Abstract

In March 2013, T-Mobile US Inc. (T-Mobile), a US-based wireless service provider, launched a marketing campaign called “Un-carrier”. Some of the initiatives that the company took under the campaign disrupted the telecom industry in the US. Under the Un-carrier campaign, T-Mobile came out with monthly plans in an industry where long term contracts were the norm. The complex pricing was replaced with flexible and easy to understand pricing. T-Mobile also allowed the customers to get their own phones, where the practice was for the customers to buy a phone from the carriers. T-Mobile came up with 13 Un-carrier plans till 2017. These plans were pocket friendly for customers. There were "Un-carrier" programs such as unlimited streaming of Netflix. Such offerings helped the company to increase its number of subscribers by more than 5 million a year for five straight years before dropping to just more than 4 million new customers in 2018. From the time of the launch of the Un-carrier campaign, T-Mobile supported it through communications and advertising campaigns. T-Mobile also re-engineered its customer service and devised a model – TEX (Team of Experts) to provide seamless and hassle free service to its customers.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the use of business process re-engineering
• Evaluate the benefits of a re-engineered process
• Understand how a brand can disrupt an industry

Keywords

Disruption; BPR; Telecom Industry; Brand Management; T-Mobile; Disruptor brand; Competitive Space; Customer service process