Digital transformation can have numerous goals, from saving money to improving customer satisfaction. But at Sprint, the goal is to empower both internal and external customers to do what they want, where they want, when they want. Rob Roy and this team called The Hive take a unique approach to finding creative technology solutions that meet the needs of customers and employees.

Digital transformation at Sprint is a reverse cultural transformation. It means embracing new ideas and working across the company to build long-term, sustainable products. A major focus of the digital transformation is internal, with the philosophy that if employees have the tools they need to succeed in the digital world, it will spread to customers. Roy often brings on digital natives with fresh ideas to his team. They also partner with startups and other entrepreneurs who have fresh perspectives on the future of digital.

In order to build a successful digital transformation that is accepted within the company, Roy says that it’s important to ask two questions:

1. What is the direction of the company, and how does digital transformation align with those goals?
2. What is the customer saying? What are their main pain points?

Combining the answers to those questions can help companies prioritize the areas that are the highest need and that will have the biggest impact. Sprint uses customer feedback, analytics and real interactions with sales representatives to set its digital transformation priorities. After all, digital transformation isn’t effective if it isn’t accepted by employees and goes against the goals of the company.

Instead of simply building digital products and hoping for the best, the team at Sprint gets input from employees and customers on what matters to them. Members of the digital transformation team flew to platinum care centers and sat with top care representatives for weeks to listen to their calls and understand how agents go about their days and work with their systems. Seeing the technology in action helped identify pain points and ways new technology could improve the efficiency and work of the representatives. The team then built a program called AI Agent Assist that is tailored to how representatives actually interact with customers. Many companies get pushback on new technology because the systems aren’t intuitive and require too much change, but Sprint’s new programs are familiar to employees because they played a role in designing them. Instead of working in an isolated box, Roy says it’s important for teams to work shoulder to shoulder across the organization.

For Sprint’s digital transformation, it’s important to embrace new ideas and create an innovative environment. Roy and his team spend hours every week thinking through processes. They experiment with new technology, brainstorm with outside thought leaders and surround themselves with people who want to press beyond the norm.

Staying close to customers and embracing new ideas has helped Sprint’s slightly unconventional digital transformation lead to amazing results that are driving future ideas.