male announcer: "Undercover Boss" is back.
- Here's Bobby! - Oh, my--
- Gosh.
- This is ten times harder than the boardroom.
- Ugh! - This is a disaster.
I would never have found out if I wasn't undercover.
announcer: The most devastating economic crisis
for a generation
has been tough on American business
and even tougher on America's workforce.
- We all had to take salary cuts.
- My wife, my kids, and I
were all homeless. - Whoa.
- How many firemen you think you down?
- 15 just because of the pandemic.
announcer: So there's never been a more important time
to go undercover.
- Coming through. announcer: This season...
- Wow!
announcer: The toughest challenges...
- This has gotta be the worst job
in the restaurant. - It is, ugh.
announcer: The biggest shocks...
- You gotta be kidding me.
- We question whether you are fit for this brand.
announcer: And the most dramatic
life-changing rewards...
- Are you serious?
This doesn't happen to people like me.
announcer: In "Undercover Boss" history.
- I need to break cover right now
and shut this down.
announcer: Tonight...
- Oh, my goodness.
announcer: The CEO of one of America's
largest wireless companies
leaves behind...
his corporate comforts...
- Ooh, I'm shaking. Oh, my goodness.
announcer: To go undercover.
- This is Matt Collin from U.S. Cellular.
announcer: Joining his team on the front line...
- I hope I don't scare you on this one.
- It looks a little scary.
announcer: To discover if his drive for growth...
- We serve all this.
announcer: Is a roadmap to disaster.
- People get frustrated, could get up and leave.
announcer: I need to rethink everything that we're doing.
announcer: He'll uncover alarming secrets...
- At the end of the day, we've lost customers.
announcer: And employees at the breaking point...
- I'm already running at max right now,
but my workload's gonna increase.
announcer: Before making some life-changing decisions.
- Oh, my gosh.
announcer: All this next on "Undercover Boss".
- Whoo, that is amazing!
[steady rock music]
♪
- My name's Laurent Therivel.
At work, I go by LT
and I'm the CEO of U.S. Cellular.
We're in the business of connecting people.
Not only do we build cell sites
to deliver wireless and data services,
but we also provide a variety of plans and phones
to meet our customers' needs.
announcer: Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois,
U.S. Cellular is the fourth largest
wireless company in the United States
with an annual revenue of $4 billion.
- I love connecting people.
I was a communications officer in the Marine Corps.
On my first day of communications training,
they dropped us off in the middle of nowhere
with nothing but a battery, a spool of wire, a handset
and a book called "The Fundamentals of Wave Theory."
And you had to communicate with a group
that was about 75 miles away.
I rigged up the wire and figured out frequency.
I'll never forget.
Clear as a bell first time I tried.
I just thought it was the coolest thing.
And I've been in love with the industry ever since.
I spent 12 years at AT&T and I've been at U.S. Cellular
for a little bit less than a year.
We're a family owned business
founded by Roy Carlson
with the vision of bringing wireless connections
to smaller towns.
My big competitors are T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T.
Those are focusing on the big cities
and Roy felt that rural towns
deserve the same level of connection.
announcer: Since its foundation in 1983,
the company has expanded into 23 states
with over 5,000 employees and 5 million customers.
- I'm a pretty competitive person.
I like to win.
We compete in an industry with goliaths.
When you look at U.S. Cellular,
it's a strong company.
We haven't been growing at a fast enough rate
to keep up with our competition.
Being wiped off the map in our industry
is a real concern.
I've been brought on to crack the growth equation.
If we don't grow, we die.
And I've got 5,000 employees that are counting on me.
Since taking over, I've opened up new stores.
I've accelerated our move to 5G.
Most importantly, I've rebranded the company.
We have a new catchphrase, "Locally grown wireless."
I want our customers to feel a local connection with us.
There's a lot of risk in this strategy.
We're investing over $9 million a day
behind this growth plan,
and I need to go undercover
to see if those changes are working.
It's make or break for U.S. Cellular.
[upbeat music]
- Are you going Texas accent,
or are you gonna try one of your other ones
that never works? - No, I'm gonna go with
a little bit of Texas accent.
- I think it might be a bit hard
for you to maintain the accent 'cause, like,
you have to do it with everything you say.
- [in accent] Gabby, I have no idea
what you're talking about.
I will have no problem at all
keeping that accent.
All righty.
Being a former Marine,
I know success rides on gathering intel on the ground.
I need to leave our headquarters and go undercover
so I can work alongside our frontline troops
and hear their ideas direct and unfiltered.
[dramatic music]
♪
Hey, I'm Matt Curran. [all laugh]
How y'all doing?
- I don't even know who you are.
- I'm Matt Curran, how you doing?
