today on Michael saves exclusive visible's longest serving employee talks about the
phone company's new unlimited plans we are attracting a very loyal
customer those challenges with customer service well yeah it's a great question and and we have
indeed have had some challenges and what happens to Legacy visible customers who've had the party
pay discount they can stay right where they are and continue to pay 25 my conversation
with visibles Jeremy Bolton next Jeremy I want to start with the new plans you've got a couple
of new plans that launched in August once thirty dollars a month the other forty five dollars a
month and on the website it recommends that 45 a month plan so can you talk a little bit about
why people should pay more for that plan or maybe cases why they should not what are the differences
yeah a good question you know the the visible plus plan is the one that's 45 all in that includes
taxes and fees so does the 30 one um but the 45 dollar plan includes 5G Ultra wide band access and
50 gigabytes of Premium network access so you know if you are a uh a visible member and you
are experiencing you know slow Network experience the 45 plan is going to give you that prioritized
data that can give you the better sort of download speeds and upload speeds um that you know you you
would be looking for outside of you know the basic thirty dollar plan so that is the main difference
for you know for most of our customers it's it's getting that premium network access and that's on
you know not only is it on 5G but it's also on 4G so even if you don't have a 5G capable phone
you are going to benefit uh with the 45 plan it's also for people who you know call globally or text
globally and go to Canada or Mexico because it includes roaming with all these low-cost Services
I think I've tried about 15 of these phone plans at this point people always ask me okay
the pricing sounds great but what is the catch so what I tried to do is educate people on the
pros and cons of all the plans and I've got three things I want to go through with you specifically
about visible first would be the network experience customer service and then phone deals
so you touched on this just a moment ago as far as the network experience can you explain to people
who aren't familiar with the terminology how deep prioritization works with a carrier like visible
I mean it's a it's a very complex technical process that uh probably an engineer should
ultimately explain but the the basic idea is that you know a wireless network is a network and when
there's a lot of people on it the overall capacity of the network is used up and so everybody's
experience gets slowed down and the way it works in the industry is the post-paid carriers tend
to get the priority over the prepaid carriers and so you know in a situation typically you know at
busy times of the day um you know if you were on a prepaid plan you are going to get de-prioritized
and you're going to experience lower speeds so that's kind of how deprioritization works it's
nothing that that we're doing intentionally to slow somebody down because of anything they're
doing it's something that's happening you know in the broader environment in which they
are and again that's why our 45 dollar plan gets you that Priority Access the same as a
post-paid plan and that's why we we think it's worth the extra fifteen dollars for people who
do experience deprioritization uh you know here and there and the other thing I want to ask you
about is video streaming quality does is there a difference between the visible plus plan and the
base visible plan because I know with the base plan it's 480p we have you know 480p video for
both plans okay and and also the Legacy party pay plan as well and I understand with these new plans
there's also been changes to roaming and this is something that a lot of people had expressed
interest in can you explain how roaming works with the new plans domestic roaming yes um we
the the the difference is the new visible plans have extended coverage because we have access
to Verizon's lra networks and so you know if you live in a particular area where that's an issue
uh with the new visible plans you're going to have better network coverage there's also a free trial
for Visible is that on the 30 a month plan or is that for the 45 a month plan it is for the 30 a
month plan that is the experience you're getting uh when you do the visible free trial and someone
who's interested in trying out the network maybe they're still unsure about it how does that free
trial process work for them yeah I mean that's the great thing you know like most Digital Services
there's a free trial and you can go and the great thing about the visible free trial is that um you
know you don't even have to have your credit card um so you just go and you you know you download
the app you go through the process make sure your phone is compatible you get a you get an esim
profile downloaded to your phone and then you have 15 days to experience audience what amounts to our
thirty dollar uh visible plan I want to ask you a few questions about customer service because there
are customers who in this transition to these new plants they check the coverage maps they made sure
that their phone was compatible but they still had issues getting up and running with one of these
two new plans you acknowledged this a few months ago on Twitter so I'm wondering what's happened
in those few months has there been any progress made and is there an explanation for people as to
what really happened behind the scenes with these activation issues and and some esm issues as well
well yeah it's a great question and and we have indeed have had some challenges what I would say
is that and this has happened a couple of times in our history but we are uh growing faster than we
are able to keep up with and when we launched our new plans in August we also introduced a
process to visible that hadn't existed before and that is existing members going from one plan to
another so when you take the added volume from the fact that we launched these new plans that
that were well received in the market and you combine that with the fact that we have a you
know a new process it visible for customers going from one plan to another it just overwhelmed our
customer care agents and we do have live Human support behind the chats um and so that's kind of
what people ran into they ran into that challenge and and that was on us since then we've increased
our agent head count by roughly 25 percent just over the last 30 days and we're going to continue
to escape scale as we prepare for growth and they further member migrations that we expect in 2023
we've also evolved our service model so that members facing the most complex challenges can
get real-time escalated support without waiting for us to contact them back and our wait times
have gone from quite frankly long and unacceptable to just minutes today so we're very pleased with
the processes and improvements that we've made you know both process wise and technologically when it
comes to any of these phone services I think the expectation of the customer is that they're going
to be able to keep their phone number they're going to be able to keep their phone if they want
to or have one to purchase and that the transition from their old carrier to the new one is going to
be seamless No Interruption in service how are they going to know that okay I feel confident
that visible has the capacity of support staff to make sure that my switch divisible goes seamlessly
yeah I mean it's a great question you know given the you know the the challenges that we've had
after we launched the new plans and the volume that we got um the first thing I would say is that
um you know we have invested heavily in customer care like I just said we've we've increased our
agent head count by 25 so we are ready for uh the increased volume of people joining visible
