Sprint Omni-Channel Unification

Designing a Scalable, Cross-Channel Service System on the Brink of Merger

Role: Lead Designer & Systems Architect | Timeline: 1+ year
Impact: 12 tools → 1 • 45% drop in handle time • Merger-ready design system

Context

In 2019, Sprint was preparing for its historic merger with T-Mobile, in a move poised to reshape the U.S. telecom industry. But internally, Sprint’s operations were tangled in legacy systems, siloed tools, and disconnected customer experiences.

Every channel—retail, call center, web, telesales—operated in its own vacuum. Customers who jumped between them left trails of fragmented data, and no single agent had a complete view of their journey.

Our consultancy was brought in to help fix that. As lead, I worked at the crossroads of backend feasibility and customer experience transformation.

The goal: create a seamless, cross-channel “concierge” system that unified Sprint’s service tools—and could flex to meet the demands of a post-merger future.

The goal: create a seamless, cross-channel “concierge” system that unified Sprint’s service tools—and could flex to meet the demands of a post-merger future.

Team Impact

  • Served as the key contact point across backend architects, Sprint stakeholders, and internal design teams.

  • Translated fragmented business processes into a shared product strategy.

  • Led contextual research, journey mapping, and visioning workshops across four major service channels.

  • Designed for a future we couldn’t fully predict—planning for adaptability, theming, and system portability post-merger.

The Problem Landscape

Discovery consisted of workshops, contextual inquiries, interviews and audits of training material over a few months. The following was discovered as major themes to address:

Siloed Systems, Siloed Service
→ 12+ tools across telesales alone. Each team had a different lens on the same customer, resulting in poor handoffs and duplicated effort.

Zero Shared Context
→ Agents lacked visibility into prior interactions. Store visits, support chats, and upgrade calls lived in separate systems.

Training Overhead
→ Agents already needed to learn multiple tools, and devices, as well as understand scripts to help navigate customer interactions, before helping a single customer.

Merger Paralysis
→ Fear of irrelevance slowed momentum. If changes made things "too easy" for certain teams, the uncertainty and doubt about job security would make them less likely to cooperate with design efforts.

early ecosystem map of stakeholders and service channels
A Turning Point

By shadowing frontline reps in retail, telesales, and web support, a pattern emerged:

Everyone was doing the same three jobs—convert, upgrade, retain—but in completely different ways.

That insight reshaped our approach. Instead of building for each channel, we designed around shared intent and customer context. The north star became clear:

“The channel doesn’t matter. The context does.”

Strategic Design Interventions

Journey-Aware UI Components
→ Designed modular components that surfaced recent activity, personalized offers, and “next best actions” based on user behavior.

Channel-Agnostic Design System
→ Built a flexible design system that could be skinned for Sprint or T-Mobile, ensuring future portability.

Tool Consolidation Strategy
→ Merged 12 disparate telesales tools into a single intelligent interface—reducing training time and improving task efficiency.

Vision Workshops
→ Ran alignment sessions with product, ops, and engineering to translate customer experience goals into scalable system architecture.

Celebrated Wins Along the Way

Customer + Agent Wins

  • Cut average handle time and in-store dwell time by 45%

  • Created shared service context across support, sales, and retail

  • Dramatically simplified onboarding for new agents

System + Strategic Wins

  • Consolidated 12 legacy tools into 1

  • Designed a themable, merger-ready design system

  • Unified previously siloed business units around a common vision

Cultural Contribution

The impact extended beyond the UI:

  • Cross-Org Alignment: Created common ground for product, architecture, and CX teams—bridging operational silos.

  • Design Foresight: Future-proofed the work by designing systems that could integrate into T-Mobile’s infrastructure.

  • Change Management Catalyst: Helped teams see transformation as a pathway to relevance, not a risk to avoid.


Reflection

This was a masterclass in designing under uncertainty.

We didn’t just redesign tools. I was able to reimagine service as a shared system of context that moved with the customer, not the company. Amid merger anxiety and structural sprawl, we found alignment through user intent, not org charts.


Designing for uncertain futures means building clarity into the present and giving others something solid to align around.

Cultural Contribution

The impact extended beyond the UI:

  • Cross-Org Alignment: Created common ground for product, architecture, and CX teams—bridging operational silos.

  • Design Foresight: Future-proofed the work by designing systems that could integrate into T-Mobile’s infrastructure.

  • Change Management Catalyst: Helped teams see transformation as a pathway to relevance, not a risk to avoid.


Reflection

This was a masterclass in designing under uncertainty.

We didn’t just redesign tools. I was able to help reimagine service as a shared system of context that moved with the customer, not the company. Amid merger anxiety and structural sprawl, we found alignment through user intent, not org charts.


Designing for uncertain futures means building clarity into the present—and giving others something solid to align around.