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BRIAN HIGGINS - Chief Customer Experience Officer | Verizon
https://www.verizon.com/business/en-au/
(NYSE: VZ)
MOHAMED ABDELSADEK - Executive Vice President, Data, Insights & Analytics | Mastercard
https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/business/fintech.html
(NYSE: MA)
BRIAN HIGGINS - Chief Customer Experience Officer | Verizon
https://www.verizon.com/business/en-au/
(NYSE: VZ)
MOHAMED ABDELSADEK - Executive Vice President, Data, Insights & Analytics | Mastercard
https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/business/fintech.html
(NYSE: MA)
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Looking ahead, what do you envision
00:01 is the next significant AI breakthroughs
00:04 or transformative applications within financial
00:08 and telecommunications sectors?
00:10 Let's go to Mohammed on this
00:11 and see what Mastercard is doing.
00:14 - Yeah, so look, Gen AI is a huge leap forward
00:17 and enables a new set of use cases.
00:19 The way we think about it is there are three broad areas
00:21 of use cases that we are pursuing.
00:23 There are use cases about efficiency, productivity,
00:27 similar to what we talked about earlier.
00:29 It's about taking a look at a lot of existing products
00:32 and how do we make these products better?
00:34 And we're also identifying a new set of solutions
00:36 and areas that we've not been able to go after in the past.
00:39 I will tell you the biggest and most immediate opportunity
00:41 that we see is in the first bucket
00:43 and efficiency and productivity.
00:44 There are many things that we could take advantage of
00:47 the generative AI technologies to address.
00:50 Certainly customer onboarding, everything around call centers
00:53 we could make the call center even more effective,
00:55 even code development, right?
00:57 How do we make sure our code development
00:58 is a lot more efficient?
01:00 We've seen productivity in some organizations up to 40%
01:03 where they've employed some of the Gen AI technology
01:06 to be able to do software development
01:07 rather than having to start from scratch.
01:09 As it relates to new product, existing products,
01:12 what I will tell you a lot of the overlay
01:13 is how do I make it easier to interact
01:15 with some of the existing products?
01:16 So for example, we have a lot of products that loyalty,
01:19 whether it's a loyalty products or insight solutions.
01:23 Well, you get a set of sort of views on what the answer is
01:26 or perhaps as a bank, how your portfolio is doing
01:28 and how it's performing versus other issuers.
01:31 But you can interact with that product today
01:35 where you could ask a question and get recommendations
01:37 in the way that you would like to.
01:39 And Gen AI allows us to be able to unlock some opportunities
01:42 that were not possible with that.
01:44 So we see a lot that we can do.
01:47 I will say the one caveat here is,
01:49 when you put some of these solutions,
01:52 particularly Gen AI solutions in front of customers,
01:54 you have to be very careful
01:56 because it does have limitation
01:57 and it does come with risks.
01:59 So doing it responsibly for us as an organization
02:01 is something that is really important and matters.
02:04 Let's hear another viewpoint on this.
02:06 Brian, how's Verizon approaching this?
02:09 Yeah, I think Mitch,
02:10 here's the thing that's great right now.
02:12 If I take a look at where we are today with Gen AI
02:15 and some of the options that we have,
02:17 you've got within Verizon,
02:19 very similar to what Mohamed talked about.
02:21 We have hundreds of data scientists
02:23 that are constantly working on new models
02:24 to enhance the overall experience.
02:26 In addition, we partner up with some of the largest players
02:29 that are out there as well,
02:30 your Googles, your Amazon, your Microsoft as well.
02:33 And then there's a long tail of,
02:36 I'll call it boutique providers as well,
02:38 that are all feeding in new capabilities.
02:40 So we get to see it all the time.
02:42 We get to work with each one of these.
02:44 A lot of it around what Mohamed was saying,
02:45 either operational efficiency or on customer engagement.
02:49 But I'll tell you, the one that I think
02:51 I'm most excited about is that,
02:52 again, if you take a look at Verizon in total,
02:55 large number of customers out there,
02:58 many of them have been with us for 30, 40 years.
03:01 We've got legacy systems that are out there
03:04 or legacy price plans rather.
