Ep. 238: Brian Higgins | Building AI Trust: Verizon’s Bold Bet on Deliberate Progress

Episode 238: In what appears to be a paradox, Verizon is accelerating its responsible AI journey through a measured, deliberate approach—ensuring its technology is primed to enhance customer experiences when they matter most.

Verizon isn’t rushing to put AI in front of customers. Instead, they’re deliberately building trust, refining data quality, and rigorously testing their AI tools internally. This methodical strategy might seem slow, but is accelerating their progress toward a future where AI can take on a bigger, more direct, customer-serving role.

In this episode, Brian Higgins, chief customer experience officer at Verizon, explains how their thoughtful AI tool development empowers and supports employees today while laying the groundwork for handling more customer interactions tomorrow. Tools like the Personal Research Assistant are being refined internally, allowing Verizon employees to build confidence in AI’s capabilities before these technologies ever touch a customer.

According to Brian, Verizon has focused on “bringing humans and AI together to drive more yield.” By ensuring employees are comfortable and proficient with AI tools, Verizon is building a strong AI foundation. His team embraces a deliberate learning approach vs. rushing to deploy technology for its own sake.

Learn more about Verizon’s AI strategy and how building trustworthy internal tools enables smarter, faster, and more personalized customer experiences at scale.

Guest: Brian Higgins, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Verizon

Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company

Give Us Feedback:

We’d love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey.

Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey: https://www.robmarkey.com/contact-rob

Time-stamped List of Topics Covered:

• [02:15] How Verizon uses AI to empower employees and streamline operations
• [07:05] The strategy behind building AI tools like Verizon’s Personal Research Assistant
• [12:45] Employee co-development and involvement in AI-driven transformations
• [19:30] Balancing short-term wins with long-term AI-driven business goals
• [25:50] Leadership commitment and the role of AI in transforming customer experience

Time-stamped Notable Quotes:

• [02:45] “Customers don't only go into a store. They don't only go to verizon.com. They go all over the place and do all kinds of things with us all the time. You have to pull all that together into one view.”
• [03:46]  “If the employees aren't happy with their overall experience, it's virtually impossible for them to make the customers happy.”
• [05:30] “This is another tool in the toolbox, and the employees see [AI’s value] right away.”
• [11:15] “We had to reorganize everything ... but you can't simply go back to what you were doing before. You [have] to layer in something new.”
• [22:45] “Our primary focus was on areas of pain for both employees and customers.”
• [27:21] “This is about bringing humans and AI together to drive more yield. If we were a declining business, it might have a different model. But we're not a declining business. We're a growing business. We need to get more out of the current employees we have.”
• [32:25] “Personalization is the material unlock—for us and our customers.”
• [38:32] “We had some challenging times for a few years at Verizon. There was a recognition that we needed to reorganize how the whole company was structured. And we did that.”