In April, Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO of Verizon’s consumer group, dropped him an inexplicable teaser LinkedIn Page: “Project 624. Everything about customers. It’ll be coming soon.” And… to this day, there’s nothing about it about it.
624 represents the date June 24th, and the project is known to be an ambitious customer service program aimed at creating it. And yes, AI is involved, but don’t roll your eyes yet.
In a call with Sampath just before revealing details about the Project 624, he laid out changes to the customer experience that were published today. These include teams dedicated to satisfying customers on their first call (called the Customer Champion Team) and improvements to the Myverizon app, which leverages Google Gemini AI technology. We’ve expanded our live customer agent hours and live chat 24/7. Larger footprints from the Physics Verizon Store. And more perks and prizes.
in Open Letter Laying out the new customer service initiatives for the careers that were released today, the CEO of the consumer group also includes the direct email address s.sampath@verizon.com so that customers can contact him.
But before we get into the details of the new one, I wondered if today’s announcement was a direct response to the company’s latest quarter. We lost about 300,000 customers In the first quarter of 2025. Will carriers boost customer service and regain more subscribers?
“That’s a very fair question,” Sampath said. “The answer is very straightforward. You lose customers every quarter. That’s the seasonality of your business. This has nothing to do with the first quarter of your business. This has nothing to do with the transformation we’re in the middle of the two or three years.”
He explained that after previous efforts to revamp Verizon’s sales infrastructure and pricing plans, improving the customer experience is the next step.
Verizon may be the first career to acquire AI on its customer service platform, but that’s not the only one that’s considering including it. Last September, T-Mobile announced that it was partnering with Openai to provide new artificial intelligence to support its customers, which will be launched in 2025. Whether Verizon’s system lifts legs depends on what they have to help subscribers answer essential questions.
Create customer champions using AI
Customer service in any industry is challenging, but it is complicated for large mobile players like Verizon to provide connectivity to millions of customers across a large range of regional and technical hardware. And as phones have gained great importance in our lives, if something goes wrong with our connection to the outside world, it can lead to increased frustration.
“I get a lot of emails from customers every day, and they’re not pretty,” Sampath said. He estimates that it is 80% of the time for a customer to resolve the issue on the first call. About 15% need to call again. “The last 5% enters a loop of destiny. They are the most unhappy. It’s a very rough journey for them. We see it and it’s not fair to them.”
To avoid that loop, Verizon uses the Verizon customer implementation of the Google Gemini 2.0 model to launch a so-called customer champion team to handle calls, identify solutions, and continue to update customers throughout the resolution process. This is an approach inherited from Systems that Verizon uses for its enterprise customers.
“We’ve been doing it for several months as a pilot. [programs]and 90% of the time we solve first, we have problems first. ” he said. As the program progresses, he wants to make that number up to 95 or 96%.
The new version of the Myverizon app includes improvements to AI-based support.
Google Gemini is also an important part of updating the Myverizon app. The AI-powered Verizon Assistant is built with input from Google Engineers and is built into a Verizon-specific context. As a practical example, this technology can enable Verizon to actively deal with problems.
“If your phone is lost in transit, I know that because FedEx said it won’t be delivered,” he said. “Why would you call me and let me know that your phone has got lost?”
In such cases, Verizon uses AI to identify the problem, automatically open the case and return to the customer with a plan to resolve it. Sampath explained that Verizon essentially created a small language model for each case and compared it to a large language model (LLM) that currently has more visibility in the industry. Small-scale, custom-made models don’t have general knowledge about life.
“There’s no need to know what the Romans did,” he said. “We need to know why my bill went up. And we’ll move on and do just that.”
However, LLMS is not always known for its accuracy. Sunpass said that an error rate of 30% to 40% was seen a year and a half ago, but now it’s “a significant north improvement of 90% accuracy. And if it’s inaccurate, it’s a bit inaccurate because of the way we do it.” [it]. ”
Expand live customer support and save your footprint
With this surge in using AI to handle customer issues, I naturally wanted to know if it would have a negative impact on Verizon staffing. If Verizon’s Gemini model can handle most requests, does it remove humans from the loop and off the pay?
“We used AI to essentially remove cognitive workloads from our employees, making it possible to hear our customers better through bandwidth and headspace,” Sampath said. “That’s the right way for us to go. Look. If you need to take out the costs, there’s an easier way. You don’t have to deploy AI and all the complexities that come with it. And AI is all about problem solving.”
As part of this new customer support initiative, Verizon is expanding its live support options in several ways. Representatives will be available via telephone from 9am to midnight (local time), expanding from 8am to 9pm and expanding via live chat for the rest of the time.
“[Stuff] It happens when you are least expecting it and I don’t want you to have to wait until the morning.
Verizon Store in New York
Sampath also plays a role in the physical network of Verizon stores because “we want to be in your community.” He said Verizon is recognising its retail experience and plans to continue expanding the company’s brick and mortar store footprint in recent years with around 400 new stores added.
Verizon Access Rewards Platform
In today’s mobile provider environment, perks have become a powerful incentive. The carrier offers extras ranging from traditional add-ons such as streaming services and in-flight Wi-Fi to assortment of T-Mobile Tuesday gifts. In this respect, Sampath emphasized the distinction of Verizon’s offering from competition.
“Look, we won’t give you $3 from your little Caesar’s pizza… you won’t get a big popcorn compared to medium popcorn. I’m sure it’s good value,” he said. He quotes examples such as NFL Game Tickets, Katy Perry, and Beyonce Concert, saying, “Put what you can on your bucket list.”
From today until June 30th, Verizon offers 35,000 free prizes from the Verizon Access program.
