T-Com

Bringing the Team of Experts closer together with T-Com: the collaboration tool made just for T-mobile's needs.

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Inspiration

We were inspired by the idea of the Team of Experts and their more human approach to customer support. When we were brainstorming before the Hackathon, we came up with a lot of ideas that we thought were brilliant of trying to connect customers with representatives and were very surprised by how the Team of Experts had already thought of, and implemented many of the ideas we had. It truly challenged us to try and think beyond of new ways to improve their system. After talking with the a lot of the T-Mobile representatives, we were able to get a lot of information on how the Team of Experts operates and their goals. They helped us realize that, the more efficiently the team could run rep-to-rep and department-to-department, the better they could reach the goals of a more personable and frustration free support experience.

What it does

-Mobility: T-Com is an internal collaboration tool for Team of Experts. One of the most insightful questions we asked was what tools are available to the support reps. Their best tools were having each other in the same space to help benefit from each others' expertise and help resolve issues the first time. However apart from being in the same space they are heavily anchored to their desks with their wired headphones. The first thing T-Com provides is mobility. T-Com is built for iPads and built to be able to move around and allow reps to be where they need to be.

-Team organization made simple: Another major feature of T-Com is the ability to easily organize the reps in easily accessible collaboration sessions that are customer specific. Unlike Skype (what support reps currently use) this allows conversations between mulitple team members that is organized in to sessioSimplns so that only the relevant information and experts are found in each group. This system also helps the support reps and coaches manage and solve multiple customer issues without getting overwhelmed.

-Communication and organization of information: Another thing that the Team of Experts benefits from using T-Com is management and representation of customer information and issues. For example if a client calls or messages in for help, they explain their problem and sometimes the current rep can't resolve all their issues. This causes the Rep to have to reiterate and repeat the customer's issue over and over again to every expert that needs to be involved. T-Com allows the rep to in just a few clicks to record the root of the issue ones and then immediately communicate the issue to other experts and allows the space to then collaborate in a customer specific chat session only seen by the reps directly involved. This not only helps the issue get resolved faster but also showcase the support team as a much more organized and cohesive team able to handle any issue.

-Helping reps help even further: The service isn't the only thing T-Com has to offer for the Service-Sale model. After all customers issues are resolved, T-Com analyzes the customer's account and can help offer helpful tips for Support Reps to recommend services or devices that the customer might not be aware of. This and easy access to the users account information allows the support rep to tactfully offer all that T-Mobile can provide.

How we built it

  • First we held a Design thinking and Brainstorming session to identify the available tools used currently by the T-Mobile Team of Experts
  • Research currently available collaboration solutions such as Apple's Genius Bar tool, Slack, Skype, etc.
  • Created personas, flow maps, and empathy maps
  • Built the backend using Firebase realtime database
  • Built the front end iOS app using Xcode & Swift 4
  • Created animations in Adobe After Effects and imported into iOS using Airbnb Lottie SDK

Challenges we ran into

  • Always not enough time...
  • ssh issues with Github
  • Lottie/Adobe troubleshooting
  • Coding complexity
  • Ranking/deciding feature priority
  • Crazy 1 hour wait at What-a-burger...at 3 am... ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

Working together with a new team mates. Making an attractive UI. Our ability to sync the data in real-time.

What we learned

Working with Lotti and implementing animations from Adobe-After Effects. Way more comfortable with Firebase and working in the back end We shared with each other a lot of useful tool and techniques

What's next for T-Com

Expanding T-Com to other departments and establishing true Department-to-Department communication such as from support to retail to marketing. This would truly bring all the experts together. Developing a more intelligent recommendation profiling to help identify what is useful to the user and not causing unwanted pressure or frustration. To build in more net promoter style metrics to help better gauge customer satisfaction.

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