When a customer passed away, outdated policy language left frontline employees improvising answers to sensitive, high-stakes questions. I led a small cross-functional project with Legal, HR, and Operations to rebuild the policy from the ground up, clear rules, clear boundaries, and a job aid the frontline could actually rely on.
Content described is actual work I performed at UScellular; confidential details omitted. Outcomes reflect real results. UScellular was acquired by T-Mobile in 2025 and no longer operates as a company as of August 2026.
UScellular's policy for handling a deceased customer's account had not kept pace with the business. Outdated language left frontline employees unsure what they could share, with whom, and under what proof, creating real risk on both sides: sharing too much, or turning away a family member who had every right to access the account.
This was not policy anyone could rewrite alone. It touched privacy law, legal exposure, and the reality of what frontline employees actually faced on a call, POAs, executors, family members with no documentation, and everything in between. Fixing it meant getting Legal, HR, and Operations aligned on rules that were clear enough to follow and still legally sound.
I did not try to rewrite this alone. I got Legal, HR, and Operations to the same table to establish the non-negotiable rules first, what regulation actually required, before touching a word of the policy itself.
From there, I worked to reconcile that with what frontline employees were actually facing on a call, so the final policy was not just legally correct, it was something a person could actually follow under pressure.
An outdated policy left frontline employees guessing on sensitive account requests, unclear rules created risk in both directions: sharing too much, or turning away a family member who had every right to access the account.
I studied the existing policy and partnered with Operations to get a clear picture of what was actually happening on real calls where employees struggled, and what they needed to handle these requests with confidence.
Fixing this meant getting Legal, HR, and Operations to agree it was worth solving together. I worked to understand each team's priorities, made the case for tackling it as one group, and got everyone aligned on the core decisions in one or two meetings rather than months of back-and-forth.
Once the policy and a new job aid were drafted, Operations and frontline teams reviewed both, not just for accuracy, but for plain language and usability. I asked them to actively try to break it, surfacing gaps before they became real problems for customers.
After launch, I stayed connected with Operations and the frontline to confirm the changes were actually working, and made adjustments where needed. With clear ownership finally in place, future policy reviews became far more straightforward.
The result was a modernized policy with a clear hierarchy of support for every type of requester, power of attorney, executor, family member, or unlisted party, paired with a defined process to validate a deceased owner's status. In addition, a new job aid provided frontline teams a systematic way to work through each step, and updated language closed gaps that had caused confusion for years.