service said “hold on you need to speak to activations”. Then when I was passed to activations they said “hold on you need to speak to customer service”.

After two rounds of this I was done.

There are, after all, other cell phone providers offering pretty much the same service using similar phones.

Are you losing customers based on similar poor customer service?

What could T-Mobile have done to improve their service?

1. Have the representative stay on the phone to make sure the transfer happens (it doesn’t hurt to get a callback number in case you’re disconnected).

2. Understand the problem. It shouldn’t be a race to see how quickly you can hit the “transfer” button.

3. Never measure customer satisfaction based on how many calls per day a representative handles. Measuring speed only provides incentive to pass the problem off to someone else regardless of the customer outcome.

Are any of these had to implement? Would they take hours and hours of re-training for your staff?

No.

Are your employees empowered to take ownership of a problem (from start to finish) as opposed to passing the problem to another employee?

If not, why not?

T-Mobile Poor Customer Service

T-Mobile Data Roaming Changes April 2012 Create Opportunity To Leave Without ETF

My Poor T-Mobile Experience – And The Importance Of Taking Ownership Of Customer Problems

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