- How you doing? - It's nice to meet you.
Gonna disguise my identity.
I'm gonna be Matt Curran.
That's right, boy.
A failed bartender who's trying to restart his life.
- You like the facial hair? Should I keep this?
- Should go with this for the long term?
- Never, never, never. - Are you sure?
You don't want a big bushy kiss?
- No, no!
- Our team members
will think they're on a documentary
about starting over in a career.
They'll have no idea it's "Undercover Boss."
I love you guys. - Love you.
- Bye. - Bye.
- I am really passionate about what we do.
I'm on a mission to make sure that U.S. Cellular
not only survives but thrives.
[upbeat music]
♪
So our stores are the first place
that most of our customers
experience the U.S. Cellular brand
and so they're some of the most important parts of the company.
Today, I'm heading to the biggest store
in the De Moines area.
And I'm gonna be meeting with Alina.
And despite being only 25,
she's one of the top sales associates.
I'm really focused on bringing in new customers
and we have to appeal to younger customers,
so I'm really excited to learn from her today.
All right, here we go.
[sneaky music]
Alina thinks I'm hoping to start
a new career with U.S. Cellular
and that I'm here for a day's training.
- Hello. - Hey there, how are you?
- I'm good, how are you? - I'm Matt.
- Hi, Matt. I'm Alina. - Hey, Alina.
- I will be working with you today.
You will be shadowing me.
So when Matt first walked in and I saw the facial hair,
I feel like it's not a very modern style.
[chuckles]
- All right, I am changed. - All right.
I'm gonna show you what we do when greeting a customer.
As they come in, you just want to welcome them to the store.
And then we walk them over to the phones
to find out what their need is.
- I'm nervous. - You're gonna do great.
- All right. - Do you want to go ahead
and greet him? - Sure.
How you doing, sir? I'm Matt.
- Good. - Can I help you with anything?
- Super. Let's have you come over here.
- All righty.
- So these are our latest models at the end here.
These came out earlier this year.
- A new customer's come in
and we're walking through
the different phone options.
I pretty quickly get in over my head.
- So your phone now probably has
16 gigabytes of internal storage.
This one would have 128.
- So I just ended up waiting silently in the background
trying not to seem too awkward.
- This one is actually a 5G-capable device,
so it's gonna have faster download
and installation speeds.
- I'm impressed with Alina.
She did an amazing job walking through
all the new phones with the customer.
- So it is their more premium side of their phone.
So it is going to have a better processor
and a better battery life.
- Let's go with this one.
- She's a terrific sales associate.
- You are on a little bit of an older plan,
so we're going to hit select.
- What are we doing right now?
- Changing the plan. - Okay.
- 'Cause we're not able to add the phone
and change the plan at the same time,
which does take a little bit of time.
So this is searching for the phones
that we actually have in the systems.
Let me go back here and check.
- After he selected a new phone,
we went through the process of
getting his line switched over,
getting his new line activated.
So you're having to kind of recreate his account
on that spreadsheet?
- Yes. - Okay.
- And so every little drop-down has different options.
- There's a lot of different steps.
- Yes.
- I could tell the customer was a little annoyed
with how much time it was taking.
You could see his fingers were tapping.
He was ready to get on with his day.
- So we're gonna hit select. - Change finance?
- Yep. - Okay.
The longer this transaction takes,
the more likely we are to lose other customers.
- You have to unfortunately do it for every single one
so we're gonna scroll down.
- And so far, it's taken almost an hour.
- So we'll hit next.
- That's unacceptable.
announcer: Coming up...
- Ooh, I'm shaking.
announcer: LT confronts his fears.
- This is M--Matt calling from U.S. Cellular.
announcer: And faces of frontline emergency.
[generator rumbling]
- That's not good. - If the generator breaks,
then the network's down. - Yeah, it's really bad.
- It's my first day undercover
in Des Moines, Iowa, working with Alina.
- Everything has a six-digit little code there.
- And I'm shocked that the sale of just one phone
can take so much time.
- So we're gonna scroll down.
- As CEO, it was a little bit concerning to see
all the different screens and steps
she had to go through for a customer.
- So we're gonna hit select.
- It took a long time, too long.
That's unacceptable.
- Hope you have a good rest of your day.
If you have any questions, my card's in the bag.
- All right, thank you.
- So how do you think that went?
- I think that took, like, an hour or so.
- Mm-hmm. - Is that pretty standard?
- With existing customers.
Newer customers can take closer to two hours.
We could have maybe five, six people waiting.
People get frustrated, could get up and leave.
- Got it. - Yep.
- I need to rethink everything that we're doing
so that we can be faster.
I want our sales process
to be the fastest in the industry.
[upbeat music]
- So what we are going to be doing now
is what we call calling campaigns.
