See how this national retailer empowered staff to provide better customer experiences.

PCS Partners - TalkMore Wireless was the first and original MetroPCS retailer. The business has since expanded to over 60 locations across Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. The team consists of around 250 sales representatives, managers, and a small cohort of support staff.

Tye Stahly is the Head of Store Operations at PCS Partners - TalkMore Wireless. Along with owner Jim Pack, Jr., the two are building a community of engaged and motivated employees equipped to provide industry-leading customer experiences in a highly competitive vertical.

Customers in wireless retail are notoriously price sensitive and won’t hesitate to switch providers for a better deal unless they’re given a compelling reason to stay. Tye and Jim knew that competing on price alone was not a sustainable strategy given the razor-thin margins in this space.

Instead, superior customer experiences would be the key to increasing customer loyalty, retention and referral sales. The management team knew that this effort to provide industry-leading customer experiences would require sales associates to reach a new baseline level of performance.

Boost Customer Retention

Tye and Jim needed to motivate employees to give their best in every single customer interaction, from better attending to the needs of customers, to increasing the amount of accessories and additional services purchased. This is critical for driving new customer sign ups, referrals, and repeat business in a highly competitive industry.

Keep Employee Satisfaction High

Keeping great employees long-term has been a key focus for PCS Partners - TalkMore Wireless and a large component of their success. When employees leave they don’t just take their knowledge with them—they often leave with their entire customer base!

In order to keep employee retention high, Tye has placed a large emphasis on experience-based rewards over cash incentives. This approach is backed up by the evidence. A recent study conducted by the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) shows that 80% of employees prefer experience-based rewards over cash. However, it was immensely challenging and time consuming to effectively manage the distribution and fulfilment of these rewards across multiple geographical locations. Not only was it extremely costly for Tye and his store-managers, it was frequently frustrating for employees - the very people they were trying to keep motivated!

Create a Cohesive Company Culture

Tye is opening new stores at a rapid pace. With a growing community of over 250 sales staff, maintaining a healthy, happy and consistent company culture is a challenge during a period of rapid growth. It’s essential that every employee embodies the values of the business. This is only possible when employees feel connected to each other, and to the organization as a whole.

After reviewing a number of solutions Tye decided that Arcade offered the best tools to address these core challenges.

Arcade’s built-in system of micro-incentives, automated rewards and sales contests kept employees motivated and engaged at a high level every day, not just during bonus periods. These micro-incentives and sales contests are tied to behaviours that create the best possible experience for customers.

Arcade improved retention by creating strong links between micro-goals for individual employees and high-level organizational KPIs. Employees check Arcade every day for new goals, contests and incentives, all of which incentivize critical behaviours.

The Arcade platform connected employees across teams and locations through a streamlined chat tool, making it incredibly easy for district managers to communicate across stores, and for staff to share knowledge and learnings across the organization. This gave employees a stronger sense of purpose and connection to the organization, which are essential ingredients for employee retention.

It's all smiles at MetroPCS.

Finally, a shared, company-wide platform focused on positive interactions and rewarding high performance helped to build a strong, consistent, and performance-focused company culture across multiple distributed teams and store locations.

The Arcade team worked closely with Tye to rapidly onboard the company’s employees. A dedicated account manager worked on all aspects of getting PCS Partners started with Arcade, leaving Tye free to focus on the many day-to-day tasks involved with being the Head of Store Operations at a thriving wireless retail business.

Tye’s Arcade account manager was also on-hand at all times to answer questions, give advice, and help with every aspect of motivating and engaging employees using Arcade.

Tye reports that employees at PCS Partners - TalkMore Wireless love Arcade and use the platform daily, participating in goal-based games, working toward micro incentives and sharing customer insights between store locations.

PCS Partners - TalkMore Wireless had previously been using GroupMe for communication between staff. “It was very bland, very boring,” says Tye. Arcade replaced GroupMe’s basic communications functionality with a fully developed social-media style experience. Employees rapidly adopted the new platform. “They got excited about posting, they got excited about sending messages, and excited about using it, so the interactivity and the participation rate that we’ve had has really gone up,” says Tye.

“Since deploying Arcade, we’ve been able to save 10% on the cost of managing our previous reward system and our overall value-add sales has increased 25%. Sales revenue has also been more consistent due to a noticeable lift in the baseline level of our customer experience scores.”

The company attributes these result to Arcade’s overall impact on staff performance and engagement, which has helped drive an industry-leading level of customer experience across its 50+ store locations. Arcade empowered PCS Partners - TalkMore Wireless to thrive in an extremely competitive industry by unlocking the full potential of its workforce.