What’s the importance of strong customer engagements in today’s wholesale industry?
Firstly, I’d say such engagement is at the heart of everything we do within Verizon Partner Solutions [VPS], acting as a key differentiator in the wholesale industry alongside network reliability and performance. Engaging customers helps us tailor experiences and services based on what we hear back, while ensuring we’re thinking about the future in terms of how we can innovate and bring new offerings into the marketplace.
At VPS, we hold an annual Partner Summit, as well as Customer Advisory Board meetings. These types of events fulfil the old adage that there’s no substitute for face-to-face engagement with customers. But as things evolve in the industry, it’s important to provide customers with a seamless experience via all touchpoints. As part of this, we recently relaunched the VPS website, tying into the broader Verizon brand refresh this June.
How do the refreshed VPS website and other non-face-to-face channels help with customer engagement?
The relaunched website enriches our content and makes things more intuitive, transparent and efficient for customers, providing all the information we think will help them be successful. As well as updates on our products and services, it will include newsletters, recorded webinars, podcasts, tutorials on VPS services and thought-leadership pieces.
We also have our VPS Exchange portal, which helps customers engage digitally in activities like obtaining quotes, ordering and getting services delivered, as well as facilitating interactive communication. As technology becomes ever-more immersive, such channels help meet the latest user demand by providing more services in real time alongside clarity on the services we provide.
What kinds of partnerships are fruitful in the modern wholesale industry?
The industry today is dynamic and increasingly competitive, meaning the importance of partnerships has probably never been higher.
Those we have are fostering the exchange of ideas and collaboration on technologies such as IoT, while there are emerging partnership opportunities in private 5G network deployments both in the US, where we leverage our wireless network, and some other international geographies. These kinds of partnerships are helping us to innovate, and adapt to evolving trends and opportunities in the marketplace.
In addition, we’re seeing AI deployed more and more when it comes to customer engagement, with increased relevance in areas including predictive analytics, process automation and personalised pricing. It can aid with network optimisation and security too, helping us predict potential issues and prepare ourselves to proactively deal with them.
Given the significant amounts of data traffic that AI is driving, it’s also crucial that we partner with subsea cable providers and the main players in the US data centre ecosystem to properly strategise where we want to have a presence, and ensure we are best placed to support our customers to scale and innovate.
In what ways is VPS effecting cultural change to support the adoption of future technologies and services?
First and foremost within VPS, the focus is on making sure we have a culture that encourages creativity, collaboration and a forward-thinking mindset. The company provides continuous learning and upskilling for employees so they can stay ahead of technological advances and think innovatively about changing dynamics, as well as how we can best position ourselves to support customers.
Change can be daunting, especially in a fast-paced technological environment. It’s therefore important to communicate to ensure an understanding of the benefits of new developments and, most crucially, how they help customers. The company offers structured training programmes that include developing an understanding of the challenges our customers face and how they are adapting. I don’t think the importance of this learning can be underestimated.