- All right. - To let any of the customers
that we currently have know the offers
that we have going on at the moment.
- Okay. - So I will start.
- Okay. - And then I will turn it over
to you and let you make a few calls
if you feel comfortable with that.
- I know all about this calling campaign.
This was my idea.
But this is the first time I've really seen it in action.
- Hi, James, this is Alina from U.S. Cellular.
How are you? I'm good.
So I'm just reaching out to let you know you can add a line
with the iPhone SE or $150 off an Android.
Is that something you'd be interested in?
All right, hope you have a good rest of your day.
Bye-bye.
Not interested.
Do you want to try this next one?
- [exhales] All right, here we go.
Ooh, I'm shaking. Oh, my goodness, all right.
I meet with other CEOs.
I meet with senators and congressmen.
I've given speeches to thousands of people.
But making these calls, I'm pretty nervous.
[line ringing]
Hi Lyle.
This is Matt calling from U.S. Cellular.
I just wanted to call and let you know
that you can add any one of our Android phones for $150.
- He definitely did make some mistakes.
- Thanks, hope you have a great day.
- He told somebody that they could get
a new Android phone for $150, which is not a thing.
It's 150 off.
- Off an Android. - Yes.
- Whoops. - [laughs]
- I may be setting a customer up for some disappointment
when they come into our store.
- Hi, Corinne, this is Matt calling from U.S. Cellular.
I think it's good to reach out to customers.
Hi, Chris.
But it's a little bit frustrating for me
to have my phone calls
always go to voicemail.
Hey, Alyssa.
Hi, Jolly.
Hi, Kenneth.
Well, they've all gone to voicemail.
Is this kinda how it usually goes?
- Yeah, and then the majority of time
when they answer the call, they're not interested in it.
People will even end up, like, blocking the number.
- That's kinda counterproductive.
Have you told anybody about this?
- Yeah, so I have reached out to my manager
and then my manager has actually
reached out to her higher ups,
but it hasn't really gotten anywhere.
- I mean, you think there's a better way to go at this?
- A lot of younger people, my age,
we could target a lot more through social media,
more through the streaming services
to have commercials and stuff on that.
I think that that would be a much better approach.
- Yeah, it makes sense
if you're trying to target younger folks.
- Mm-hmm. - Okay.
I think Alina's ideas are terrific.
If we're gonna grow, we have to do it
with a younger demographic.
And to hear a younger employee
has these great ideas for how to grow our business
and they're not going anywhere, it's really disappointing.
How long have you been here?
- For about a year and a half. - Okay.
- So when I did start here, I was just part-time
but the stability was not there.
And that's something I really strive for.
And that's why I begged so hard to be full-time.
- Sounds like that job stability
is pretty important. - Mm-hmm.
I need that stability because I've never had that.
Growing up, people being in prison
or people being addicted to drugs
was pretty common in my life.
So actually, when I was 16,
I ended up emancipating myself and going out on my own.
There was an incident that happened and
I was just like, "I'm done." I called my grandparents.
I was like, "I don't know what to do anymore."
Thankfully, my grandparents were actually
willing to take me in.
That next day, they had a lawyer come to my school.
I signed the papers, they came and picked me up,
I got all my stuff, and I left.
- My goodness.
- And I think if I didn't have them in my life--
sorry, I get a little emotional about it,
but, like, if I didn't have them,
I probably wouldn't be where I am.
- I haven't heard stories like that before.
It's really cool. - To work past it,
you do have to be able to talk about it.
- Yeah, you do. I mean, I think a lot of people
close it off though, you know? - Mm-hmm.
- And they keep it inside.
I just think you're super brave for sharing it.
- Thank you. I really appreciate it.
- So I'm a father of two 14-year-old girls
and it breaks my heart to think about
what she was going through at 14.
- All right. - All righty.
The decisions that she's made at such a young age,
now she's brought stability to her life.
It's amazing.
Alina, thanks so much for letting me shadow you today.
I learned a ton. - Yeah.
Thank you so much. Any time.
- All right, take care.
I found out today that we have some opportunities
to make our sales process work a lot more quickly.
That we've got some work to do in our calling campaign.
And we've got to improve our communications processes
so that great people like Alina
can get their voice heard at the top of the organization.
[gentle music]
♪
[upbeat music]
♪
[alarm beeping]
- I am not used to waking up this early,
but you gotta do what you gotta do.
So far, I've discovered that our in-store operations
could still use improvement.
But that's not the only area
where I've made changes
in the past year.
I've put a lot of focus into expanding 5G
and improving our network.
I want to find out if our frontline workers
are ready for this expansion.
So today, I'm gonna be shadowing Kyron.
Kyron's one of our network engineers.