um the other thing I would say is you know I would come and I would do the free trial
um that's the best way to get started to make sure that you know your phone is compatible that
you have coverage where you live and where you work and just to make sure that the the service
operates as you're you know your your old one is and you know hopefully better um so that that's
how I would I would think about that and then when you're finally ready to make the transition
um you know like I said we have the agents ready to help you you know Port your number over and
keep your phone or we have a new trade-in program you can trade in your phone so there's a lot of
options um you know and we're very confident that we can handle uh you know any new customer
who wants to join us I want to talk a little bit now about the phone deals one thing that I found
really interesting in the low-cost carrier space is that people sometimes have a hard
time grasping the value of it they will see what we mentioned earlier the low plan price but then
because you're not getting a free brand new iPhone or Samsung Galaxy they just stick with
whatever provider they've had visible does offer phone deals so can you off explain how visible's
phone deals work yeah I mean we have we have phone deals for people who come and and join us
um you know typically it is in the form of a gift card depending on the device that you buy
we are confident at visible and giving those deals out because the customers who come to
visible generally stay and that's the you know the economic decision that carriers have to
make how much of a deal can I give based on how long this customer is going to stay with us and
quite frankly you know without getting specific visible is able to offer the phone deals that we
are because we have uh you know members who come and stay with us for a long time and so over the
you know the four years that we've been around we've been able to refine the deals that we can
offer and so we're confident and and happy that we can make the deals on the phones that we can
and they have evolved a little bit over time I think when I checked most recently now it requires
new customers to transfer their number stay with three months and then they get whatever that
promotion is does that sound right yeah that's correct they have to pour it in their number and
make three payments and so that that's actually it's not quite three months it's you know they
make their first payment on day one then day 30 and then day sixty so yeah and can people who take
advantage of that free trial also take advantage of the phone deals or is there only offer that
free trial yes after they're done with the free trial they can take advantage of those phone
deals I want to ask you a couple questions about existing customers people who were on the Legacy
visible plan it was forty dollars a month some of them were paying 25 a month because of this group
uh discount you had called party pay what can you tell me about what's next for those customers
well what I would say to the uh party pay Members on the visible Unlimited Plan who are paying
25 is they can stay right where they are and continue to pay 25 there will not come a time
where we are going to ask them to pay more than twenty five dollars is there going to be a time
when they are going to have to upgrade to the new network we have nothing planned right now
but here's what I would tell you Michael um we are seeing the customers migrate from the old
visible unlimited plan to the new visible or visible Plus plans that's happening at a rapid
clip and as we talked about earlier that's one of the things that's contributing to some of the
customer care challenges we've had combined with that when you when new customers join visible
they're only able to join on visible and visible plus so what we are going to see over time uh over
you know time not not soon but over time as we are going to see that old Network have fewer and
fewer customers on it so there's going to come a time logically when it doesn't make sense to
continue to operate that network but we have no plans to force anybody to do anything and I want
to be very clear people who are paying 25 right now are not going to ever be forced to pay any
more than 25 dollars and if they are comfortable paying 25 with the network experience they have
right now on the party pay plans they should stay right there for the people who are on the Legacy
visible unlimited plan are there any cases where they're having to purchase a new phone to get
over to the new plans because of the changes in the network experience or are they going to be
able to keep their phone and also upgrade the vast majority of people on the visible unlimited plans
the party pay plans are going to be able to keep their phone if they want to migrate over to one
of the new plans there are some edge cases where people will have phones that are not compatible
with the new plans and in that case we have as I mentioned earlier we have a recently launched
trade-in program we have some low cost device options and we're also going to have you know come
going forward some other programs to help them you know migrate over to the new plans we talked a
little bit about the phone deals earlier and those deals are primarily for new customers some of
the major wireless networks they are starting to offer incentives for existing customers and since
visible's been around for a few years now and some of these customers have been very loyal to visible
do you see any time in the future where there may be some sort of an offer for people who have been
loyal to visible to get maybe a little bit of a discount on a new device so you know the first
thing I would say to that is I would reference the trade-in program the trade-in program is available
not only to new members but also to existing members so that is that is kind of how I think
about that I have nothing to announce today but um you know we certainly would be looking to find a
way to help our loyal members you know upgrade their phone in addition to the upgrade program
that we already have in place have you been with visible since the very beginning is that correct
I am the longest serving visible employee and I was the person with the blank sheet of paper
saying hey what should we do in the years since visible's launch what do you think is maybe the
biggest thing or two that you've learned about the visible customer during that time you know
I think a couple of things have surprised me um we are attracting a very loyal customer compared to
what you generally see in prepaid and as I noted before that's kind of you know the playing out
in some of the uh phone deals that we're able to offer um you know the other thing is you know the
quality uh of the customer you know we offer uh zero percent financing through a firm and
um you know the the the the quality of the customer we get not only in terms of you
know tenure how long they're staying but also in terms of their their credit quality is quite High
um and the other thing is we are focused exclusively on attracting customers who are
very comfortable you know operating digitally they kind of live their life through apps they think
okay hey I need a car let me you know open this app you know I need a meal let me open this app
and that's how visible was conceived you know I need wireless service let's open you know this app
and so we are you know skewing massively toward uh Millennial and gen Z customers but anybody
who's comfortable operating did digitally and that includes me and I'm not in either of those
two groups you know we're seeing great success with anybody who is very comfortable with using
apps to solve their problems and to save money Jeremy thanks so much for joining me today yeah
Michael thank you very much please give this video a like if you found it helpful and I'm sorry if I
couldn't get to your question I tried to get as many of them in as possible in the time allowed