Ever since John Legere was named CEO of T-Mobile in September 2012, the carrier has always strived to improve the customer experience. Legere turned T-Mobile into the “Un-carrier” offering free perks and rewards to T-Mobile subscribers and the wireless provider steadily rose from dead last among the four majors to its current position as the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier behind Verizon.
Legere left after T-Mobile closed on its acquisition of Sprint, a deal that propelled T-Mobile into the early 5G leadership in the states thanks to the 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum it obtained with its $26 billion purchase of Sprint. Since then, the steady leadership of Legere’s right-hand man Mike Sievert, the current CEO, has T-Mobile poised to announce another huge gain in net new postpaid phone subscribers for the first quarter.
Current T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert on the left, former CEO John Legere on the right
But there have been some bumps in the road including data breaches, store closings, and employee layoffs. And now, according to Cord Cutters News, T-Mobile is about to do the most un Un-carrier thing ever. On the T-Mobile mobile app the carrier is informing its customers that “Beginning April 23, 2023, our hours of operation for live support representatives in chat will change from 24/7 to 6 a.m. – 12 a.m. Central Time to better serve you during peak hours.”
In other words, T-Mobile wants to get rid of chat support from midnight to 6 am CDT. Live chat support would shut down at 10 pm on the West Coast which seems a little too early for those in T-Mobile’s home state of Washington to give up on getting support for their service on any given night.
T-Mobile customers on Reddit are sounding off about this change and one Redditor has a reasonable explanation for the move. “It’s because they are bringing chat support back to stateside, and through corporate employees. Since the employees now work in our time zones instead [of] on the other side of the planet, conveniently during non business hours, they will obviously be allowed to sleep. To better serve you = more localized, corporate (ie NOT outsourced) support. No it won’t be available 24/7. Get your life together. Humans don’t exist to [serve at] your beck and call in the middle of the night.”
On the other hand, 10 pm is not exactly the middle of the night and that is when live chat support would cut off every day in cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and others. In addition, some people work late and might not be able to chat until the evening hours or even overnight.
Sievert and other T-Mobile executives might need to rethink this and ask themselves “what would JL do?”