♪
U.S. Cellular prides itself
on serving out-of-the-way places.
And so, Kyron's got a tough job.
I know it isn't easy, but I want to find out
the real challenges of the job.
How you doing? - Hey, how's it going?
- I'm good. I'm Matt. - Matt, Kyron.
Nice to meet you, man. - Great to meet you as well.
Thanks for letting me shadow you today.
- What made you want to-- want to do this, man?
- I'm going through a couple of different jobs
to see what they're like, so--
- You done anything like this before?
- Never. - No?
- No, this is gonna be brand new for me.
- You're gonna love it, man. - What are we gonna do?
- We're gonna go up here to the cell site
up this mountain
on this ATV right here.
Hopefully, we'll be able to make it all the way up safely.
I hope I don't scare you on this one.
- Well, definitely, this looks a little--
it looks a little scary.
- When I told him that we were gonna go up
to the top of the mountain and he looked up,
I think he dropped a deuce.
It's kinda funny.
You ever been on one of these? - Nope.
- Don't scream in my ear. - I swear I will not.
- All right, let's do it.
[upbeat rock music]
♪
Big dip. - Okay.
- Oh, you good?
All right, here's where it gets rough.
- Yeah.
♪
- Going up this mountain is pretty tricky.
I had to grab on a few times.
- Whoo!
♪
We made it. - Man, look at this!
This is gorgeous up here.
- You know, we serve all this.
And you see that house way over there?
- Sure. - Without us,
without this tower being up,
that house doesn't have service.
It means something to me 'cause it's bringing service
to someone who otherwise wouldn't have it.
Time to get to work. - Let's do it.
- So what we're gonna do today is to make sure that
the site is up and running
and that there's no issues within the site.
There's something that we got to check
and that's the generator right here.
- All right.
- So this generator is super important
because when we lose power, the generators kick on.
It's probably like three days
that it could keep the site running.
- So if the generator breaks,
none of that works now. - For sure.
If there's no power to the equipment,
this tower goes down, the people,
they don't have any lines of communication.
- Sure. - Yep.
So we wanna make sure this is running.
To start real simple, we hit this run.
- All right, run. [engine rumbling]
- When you turn it on, you hear clink, clink, clink,
and that's not good.
[engine struggling to start]
- Power cuts in remote areas like this are not uncommon,
so this backup generator needs to be working.
- So right now, well, I gotta be honest,
it's really bad.
Hit that.
- I came here today to see how this site runs.
- We gotta take care of this.
- I didn't expect to find myself
in the middle of a technical emergency.
- Come on.
[tense music]
- It's my second day undercover.
I'm working with Kyron in rural Maine.
- All right.
- And a critical generator
at one of our cell towers
is failing to start.
[engine rumbling]
- What happens is sometimes
it gets real cold and that's not good.
- All right, here we go.
[engine struggling to start]
- It's cold, it's cold.
- It's thinking about it. - It's thinking.
- All right. - Oh, oh, there it goes.
Whoo! - Hey!
- There it is!
So now we know it's running.
We usually let it heat up for 15 minutes.
- All right.
- Right, we're good.
You don't see any lights flashing, you're good.
- You're all done, all right. - Yep, we close this up.
Let's go.
So we're gonna make sure that we do
the maintenance stuff right now,
and we're gonna start with some battery testing.
- Let's get to work. - Okay.
Take those plastic covers off.
- All of 'em? - Yes.
Let's do it. Grab this one. - Yeah.
- And grabbed this one and all you do
is just push down and hold it.
- Right there? - Yep.
And now you can take it off.
109%, that's good.
- I'm impressed by Kyron. He knows his stuff.
- So you gotta do the same for each one.
- He's a very knowledgeable engineer.
- 2-1-1-1.
Look at that, you don't even need me.
- I don't know about that.
- "Test complete," perfect.
So the next thing right here is the CDMA.
It handles the high-speed data but it's the old 3G.
And now, everyone wants 5G.
- There's no 5G here yet.
- Right now, this site hasn't been modernized yet.
- Got it. - But it will be
coming this year. When that all happens,
my workload is gonna increase a ton.
Right now, my workload is 635 sites.
When 5G comes, my workload can go to
2,635 sites.
- Wow.
- Over three states. - Wow.
- I don't even want to think about the number
'cause it hurts my head.
More sites, it's obviously just gonna make me
have to work faster,
try and put more time in.
But I'm already at-- running at max right now.
- This is a worry.
5G is a huge positive for our company.
It's a huge positive for our customers.
What concerns me is that when we move to 5G,
he's gonna have so many more sites to take care of.
We've already been working on plans to ease the load,
but after meeting Kyron,
I realize we need to do more.