03:05 They've been with us for a long time.
03:07 There's a long history that we've got to go through.
03:09 And we have the benefit of having employees
03:13 that are on for many, many years,
03:15 oftentimes many decades,
03:16 but we also bring on new employees all the time.
03:19 Think about the frontline.
03:20 So new folks that are coming into the stores,
03:22 new individuals that are in customer care.
03:24 And so the big focus for us is,
03:27 how do you take a lot of the complexity
03:28 that you have for any large company,
03:30 especially a company where you've got customers
03:33 that have been with you for a very long time
03:35 and really create a scenario where it's cognitive offload.
03:38 Like think about how do we create time and space
03:41 for the employees to engage with customers
03:44 at the emotional level and not thinking about,
03:47 let me go back and do some research on that price plan
03:50 that maybe was 10 years ago
03:52 and I've only been at Verizon for a year.
03:54 So how do you get there?
03:56 So the best way we think to get there
03:57 is to take essentially an AI coach
04:00 that you would then have within Verizon
04:03 that rides along with all the employees all the time.
04:05 And this is gonna be true in the stores.
04:08 It's gonna be true in care.
04:09 It'll be true in telesales as well.
04:12 And I almost think of it as like a Jarvis,
04:13 like that same kind of concept there.
04:15 So it's still Tony Stark making all the decisions.
04:18 You've got Jarvis there all along the way,
04:20 just enhancing the overall engagement.
04:22 And the big value there is that, again,
04:24 it allows the frontline employees
04:27 to have that emotional connection with the customer,
04:29 making sure we're solving problems for them
04:32 and then eliminating a lot of the complexity
04:34 and allowing the AI agent to just go ahead
04:37 and pull that all in together.
04:38 So kind of like, again, sidecar,
04:40 always there, always helping out.
04:42 And that's on the assisted channels.
04:44 And then if you think about
04:45 where things are going for digital,
04:47 it'll be a similar concept.
04:49 What we're looking for is that
04:50 as individuals come into our digital storefront,
04:54 rather than customers going through
04:55 and trying to do their own wayfinding
04:57 and get to the end result,
04:59 it would be a better experience
05:00 if we had something that sat up front
05:02 that helped the customer along.
05:04 But then to Mohammed's point,
05:05 you've gotta be careful there as well.
05:06 You need to be very clear that,
05:08 hey, listen, this agent that's running in the background,
05:10 this is not necessarily a human.
05:12 There may be a point where he handed off to a human,
05:14 but you've gotta engage with the customers the right way.
05:17 So I think those AI coaches,
05:19 we're gonna see that across a number of different businesses
05:21 just especially the more complicated ones,
05:24 because it just helps with the frontline employees.
05:26 It helps create the right kind of engagement
05:28 that employees wanna have with the customers.
05:31 And then it simplifies the overall interaction.
05:33 So that's what I see is like the big unlock.
05:35 And again, because of the partners we have
05:37 and also the internal resources,
05:39 just like Mohammed mentioned,
05:40 I think we're in a really strong position
05:42 to start leveraging that very, very quickly.
05:44 - Yeah, I just, I don't know if I can just build on that.
05:48 I do think an important question,
05:49 organizations like myself and Brian are thinking about is,
05:53 well, we've gotten hundreds of ideas
05:55 of what we can do with generative AI.
05:56 There is not a shortage of ideas of what you can do.
05:59 It is really important to prioritize what matters
06:01 and also decide what do you wanna build yourself
06:04 versus what do you buy?
06:05 Because look, the reality is, yes,
06:07 many organizations have not yet implemented
06:10 product ready gen AI solutions.
06:12 But if you're a company that specializes in,
06:16 for example, a customer service solution,
06:18 you're gonna have to develop gen AI
06:19 and offer it to your customers, right?
06:21 So do you take that on as an organization
06:22 and do you sort of leverage your provider to do that?
06:26 My perspective is focus on areas
06:28 that really help you create a real advantage
06:30 for your customers that you don't think
06:32 anybody else can do and obviously weigh the risk
06:35 and the benefit of doing that work.