T-Mobile dials up the savings with SAS®

T-Mobile Czech Republic saves millions of Czech crowns annually with SAS Credit Risk Management. The software allows T-Mobile to rate customers by credit risk, so the company knows who can afford extra features. It also ends a policy of automatically cutting off any customer a few days late with payment. Customer satisfaction has increased – critical in a mature market for cell phone services. 

Customer Success Video

Check out this video to learn more about T-Mobile Czech Republic and its successes with SAS. 

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(Runtime: 3 mins., 15 secs.)

Pavel Vlasaný
Head of Credit Risk and Collection

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T-Mobile Czech Republic, a subsidiary of T-Mobile International, has 4.5 million customers. The business is mature – the company estimates the penetration rate of cell phone service is above 100 percent. Retaining customers, marketing additional features and reducing bad debt are critical to staying profitable. 

When T-Mobile began selling cell phone service, Czech households had little disposable income, and the firm took a hard line on late payments – service was cut off within a few days. The company couldn’t run a credit check on individual customers, so it was difficult to determine whether to steer a customer toward a prepaid plan or a contract with added features. But as the country’s economy has taken off, disposable income has skyrocketed, and consumers have grown irritated with providers who assume they’re bad debtors if the bill is a few days late. 

The company looked at a number of credit risk solutions, but none met their specific needs in terms of company processes and system environment. With SAS, the company found a provider with experience in telecom and credit risk, as well as an approach tailored to its needs: SAS helped develop a custom risk model for T‑Mobile in weeks.

This custom credit risk model has allowed the company to postpone automatic service disruptions for late payers. That, in turn, has increased revenue as customers who are good credit risks continue to make calls rather then get cut off. Sales and marketing use the data to identify customers likely to purchase extra services and features. Customer satisfaction has also increased, which has reduced customer churn. With the number of contract customers going up rapidly the same number of staff can now chase down more customers with unpaid bills.  Overall T-Mobile Czech Republic recovered its initial investment within the first year and continues to save millions of Czech crowns annually.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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