- I got some computer work to do,
but I got a job for you.
You're gonna take this filter
and swap it out with this old filter that's in here
because over time, it gets dirty.
- Ugh! - Okay.
- That's a lot of flies.
- Yeah, flies get stuck in all sorts of places.
- Oh, God!
So I'm opening the vent
and a whole bunch of flies come popping out of there.
- And you're gonna want to pull this out.
Because if there's flies here--
both: There's gonna be a lot flies in there.
- Probably the most flies I've seen
in one place in a long time.
- Get 'em all out, get 'em all out.
You know how to work a broom?
- I know how to work a broom. - Awesome.
Let's go, Cinderella. - Let's--[chuckles]
Let's do it. [laughs]
As the CEO of a company, it's been a little while
since I've been sweeping up dead flies.
Good reminder about what really goes on in the field.
- You know I usually work alone,
but I feel I can get used to this.
- [chuckles]
- We'll wrap up, pack up, and we're out of here.
- Let's head down.
These remote sites,
they require a huge amount of time,
a huge amount of effort to maintain.
I don't think I fully appreciated that
until I spent some time with Kyron today.
- All right, well, here you go.
- Appreciate you. - Yeah.
Awesome. - That was a good day.
- It was a good day, man.
So where are you from?
- I grew up in Texas.
- I like this, I like this.
'Cause I was born in Texas. Cowboys fan?
- I am a Cowboys fan. - Oh, I love you, man.
- Yeah, I am a Cowboys fan.
- Oh, I knew there was something about you.
- It was really cool to learn about the job.
It must be a lot of time on the road.
- This job is, like, a week, a month away from the family.
- Do you think that that 5G expansion
we talked about is gonna require
more time away from home? - Without a doubt.
It's definitely gonna be a lot more time away.
But the thing is I have seven kids, man.
- You have seven kids. - Yes, I do.
I have four kids with my first wife
and then my wife that I married
had a son so that's the fifth.
And then my wife and I
became foster parents to my niece and nephew.
- You became foster parents after having five kids?
- Yeah, yeah, my wife's sister and
her--her husband just-- they--they had a lot of issues
and they ended up losing custody of my niece and nephew.
And so, we were like, "You know, we'll take 'em
and, you know, we'll raise 'em over here.
- My goodness, man. - Yeah.
- That's a lot to take on. - It is, it is.
But like I said, it's--it's your family.
- So a bunch of time on the road,
week gone from the family.
When you do have spare time, like,
what do you do in your spare time?
- I volunteer time
at a foundation for wounded warriors.
It's called the Travis Mills Foundations.
It's a resort and what they do is they have the families come
and they do all these activities for the kids.
For me, it's--I mean, it's a great thing, like,
to give back to people who serve is--is amazing.
- I served in the Marine Corps for five years
so the fact that Kyron takes time to serve wounded warriors
is just absolutely amazing,
especially given the amount of time he spends with his family
and the time he has to spend professionally.
I don't know how he juggles it all.
- Hey, you did a great job and I really wish you
the best of luck on your journey.
- Thank you so much, my friend. - For sure.
- Take care. - Take care.
- Learned a lot from Kyron today.
It's frustrating to me that our focus on 5G
makes him worry that he might have to
spend more time away from his family.
It makes me worry we might lose him
or people like him.
I don't want that.
We need to keep that workload manageable,
and I've got some work to do on that.
announcer: Coming up.
The boss faces a roadblock
in his growth plans.
- We've run out of stock several times
so we have lost customers.
- It was tough to hear
that we've lost sales to the competition
because we didn't have the right phones in inventory.
[upbeat music]
- I've been disappointed to find out that
some of my recent changes to the business
still need work.
But I will always strive to find new ways
for us to grow.
Now I'm in Oklahoma City
to check out one of our prepaid stores.
Prepaid acts as a pay-as-you-go service.
It doesn't require the customer to commit
to a regular contract
so it can be a more flexible or affordable option.
These stores are a new venture for U.S. Cellular
and it's in a trial phase right now.
So I'm meeting Marco, the manager
of three prepaid stores.
I want to see if this trial has a future.
How's it going?
- Hey, what's up? I'm Marco.
- Hey, Marco, I'm Matt. - What's up?
So I'm gonna be training you today.
- Sounds great. - Got your stuff in the back.
- Let's go.
All right, I'm ready. - All right.
So how we typically start our day
is we want to make sure we check inventory.
Obviously, if we're running a special,
we don't want to tell our customers,
"Hey, you know, we have a great deal on this device"
and have us not have any.
- So have you ever run out of one of these phones?
- Yeah, we've run out of stock several different times.
- Like what happens if you don't have the phone in stock?
- We have lost customers
because we didn't have the device
that they were looking at.
