A Return to Delivering Customer Value

Wednesday morning, a day after announcing subscriber growth that outpaced both AT&T and Verizon combined, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert joined CNBC for a recap of the earnings call and the Company’s impressive quarter. Like many of you, I am a happy customer of T-Mobile. I have always appreciated the sometimes whimsical, often aggressive marketing of their “Uncarrier” mission, but ultimately elect to give them my money because they are dramatically cheaper than the alternatives, with great service and a lot of extraordinary benefits such as free international data roaming.

Over the years and through a variety of fortuitous circumstances, I’ve gained the opportunity to spend some time with Sievert, and have accordingly paid special attention to his appearances and messaging, whether that be his CNBC interviews or the Company’s earnings calls (since taking over from John Legere). Across the totality of these appearances, there is one single word that I’ve heard Sievert utter more than any other in his repertoire: value.

 Don’t take my word for it. The Company press releases typically prioritize the concept of delivering “customer value” in their first sentences. In the Company’s Q1 conference call, Sievert referenced driving value for the customer an astounding thirteen separate times. As an example, here’s his response to an analyst question on market pricing and competitor promotions:

I'll start by saying our envelope of value leadership has been remarkably consistent over time. And so if you look at a multiyear arc, we offer the best value to postpaid consumers. That has been the case for the entire Un-carrier journey. And it's been about consistently the case in terms of the extent of that value leadership.

Now we're always introducing new promotions. But I want to be really clear. Our strategy as a company is about showing customers the remarkable value of Magenta MAX. That's our strategy. 

And you can see how it's unfolding in terms of customers self-selecting up our stack to buy our best products because they are the very best expression of the very best 5G network. And that is running on all cylinders, allowing us today with the best values and with incredible promotions in the market to tell you about for the first time in the 10 years I've been here, an outlook of ARPU rising.

Here's a troubling secret: I can count on a single hand the number of times I’ve heard founders – either in a pitch OR in a strategy session – outline their focus on “delivering value” to their customer or the extraordinary “value” their customers are deriving from their products. Whereas it would take me a lifetime to recount the number of pitches and founders who have described at length their “brand,” their product “experience,” “delighting” their customer or a brand’s “values.”    

In truth, all of the above features may be inputs into overall customer value. How your customer experiences a product is an input into its overall value. But it is not the value itself. In a recent meeting for one of our portfolio companies, an executive suggested that although the product experience had actually improved, a variety of external circumstances had caused the perceived “value” to lessen. A wonderful strategy discussion was then able to ensue around pricing. Could we re-establish that consumer value by lowering the price of the good being sold or were other initiatives necessary?

Price alone is not value. Nor is promotion. Nor is brand. Customer value is holistic and demands an obsessiveness that begins with Company leadership and becomes deeply inbued in the lexicon and focus of all team members. Verizon’s lead in the mobile industry was once considered impenetrable. It was broken by a decade long obsessiveness on delivering customer value.

Investors and founders spend a lot of time debating “product market fit.” But that phrase mostly serves to complicate a rather simple question: does your customer derive immense value from your product? Startups, who are by their very nature, fighting for existence, should have no more noble goal than focusing on delivering customer value. In a world of rising inflation and looming recession, delivering customer value has never been more imperative.