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It comes as no surprise that the start of the AI revolution has opened up a world of opportunities for companies to integrate artificial intelligence and streamline their workflow. Now, in a recent interview, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert shared the company’s plans to capitalize on artificial intelligence (AI) for customer retention.
Understanding the churn rate
Every mobile carrier discloses the net number of new postpaid phone subscribers in their quarterly reports, as well as the churn percentage, which represents the rate at which customers leave a wireless provider to join a competitor. In Q1 2023, T-Mobile achieved a postpaid phone churn rate of 0.89%, down from 0.93% in the same quarter of the previous year, making it the only carrier to report a declining churn rate.
“But still, because we’re a very big company, millions of people left us last year. And that just gnaws at us. Something was going wrong, something in the network, something in the customer interaction,” said T-Mobile CEO, Mike Sievert.
Although this declining churn rate is a concern for the company, the customers who abandoned the carrier left behind a wealth of data that holds insights into their departure. And this is where T-Mobile wants to leverage the power of AI and unravel the underlying reasons behind the mass exodus by analyzing diverse data sets related to customer experiences and ultimately reinforcing its position as an industry leader in wireless services.
“This is a major priority for our company going forward. We need to rethink our strategies in a profound way for this next era,” said Sievert.
Long way to go
While T-Mobile’s plan to use AI to better understand customers is a step in the right direction, Sievert believes AI still has a long way to go before making a significant impact. He predicts that within the next 18 months, the world will not see dramatic changes, but over the next decade, AI’s transformative potential will surpass imagination.