The main challenge with it is
that we don't have a direct person to contact
on the inventory side for prepaid.
So we do our best to send out emails
to whoever we think can help us,
maybe a generic device analyst, and request some phones.
That could take a couple of days
and then they'd replied back say,
"Hey, what phones do you need?"
And the whole process could take a week, maybe two.
- It was tough to hear that we've lost sales
to the competition because we didn't have
the right phones in inventory.
All right.
We can't expect this expansion
into prepaid-only locations to work
if customers are coming into the store
and the phones they want aren't there.
- All right. So I'm gonna tell you
a little bit about our accessories.
So the wall does look really pretty,
however, a lot of these cases
don't actually fit the devices we carry.
We do have this device in stock.
However, all these other cases that you see,
they do not fit any devices.
- Do you get paid for selling accessories?
- You get 15% off the total amount
on top of your hourly wage. - Okay.
- So it has been a struggle and a challenge
just because we're very limited on
what we do actually have in stock.
- For our team, selling accessories
is a key part of how they get paid.
It was difficult to hear that
a lot of times they don't have
the right accessories for the right phone.
That means you can't make a sale.
These prepaid-only stores are still in a trial period,
but I can tell they need some more attention.
- As you notice, it is a little bit slow out there.
I would like to go out into the community
to try and drive business, if you don't mind.
- Sounds great to me. - Awesome, let's go.
- Let's do it.
[upbeat rock music]
♪
- A lot of our customers use the bus system
as their only means of transportation.
So we're heading to local bus stops
to pass out some goodie bags.
These are things that I thought would be really helpful.
Some hand sanitizer,
a couple of snacks for the bus ride.
- That's smart, man.
- The coolest part inside those bags
is a U.S. Cellular flyer.
So if you bring it back into the store,
we do give you a discount.
So it's just more of an incentive
to get customers back into the store.
- You just dream this up? - Yeah, I always try and
give something to the community.
- Right on.
I was blown away with Marco's initiative
to grow the business.
It's a great idea, I love it.
Getting out in the community,
drumming up enthusiasm and awareness
for U.S. Cellular,
that's how you grow a business locally.
- You got the cooler? - I'll get it.
Let's do it. - All right, let's go.
- All right.
Hey there. How you doing?
- Hey! - Good, how are you doing?
- We're from U.S. Cellular. We're just handing out
some goodie bags. Would you like one?
- Yes.
- How about a drink? Would you like a drink?
- Yeah, if you got one. - I sure do.
Take your pick.
- Thank you, sir. - You ever need any service,
come see us. - Okay, good.
- When it came to approaching people at the bus stop,
he did phenomenal, honestly.
He hit the ground running.
Hey, what's up, man?
- Hey, we're from U.S. Cellular.
We're just handed out some goodie bags.
Would you like one? - Yeah.
- All right, here you go.
When I rebranded U.S. Cellular as "locally grown wireless,"
my goal was giving people on the ground floor
that are closest to the customer
the power to make decisions on how to grow the business.
Hey, we're from U.S. Cellular.
We're just handing out some goodie bags
for folks on their bus ride today.
Can I give you one? - Sure.
- I can't think of a better person
to represent our rebranding efforts,
"locally grown wireless," than Marco.
He lives and breathes it.
- That--that was nice. - Thanks, brother.
- That's exactly what we're looking for.
All right, so I am pretty hungry.
Do you want to get dinner with me and my girlfriend?
- I don't wanna, like, interrupt romantic time, man.
- No, not at all. - I'd be honored to, man.
Thank you for the invite. - Awesome, sweet.
[gentle music]
- Hey there. - Hi.
- How are you? - Good, how are you?
- I'm Matt. - I'm Paige.
- Hey, Paige, great to meet you.
So how do you think I did today? Was it all right?
- Yeah, I mean, you killed it.
- He was a great coach today.
You'd have been proud of him.
So how long you been together?
- About two years. - Right on.
- So I don't know if you noticed,
but we are expecting our baby.
- Oh, my gosh, congratulations! - Thank you.
-In June. - June's exciting.
- June 1st. - Yeah.
- Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?
- A boy, yeah. - A boy?
- He's gonna be pretty fortunate.
You know, when I was growing up,
we actually didn't have running water
but we had a well.
And we didn't have an indoor bathroom,
we had an outhouse.
- Were you in-- growing up in Oklahoma there?
- No, so this was actually in Mexico.
I was born in Mexico.
- How was it coming here from Mexico?
- Well, I came here when I was five.
I mean, I definitely had a lot of obstacles.
My parents also worked a lot.
Like my mom used to work from 5:00 in the morning
till about 12:00 at night.
- Wow. - It was a struggle.
