GoKawiilKey Takeaways T-Mobile is using AI to proactively resolve customer issues, aiming to eliminate the need for support calls altogether.
Voice AI now handles about half of customer service calls, contributing to over 200,000 AI-driven interactions daily.
The company’s AI strategy centers around enhancing customer experience, not just automation.
T-Mobile’s ultimate goal is to “surprise and delight customers” by solving their problems before they even need to talk to a human customer service agent, Julianne Roberson, director of AI engineering at T-Mobile, said at the AI Agent Conference in New York City on Tuesday.
In practice, that means shifting from reactive service to proactive problem-solving, where AI anticipates friction points and removes them before the customer even notices. The company also added a layer of AI to handle customer inquiries, with voice AI answering the phone for half of customer service calls.
“I’ve been at T-Mobile for 10 years,” Roberson said. “There’s a culture of loving our customers and putting customers first. We want to better understand customers and fix pain points with AI.”
Customers increasingly interact with AI systems capable of understanding natural language and resolving common issues on the spot, she said. This shift allows human agents to focus on more complex or emotionally sensitive cases, while AI handles routine inquiries instantly and at scale.
(Left to right) David Politis, Founder, Not Another CEO; Derek Ho, Co-Founder and COO, Distyl; Julianne Roberson, Director of AI Engineering, T-Mobile.
T-Mobile first went all-in on AI in 2024, Roberson said. The conviction and competitive pressure to do more came from top leadership. Now, AI is handling over 200,000 conversations a day.
Roberson said that T-Mobile’s aim for using AI is to create a future where customers don’t have to call the company with complaints — things just work. She pointed to T-Life, an AI-driven T-Mobile app that allows customers to shop, compare plans and manage their accounts and devices, as an example of AI at work. She highlighted that the app was so easy to use that even an 80-year-old woman could use it to buy phones for her grandchildren.
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