How Verizon Uses Data, Analytics, And AI To Deliver Responsible AI That Drives Innovation

Verizon Communications Inc., based in New York City and incorporated in Delaware, was formed on June 30, 2000, with the merger of Bell Atlantic Corp. and GTE Corp. The new “Verizon” brand was launched on April 3, 2000, and the wireless joint venture began operations as Verizon Wireless on April 4. GTE’s wireless operations became part of Verizon Wireless, creating the nation’s largest wireless company, when the Bell Atlantic and GTE merger closed nearly three months later.

Today, according to the company’s website, Verizon is a global communications technology company delivering the promise of the digital world to millions of customers every day. Headquartered in New York City, Verizon serves over 150 countries worldwide. The company generated revenues of $134.0 billion in 2023 and ranks 31 in the Fortune 1000. It is the world’s second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 130 million subscribers.

An innovator in telecommunications, Verizon is leveraging data and AI as one of the foundations for its innovation journey.

To ensure its leadership position and sustain its ongoing innovation path, Verizon appointed Kalyani Sekar to the role of Senior Vice President and Chief Data Officer (CDO) in December 2022. Sekar is a 22-year veteran of Verizon, having joined the company in 2002 as a Systems Engineer and holding a dozen technology and leadership roles during her tenure.

I recently hosted Sekar on an industry Chief Data Officer panel, and at an intimate industry roundtable event for Fortune 1000 CDOs and AI leaders organized by DataIQ. I spoke with Sekar about the data and AI leadership journey at Verizon. In her role as CDO, Sekar leads the strategic direction and execution of Verizon’s data and AI initiatives, focused on planning, building & running the network, delivering differentiated customer/employee experience, product expansion, new revenue generation, and driving operational efficiencies.

Sekar brings a deep knowledge of the business and organizational culture at Verizon, along with expertise in technology strategy, building scalable solutions, and process excellence. She explains, “As CDO of Verizon, my mandate is to establish a comprehensive data fabric that seamlessly integrates Verizon’s diverse assets and accelerates the time to insights and actions by industrializing end-to-end data and AI life cycle.” Sekar adds. “A key focus is data governance and embedding AI responsibly at every step of the way to drive impact for the business.”

Investing in AI Innovation

For Verizon, the key to developing and sustaining leadership in the use of data and analytics is the application of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Verizon has been on its AI journey for over a decade. Sekar explains, “We have come a long way from descriptive analytics to leveraging the combined power of GenAI. Today, Verizon is deploying a full spectrum of AI, including predictive/prescriptive AI with machine learning/deep learning algorithms and generative AI across functions within the company.” She adds, “Verizon is also using AI to create new products and develop new revenue streams.”

Sekar elaborates, “As a company that relies on the innovative application of technology, Verizon is setting a high standard for its AI ambitions with a clear message from the leadership on becoming the world’s best applied AI company.” She continues, “Verizon is bringing together all of its data onto a common AI-powered platform, which will improve and modernize every aspect of the company’s operations, that drives significant value for their customers.” These AI innovation initiatives are being applied across the Verizon network, commercial and corporate functions.

Delivering Business Value from AI Investments

Verizon’s investment in data, analytics and AI is based on a progression of time horizons for delivering business value. In the short term, AI investments are expected to drive value within the same year, with a focus on measuring the incremental benefits generated by these AI-driven interventions. Over the multi-year horizon, these investments are aimed at delivering long-term efficiencies and expanding capabilities that open up new business opportunities. Sekar comments, “To drive value in a big enterprise, it is very important to realize that there are a lot of ‘unknown unknowns’ that these capabilities will unearth and continue to drive value iteratively”.

Today, Verizon is leveraging a combination of traditional AI and GenAI to deliver significant value across business areas. Sekar explains, “The unique design in AI fabric in Verizon is having an end-to-end focus across the lifecycle of the customer & employees.” She continues, “To illustrate this with an actual example in customer experience that helps Verizon more deeply understand how customers feel, Verizon has developed and implemented measurement systems that score the overall journey experience including the network experience. Verizon then leverages all the data and the experience scores to predict the next best action of the customer, and intelligently pairs the customer to an agent for outbound and inbound calls.”

Sekar elaborates, “Even during the call, AI is powering experiences that reduce the cognitive load of the agents through a critical feature called the Personal Research Assistant. In the entire lifecycle, there is rigorous focus on model ops and measurement.” She continues, “For instance, in the Personal Research Assistant, the answerability rate is 95% and accuracy rate is 96%. On the retail side, with approximately 70 million store visits annually, AI helps Verizon personalize customer offers during visits, reducing visit time by about seven minutes per store visit.” Sekar sums up, “Verizon is leveraging AI throughout the customer journey – learn, buy, get, use, pay and support. The idea is to make it simple to do business with Verizon.”

Sekar notes that Verizon has taken a thoughtful and deliberate approach in scaling AI, using an industrialization strategy. This approach involves developing base models that work for a use case, then designing them with flexibility and interchangeable components to be expanded across multiple use cases or reused with minor modifications. As business teams adopt the reusable solutions, they measure not only the model accuracy but also user adoption and business outcomes. Sekar concludes, “With a dynamic environment in which AI resides, it’s great to see Verizon’s emphasis on holistic and iterative feedback mechanisms that include humans in the loop as well.”

Building a Data and AI Culture

Execution of Verizon’s data and AI vision is organized around the establishment of a data and AI awareness culture at all levels of the company, where Responsible AI is central to Verizon’s AI mandate. To ensure Responsible AI, the company has rolled out a set of guiding principles for teams to innovate responsibly with AI.

Sekar observes that from the outset, Verizon’s leadership has been focused on the ethical deployment of AI adhering to AI principles that guide its enterprise-wide efforts in leveraging new technologies. Responsible AI principles help the company serve the stakeholders and reinforce Verizon as a trusted brand and partner in AI.

To achieve this objective, Verizon has established an AI Council which includes senior executives from Legal, Security, IT, Network, Commercial and other corporate portfolios. This council focuses on five key pillars: AI Strategy, AI Adoption, Responsible AI, AI Talent, and AI Tech & Infrastructure. To enhance AI understanding across Verizon, the company is offering enterprise-wide AI education courses for its employees. These courses are designed to build a basic understanding of AI at all levels of the organization, from foundation courses for all employees to advanced technical courses ensuring enterprise-wide AI readiness.

By leveraging AI, Verizon aims to deliver a simplified yet differentiated experience to its customers and employees, while improving operational agility and securing a sustainable competitive advantage.

Reflecting on the teamwork and commitment that is required to build a culture that prioritizes AI, Sekar notes, “Progress at Verizon has been a team effort, driven by commitment to responsibility at every stage of the journey”, adding, “This would not have been possible without commitment from leadership as well as people at all levels of the organization”. Sekar concludes, “This approach ensures a positive impact on both customers and other stakeholders, now and in the future”.