- Oh, that's so hard.
- Despite all that, we were really fortunate.
I mean, we always had food on the table.
So I mean, I do appreciate everything that I do have now.
And I'm gonna make sure that my son does as well.
- You guys thinking about marriage?
- Absolutely.
- You gonna hold him to this, Paige?
- Yeah, yeah. - All right, good.
- It's a matter of when not if.
- But has he proposed yet? - No.
- All right, I'm not putting any pressure on you, man.
But okay. - No, I'm just kidding.
- I'm sure that's exactly the venue
she was looking for, right? Yeah.
That's fantastic, guys. Congratulations.
- Thank you. - That's awesome.
I don't want to crash your dinner anymore.
You guys enjoy.
- Anytime you want to come shadow me,
you know where my stores are at.
- I appreciate it, man. You guys take care.
- All right. Bye, man.
Came here today to learn a little bit more
about our prepaid stores in Oklahoma City.
And it was terrific to see Marco's initiative.
Some of the ideas that he has
about getting out in the community
and bringing in customers made me feel proud as the CEO.
But I learned that we have issues with inventory.
We need to have the right phones,
we need to have the right cases,
and the cases have to match the phones.
There's no point in Marco working so hard
to bring in new customers
if he doesn't have the products
that they want in the store,
so I've got some work to do to fix this.
I finished my last job.
Now it's time for me to get to work as CEO.
Going undercover has been an amazing experience.
I've learned we need to rethink the way
that we do customer outreach.
We need to improve our focus
on the prepaid side of our business,
and we need to improve our 5G communications
so our whole team is excited about the new launch of 5G.
I also went undercover to get to know our team
a little bit better.
They're passionate about this company,
they're passionate about taking care of customers,
they know how to grow this business.
We just have to listen to 'em.
[determined music]
Today, all the associates think they're coming
to meet with producers
to discuss the filming of the show.
But actually, I'm gonna reveal my true identity.
- I don't know what's going on, man.
Everything's a secret.
- They have no idea they're on "Undercover Boss."
♪
[mischievous music]
♪
You recognize me at all? - You look really familiar.
- Who do I look like? - Matt.
- I am Matt. Do you know who else I am?
So I'm LT,
I'm the CEO of U.S. Cellular.
- No, dude, no!
- You, my friend,
are on "Undercover Boss."
- No way.
- Why am I tearing up? [chuckles]
- Hope I'm not getting fired. - [laughs]
announcer: Coming up...
- Whoo! No you're not, man.
announcer: The boss delivers life-changing news.
- Oh, my gosh.
- Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen
to people in my place.
- Alina, you are amazing.
I had such a great time
shadowing with you. - Oh, thank you.
- And I learned so much. - Thank you.
- What I want to do is just talk about
a couple of the things I learned.
We did this customer outreach calling campaign.
- Right. - It didn't feel effective.
- Yeah.
- Almost all of them were going to voicemail.
- Mm-hmm. - The other thing,
the customer that you and I served together--
- Yes. - That took a while.
- Yes.
- So the first thing I'm gonna do is
we're going to create a team to fix those problems.
- Okay. - What I'd like to do
is have you join the team
because they're gonna learn
from your experience. - Oh, my goodness.
- I know it's gonna take a little bit of time away
from selling. - Right.
- So I'm gonna give you a $10,000 raise.
- Seriously? - I am serious.
- Oh, my gosh.
For real? [laughs]
Thanks. [chuckles] That's awesome.
- I want you to build a future with us.
- I would love to. That means the world to me.
- I'm honored to do it.
But I want to talk a little bit about you.
- Mm-hmm. - So you shared with me that
the desire to find stability is really big for you.
- Basically, I've just kind of never really had a stable life
and that's kind of what I'm striving for.
I emancipated myself at the age of 16.
I was like, "I can't do this anymore.
I can't live like that."
Like who would want to stay in that?
- Feels like you've still got a little bit
of financial uncertainty, right?
I want to give you a safety net.
I'm going to give you
$50,000.
- Oh, my gosh.
That's crazy.
Are you serious? - I am serious.
- I don't even know what to think.
- Will it help?
- Yeah, more than you can even think.
- You've made brave choices, courageous choices.
And, you know, you deserve some help along the way too.
- Thank you. The way you approached it
meant so much to me 'cause, I mean,
I don't get told that very often, like, "That's so brave.
That's so awesome." You know, I don't hear that.
So I really appreciate it.
- It was an honor
to meet someone like you. - Oh, thank you.
- I don't get a chance to do that very often.
- Mm-hmm. - So thank you.
- Thank you.
50,000 is just crazy.
This is gonna help more than I can even imagine.
- Kyron, meeting you was amazing
but you called me Cinderella.
