Switching carriers as an enterprise business: How we make it easy.

Change can be daunting for even the most agile enterprise. When that change directly affects thousands of employees, it’s even trickier. Throw technology into the mix, and the change can become a complex challenge with the potential to disrupt business as you know it.

Case in point: onboarding a new wireless carrier.

It takes careful planning ahead of a wireless migration to accommodate diverse groups of users with unique needs. There are lots of mobile devices that need to be pre-programmed, loaded, kitted, unlocked, transferred, and activated. Numbers need to be ported. Users need to be trained on new devices and apps.

But it doesn’t have to be complicated or interrupt operations—with the right onboarding support.

You'd think carriers would give you stellar onboarding support as table stakes. After all, it’s in your best interest—and especially theirs—to transition you seamlessly. But the reality is implementation support is a mixed bag. There’s a lot of variation among carriers in levels of customer service for onboarding.

Victor Lee, Senior Manager, Sales Implementation for T-Mobile for Business, explains: “We don’t make our customers jump through hoops to get top-notch onboarding support.

“For example, we don’t impose line count thresholds or revenue spend thresholds the customer must meet to qualify for the support they need. Every transition is different and businesses have different needs, but every one of our customers gets the Magenta Glove experience, whether migrating a few lines or a few thousand.”

Should you settle for less-than-stellar onboarding support when you switch carriers? We don’t think so. In fact, you should insist on a few specific things from the start.

A clear process
When you onboard a new carrier, you should expect them to lay out a clear process, with a timeline of key milestones. The process we’ve developed at T-Mobile for Business, delivering a world-class switching experience and maximizing customer value, is consistent, customizable, and grounded in years of experience onboarding enterprise customers. Our process includes five distinct phases:

1. Planning is critically important—more on that later.
2. If the implementation requires staging, that comes next. In the staging phase devices need to be preprogrammed and kitted.
3. Deployment includes the porting process, distribution of devices, and end user training. Here’s where the strategic plan we developed in the first phase really matters, because getting deployment right is heavily dependent on that plan.
4. Next we inspect our work and measure your satisfaction with the implementation process.
5. In the final phase, we transition you to your dedicated account support team.

A strategic plan
Remember the plan we mentioned in phase 1? Your new carrier should collaborate with you to develop your strategic implementation plan. When your carrier takes the time up front to study your organization, to understand its landscape of devices, and to develop a customized plan, it can ultimately make subsequent phases go faster, minimizing downtime for end users.

Tisha Dee, Senior Program Manager Sales Operations at T-Mobile, describes the T-Mobile for Business approach to planning. “We strive to have a comprehensive understanding of our customers’ unique deployment needs—not only from an IT perspective but all aspects of their business, inside and out—to make it a smooth transition.

“We take the time to strategically plan the deployment so it doesn’t interrupt the customer’s business, their ability to use their devices. That goes back to knowing how the company works internally so we don’t disrupt their services, and so their new devices work and are operationally sound.”

Dedicated implementation experts
Your new carrier should offer dedicated implementation support. Having a consistent point of contact throughout the implementation process is important for an efficient, seamless onboarding.

The expertise that point of contact brings to the table is just as important. “The biggest value that we bring is our experience,” says Vance Reyes, Executive Sales Manager, Strategic at T-Mobile for Business. “We have the know-how and the tools to be able to deliver a no-stress switch for the enterprise.”

At the center of your T-Mobile Implementation team is an implementation expert, dedicated to working with you throughout the migration process to ensure that milestones and deadlines are met with no disruption to your daily operations.

Supporting the implementation expert is a team of professionals composed of sales engineers who provide technical support, network engineers who help optimize our coverage, and a dedicated care team that will provide lifecycle support.

Putting our implementation teams to work reduces the demand on your own IT resources—especially critical when those resources are limited. “The challenge for a lot of companies is they don’t have enough IT professionals available to do this,” says Reyes.

“But they’re not alone. We understand that it can be a heavy burden to lift if it were left up to the enterprise to do it, but we have the resources and expertise to help remove that pain point for our customers. So they don’t have to divert hours and hours of their IT talent’s time to handle the migration by themselves.”

A clear process, a strategic plan, dedicated support: you can count on all of these advantages and more when you onboard with T-Mobile for Business. We believe your business deserves nothing less than stellar implementation support—don’t ever settle for less from your mobile carrier.

Read more about how we eliminate compromises for our customers.