Our AI Journey From 70 Billion Data Points to a Common Platform

Generative AI has exploded onto the world stage in the last year. A scan of the top news stories on any given day shows multiple headlines focused on the revolutionary new technology.

If you want to embrace gen AI, however, you need to get your data in order.?

Verizon knows this because we have been innovating with “regular” artificial intelligence, the good old-fashioned AI, for years. We’ve developed, along with our AI partners, ways to enhance and add new tools in customer care as well as help relieve some of the cognitive load from our service reps so they can apply the human touch.

The work is already starting to pay off as we saw in Verizon’s most recent quarter. Not only did we deliver on the promise of improved phone subscriber gains, we also witnessed increased average revenue per account, or ARPA, because our care team helped customers find better perks and service plans. We expect to build on this as we invest in and dedicate more AI power to help personalize the overall customer experience.?

Harnessing Gen AI?

This year, we started using generative AI internally to improve our work processes. We see this as an important beginning to a new era of productivity gains. And to get there, it’s going to take some extraordinary effort to get it right.

As I mentioned at a recent analyst event, our AI engines ingest more than 70 billion data points from the network every single day. This enormous body of information has the potential to provide a wealth of insights, but it also presents a challenge: how do you harness this resource.?

Analytics engines are only as good as the data you put into them. We see an opportunity to sift through and separate the important messages from the noise. But right now, we have more than 30,000 different data sources. The data doesn’t always use a common taxonomy.

Thoughtful Implementation

So we’ve started a journey to bring all our data together into common platforms and common governances and taxonomy structures. This will provide huge cost savings because we will spend fewer resources moving and translating data. A common platform also will accelerate the speed at which we can take the insights from the analytics and apply them to service improvements and customer success.?

Verizon Global Services runs the shared platforms for one of the most complex companies in the world – that includes projects that are up and running now and those that will carry us far into the future. Together, we oversee IT, data analytics, real estate, cybersecurity, supply chain, HR operations, fleet, public policy, and finance operations for Verizon. If we’re successful and can bring all our data onto a common AI-powered platform, it will improve and modernize every aspect of those operations and ultimately drive a better customer and employee experience.