Hi Lori Anne, please tell us about your role and how you arrived at Verizon.

Hi, and thank you for the interview. I started my career at Verizon 30 years ago in customer service, and I have held roles in Sales, Marketing and my favorite jobs have been Product Management. Product Management touches all parts of the business and keeps me in front of customers, collaborating with partners and exploring technology. Today, I am responsible for developing Verizon’s global VoIP and Customer Experience services portfolio.

How much has Verizon’s products and services evolved in the last 3 years? What impact did the pandemic have on your product roadmap?

The progress and adoption of digital customer experiences is definitely related to the pandemic! Our customers have been using digital technologies like Chat for years, but most were still treating digital interactions as a call deflection and FAQ strategy. Early in the pandemic, we flexed and delivered huge volumes of contact center traffic for retail, public sector and healthcare customers, but higher call volume didn’t deliver a better experience in a market with agent turnover and shortages. (good news! CCaaS helped with work-from-home and agent retention) A few months into the pandemic, we saw a spike in digital and AI customer experience trials as businesses and agencies tried to align with rising consumer expectations. Today, the digital and AI experience capabilities are table stakes in the contact center and customer experience technology stack, and the differentiation is created in the way knowledge is integrated across all interactions...