Customer Service
Verizon customer chief talks retail customer experience: It's all about personalization
Brian Higgins, chief customer experience officer at Verizon, offers insight on Verizon’s CX strategy and what makes for a rewarding, compelling customer experience.
January 21, 2025 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
As the chief customer experience officer at Verizon, Brian Higgins heads up the consumer group CX organization and is responsible for shaping customer and employee experiences and empowering the Verizon workforce to drive personalized and memorable customer experiences.
Higgins joined Verizon about 24 years ago, as director of network implementation. He has held nearly a dozen leadership roles and was named to his current role in July 2023.
The first step toward delivering a rewarding customer experience, as Higgins outlined in a blog at RetailCustomerExperience.com, is to commit to being a loyalty company — instead of a transaction company. "If you are adept at fostering meaningful connections with your customers, they will stay with you for years. If you are great at this, they will be with you for life," he wrote.
The year 2024 was a busy one for Higgins' team as it launched a new CX organization, with a whole new level of service and responsiveness. As Verizon heads into 2025 he and his team are focused on AI innovations, one of which intertwines AI with human agents.
To get deeper insight on his steps to CX success, as well as what Verizon is doing with its CX strategy, RetailCustomerExperience.com reached out to Higgins via email.
What makes a great CX
Q. The retail consumer expects much more these days in terms of customer experience — what trends or substantial changes has Verizon seen in terms of what new and current customers want and needs?
A. Today's consumers want companies to anticipate their wants and needs to some degree. In fact, four out of five people say they would share personal data if it made for a better experience, according to a PwC loyalty survey. And 55% said they would stop buying from a company that they otherwise liked after several bad experiences.
So, what makes a great customer experience? First, it's personalized. When a customer engages with Verizon — whether online, on the phone or in a store — they expect that we know who they are and how they've engaged with us in the past. They want us to provide them with offers and services that are specific to their needs.
Second, a great customer experience makes the customer feel good whenever they contact us. That means: resolving problems quickly, delivering upside surprises and making them feel like they and their business are valued.
Think of your interactions with your local retailer, where you've shopped for years. The proprietor knows you, your likes, and dislikes, and can recommend products and services based on that knowledge. They want to keep you happy. That's what consumers expect from every company today, no matter where they shop.
Tech in play
Q. What technologies is Verizon using to drive an enhanced customer experience and how important is embracing new technologies in CX?
A. New technologies are central to an enhanced customer experience — especially GenAI.
We're using GenAI to relieve some of the cognitive load on our employees so they can focus on the customer in front of them and create a better customer experience. In the past when customers called in with complex questions, representatives often had to search through many documents to find the answer. It could be time consuming. Now, using GenAI we've created a tool called the Personal Research Assistant which helps provide employees with the information they need to answer a customer's question instantly and personalized for their unique needs. We're seeing great results so far with employees being able to answer nearly all (95%) of customer questions with almost always (96%) the correct answer.
Another tool we've created is our Personal Shopper/Problem Solver which uses GenAI to instantly analyze a customer's profile from the moment they contact us to help employees get a head start on who the customer is and why they may be calling. Since launch, this has helped reduce customer transaction time — what used to take roughly 20-25 clicks by employees now takes one to five clicks.
Our application of GenAI has already improved the Verizon customer experience. It's giving us an edge and the ability to stand out in a competitive market.
Where loyalty fits in
Q. How is Verizon driving customer loyalty and how critical is a strong loyal relationship for today's retailer?
A. Customer loyalty is the core of any business. An unhappy customer can always go somewhere else, and it is much more expensive to gain a new customer than to retain an existing one. To keep customers happy and loyal, we work hard to provide the best network: making sure that it's fast and always working whether a customer is at home streaming a movie, or on the road, or at a concert with 90,000 other fans.
But there's a second part to loyalty, encompassing the many things we do that surround the network — billing, customer care, the in-store as well as online experience. All of these responsibilities must be delivered with excellence. Getting both the network and everything else right is the key to making customers want to be loyal.
Getting personal
Q. Consumers love personalization. How is Verizon responding to that want?
A. Consumers want to feel that products and services are made for them. Our job is to identify — proactively when possible — what a customer is looking for and deliver it fast and consistently.
We do this by analyzing billions of data points so we can zero in on the best options for each customer.
In order to personalize our response, we try to get the best picture of a customer based on what we already know. What's their purchase history, their likes and dislikes, the devices they own, the upgrades they're eligible for and how and where they like to do business with us?
This approach allows us to offer a feature they might be looking for, or content that's relevant to them, before they even reach out to Verizon. We can also replace generic correspondence and marketing material with custom-tailored messages — what we call a "segment of me."
About Judy Mottl
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