Telecom Giant Cuts Costs and Grows by 20% with the Achieve System™

The Challenge: Fragmented Operations and Rising Costs Threatened Customer Satisfaction.

The leadership of this Fortune 50 telecom company saw trouble on the horizon: its retail business was adding tens of thousands of new customers daily, rapidly driving up customer service costs. Meanwhile, the company’s wireless customer care division remained a fragmented, regionally siloed operation, the result of multiple mergers and acquisitions. The problem soon reached a tipping point. Exhausted service leaders grew frustrated as the company faced alarming declines in both customer and employee satisfaction.

Everyone knew the solution: a streamlined integration of service operations—one that wouldn’t damage the customer experience or further overwhelm service staff. An internal team of Six Sigma Black Belts, along with an outside management consulting firm, was tasked with assessing the problem and developing a detailed plan. But after months of little progress in managing the needed change, the division VP decided to take a chance on the Achieve System™.

The Application: Shifting to a Future-Focused Mindset to Transform Customer Service.

Performance experts from the Achieve Institute™ quickly applied a key concept called “Create, Don’t Fix” to unlock new thinking and drive innovation.

“For the first time, we looked at everything from a future-oriented mindset: how we perform and behave, how we feel about our customers, how we present information, how we analyze customer feedback, how we recognize our team members’ accomplishments, how we use customer service desktop technologies, and more,” explained the Customer Care Vice President. “Many things we would have never given a second thought in our old mindset.”

In the first transformation wave, about 1,000 key employees learned to apply the Achieve System™. Instead of making incremental fixes to past processes, the team pivoted to a forward-thinking approach, incorporating Achieve System™ concepts like “Connect to Possibility” and “Point B” to redefine customer service operations.

Once the initial team embraced this new way of thinking, they rapidly rolled out fresh processes across the entire customer service division. As evidence of success grew, these changes were scaled company-wide, driving a fundamental shift in how the organization approached customer service.

The Results: Achieved $500M in Savings, Improved Customer Experience, and Enhanced Employee Engagement.

Over the next three years, the Customer Care team successfully applied and scaled the Achieve System™, introducing over 25,000 employees to a new way of working. This transformation led to a 20% reduction in service costs annually across the entire company, totaling $500M in savings by the third year, even as the customer base grew by 25%, from 80 million to 100 million.

As a bonus, both customer and employee experiences dramatically improved. The net outcome: increased savings, an enhanced customer experience, and greater employee engagement and job satisfaction.