- [laughs] Can I take that back?
- No, no. - Oh, man.
- It's all good.
You shared with me that as we transition to 5G--
- Yeah. - One of the concerns
that you have is that
you're gonna have a lot more sites to take care of.
- Yeah, it could be thousands.
- So we're gonna be doing two things.
We're going to spend about
$17 million on automation.
It's gonna make the amount of time
that you have to spend at each site
way less. - Nice.
- The second thing that we're gonna do
is we're gonna redraw the geographic area.
They're gonna be a lot closer together.
And so it should mean
more time with your family
as opposed to less.
Do you think that will help? - Oh, for sure.
I feel like you're kicking the weight off right now.
That's--I mean, that's awesome.
- I want to talk a little bit about
the Travis Mills Foundation.
It's a fantastic organization
that you're supporting for wounded veterans.
- For me, it's me giving back, you know what I mean?
- I was actually in the Marine Corps
for five years.
I personally have a lot of friends
that have come back that struggled.
And I think about what you have on your plate
and the fact that you still take that time
to give back to wounded veterans, it's fantastic.
What I'm going to do is we're gonna donate $20,000
to the Travis Mills Foundation. - Whoo!
- And we're gonna do it in your name.
- Oh, man.
That's awesome.
That is so awesome, man. It really is.
That is--that means a lot to me.
- You shared that you were passionate
about something else.
- I am a diehard Cowboys fan, first of all.
There's no if, ands, or buts about it.
- You been to a game? - I haven't been to a game
in Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
No, no, no, no. - Okay.
Well, I'd like to address that.
So we're gonna send you and your wife on--
- Oh, no, you're not! - Oh, yeah.
- Whoo! No, you're not, man.
No, you're not. Don't say it, don't say it!
- You're gonna get to tour the stadium,
you're gonna get to meet some of the players,
you're gonna get some really great seats to watch that game.
- Oh, man.
Ah. [sniffles]
Dude, that is amazing.
Oh, my goodness.
- I want to talk a bit personal.
- Yeah. - So you had five kids.
- Yeah, yeah. - And then you added
two more to the mix. - Two more.
Yeah, we took on my wife's sister's kids.
- So you have nine people
in the family. - Yeah.
- I watch what you do to support them,
and I'd like to do a little bit of supporting of you.
And so, we're gonna give you $40,000.
- What? - I want you to try
to take a vacation with your family.
- Oh! No way.
What's going on right now?
Oh! Oh, dude
I don't know if I have any more tears left.
That is amazing.
You don't know how much--oh.
You don't know how much that means, man.
I feel incredible right now. I--I--
words can't even describe.
It's like a dream. It really is, man.
It's like, "What just happened?"
- Marco, it's not every day that
I'm passing out free drinks at bus stops,
but I loved it.
You're engaged in your community
and you're figuring out what you gotta do
on the ground to grow the business.
But you taught me some things
about our prepaid business.
The first thing that I saw was the work that you had to do
to get the right phones.
We were losing sales. - Yeah.
- That was frustrating to me.
And so we're gonna have a single person
that's gonna be responsible for supporting
our prepaid distribution. - Excellent.
- So you'll have a single place to go.
I want to talk about the second thing,
which was the accessory wall.
I left that discussion with you,
placed some phone calls immediately,
and we're gonna get you the right accessories
that match the phones. Do you think that'll help?
- I think--yeah. I think it will work wonders.
- You were kind enough to invite me to dinner
with your girlfriend.
I loved that, hey, you're gonna be a dad.
- I--I'm so excited.
It's the best thing that could've happened to me.
- You said in the dinner, right?
Getting married, it's not an if but a when.
- Correct. - I'm gonna give you $15,000
to help with any proposal that you might want to do,
but also a wedding and a honeymoon.
- Oh, my gosh.
I can't believe it.
I feel like I'm still dreaming
and I haven't woke up yet.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- You also talked about
trying to create opportunities for your son
that you never had.
Another thing that we'd like to do for you is
I'm gonna take $40,000
and we're gonna create a college fund for your son.
- Thank you so much.
- It's an honor to do it.
- I don't know what to say.
Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen to--
to people in--in my place.
- But sometimes it should.
- Oh, man, this is, like, on a whole another level.
Like, this is great, I'm so thankful.
[inspiring music]
- I went undercover to see if
the changes that I've made to this company
are enough to grow this business
and compete in a highly competitive wireless industry.
I knew U.S. Cellular was different
when I took over as CEO.
But by going undercover,
I've seen firsthand the love and the passion
that's gonna guarantee our success.
U.S. Cellular is not just gonna
keep up with our competitors,
we're gonna beat them.
After this journey,
I can't wait to get started.
[upbeat music]
♪