Ep. 21 – Voice Fraud, AI, and the Future of Consumer Authentication with Verizon.

In this episode, Ellie sits down with Don Spaulding, a seasoned innovation and product leader with over 17 years at Verizon. Don shares his remarkable journey from educational psychology to tech leadership, bringing a unique human-centered perspective to digital transformation. They explore how his background helps him develop data-driven strategies that improve customer experiences while maintaining trust and security. Don dives deep into the evolving landscape of AI in customer service, the growing threats of voice fraud, and the delicate balance between security and user experience.  

Transcript

00:12
Ellie Tehrani
Welcome to the elusive consumer Don, a seasoned innovation and product leader with over 17 years of experience at Verizon. You have a unique background in educational psychology and deep expertise in tech and analytics. I’m very much looking forward to hearing about your data-driven strategies to improve customer experience and your thoughts on all things AI for smarter service solutions. So, first things first, can you tell us a little bit about how you moved from psychology into tech?

00:54
Don Spaulding
Yeah, sure. But first, it’s a pleasure to be joining you today. I. I really look forward to the conversation. Yeah, so I have somewhat of an unorthodox journey to the role I’m in now in that I really started my career as an educator, specifically in educational psychology. And I spent the first part of my career working in public schools as a psychologist in the school, helping kids with learning disabilities, kids with other types of issues, whether they had to do with the social adjustment to the classroom or any of the adjustments to be able to learn.

01:37
Don Spaulding
And so I spent the first part of my career as an educator doing that and over time wanted to affect more, had great experiences dealing with families, dealing with children, teachers, and helping, I guess, one kid at a time, and really enjoyed that, but really felt that I was interested in having a bigger effect. So I went into administration and went through several years of doing some different things in that capacity. And through the course of doing that, one of the things I became really involved in and committed to was how technology actually was a differentiator for kids with disadvantages, whether that would be, you know, in their ability to read or process or learn or listen.

02:35
Don Spaulding
And so that was my real first interest in technology, was just as an adaptive tool and really became very involved in a whole bunch of different types of groups, different types of initiatives to bring more of that type of technology into schools, to kids, to really help provide them every resource or asset that we could provide for them to help them be successful. So through a whole series of turns, I began to work in a larger district, a school district, Syracuse City School District, and in that role began to use technology more on the data and the information side to support students.

03:25
Don Spaulding
So this was during some of the early years of no Child Left behind and some of the regulations and mandates that came out to really help kids really learn from us, doing more around assessment, gathering data and information, being able to take and utilize that data and information and apply it to strategies and methodologies in the classroom. So I became really involved information systems, data systems to really provide analysis over very large volumes of data. So I think the last year I was in the role, at that point in time, I was the director of evaluation, assessment and research. And I think we gave over, I think, 164,000 formal assessments that year in the district. So it was mounds and mounds of data.

04:24
Don Spaulding
So really, in the course of doing that, I began to work with different student information systems, different testing and assessment systems. And part of doing that is not only do you really become a user of those systems, you have to kind of start to learn a little bit about the systems, how to make sure that they’re, you know, the data and are correct, the capabilities and the tools and everything are commensurate with what your needs are. So I really started to become much more well versed in applications, technology, applications, specifically related to those systems. Had a new superintendent who came into the district who really didn’t understand that being a super user is a little bit different than being a technologist.

05:19
Don Spaulding
And so he really encouraged me and wanted me to kind of take on not just those systems and not just the assessments, but really wanted me to kind of run all. Anything that was digital, everything that. From information systems to network to communication systems to everything. So he asked me to take a role, and I became really what was the chief technology officer for that district. And so in the course of doing that, it’s a urban district that really was very technology poor. And so we had a lot of facilities that really, the infrastructure wasn’t good. And so I began to do some work and understand how using federal funding and state funding and grants could actually help a disadvantaged district, economically disadvantaged district, to secure assets.

06:15
Don Spaulding
And so we did, over the course of the last few years I was there in the district, did about an $80 million renovation to the district. And that actually caught a lot of attention. And it was really kind of noted by all a lot of different technology organizations, with Verizon being one of them. They’re one of the partners and one of the folks that we utilize to help with a lot of the network services that were building out there. And at one point in time, they came to me and asked me if maybe I could help teach other school districts, other educational institutions to do some similar things. And I thought it was a good opportunity and a new challenge. And so I moved from the world of education into the world of technology.

07:02
Don Spaulding
And here, for 17 years, have done all sorts of different things here and really have had a world of opportunity. At Verizon’s big company, you can reinvent yourself every couple years. And do something entirely new, which I’ve really taken advantage of and done. But that’s kind of the journey of how I went from psychologists giving IQ tests, Stamper, Bernays and Wechsler tests today we’re working on creating strategies to help customers with authentication and identity and help to defeat fraud and all the other things that become inherent with a lot of the systems and the interactions that our enterprise customers have with their customers and users. So today I largely support enterprises and their efforts to provide services back to their end consumers. So I’ve had quite a journey through my time here at Verizon, but that’s where I’m positioned today.

08:11
Ellie Tehrani
Wow, that is quite a journey. And I like how you started the interest with the idea that tech can actually be a differentiator to help people and provide access to those who need it the most, which I think a lot of people forget these days with some of the bad rep that the tech industry is getting. So it’s interesting for me to see someone from that background that you had come into this industry. From your perspective, what was the most significant culture shift or culture shock rather when you transitioned into this industry?

08:50
Don Spaulding
Really I was in a public service role when I was an educator to where you really become either a consumer or an enterprise service role, depending on which role I held. And I would say there were probably more similarities than differences. I would say the biggest differences really were around just process and availability of resources. It’s much more resource rich world here in the corporate side of the world. But the similarities I think were really more profound than the differences. And what I mean by that is that you had a focus on delivering quality services and helping whoever your customer was to be as successful as they could be.

09:46
Don Spaulding
Whether that’s a student, a school or that’s an individual consumer or that’s someone who’s part of your organization, that’s an internal customer that you’re providing capabilities or some type of technical resource to or whether that’s an enterprise where you’re a business that does business, that services tens of millions of consumers and you need to help equip them to be the best they can be in that mission. So those similarities were very, you know, they carry through, you know, just kind of keeping focused on how do you really help them be the best.

10:27
Ellie Tehrani
They could be and with your background. Because a lot of what we talk about on this show is regarding consumer behavior and understanding their needs and the constant challenges that comes with the changes in the world and how that affects the overall industries that we’re operating in. But in terms of understanding consumer behavior, how has your background in psychology affected your approach?

10:59
Don Spaulding
The background in the formal training and the opportunity that I’ve had to really kind of refine and hone those skills and those different strategies as a psychologist have translated in every role I’ve ever been in. Because largely being a psychologist is really largely about knowing how to ask the right questions and knowing how to listen and be able to take perspective and understand where whoever it is you’re interacting with is coming from and really being able to deliver to them what they need at a very fundamental level and actually be able to kind of take them on a journey to go from that very fundamental level through those communications and those interactions to really start to look at growth and enhancement. And that’s just a.

12:01
Don Spaulding
It’s just kind of how you learn to communicate very early in terms of your training as a psychologist, and that’s valuable. And, and, you know, I. Whether you come from a, the background, a background, you know, as a psychologist or whatever it is that you do, whether that’s in, you know, business, industry, whatever it is, learning those types of skills are super important to be able to again, interact and be able to connect with people in a way that you can provide value back to that interaction. So I use that without really thinking about it. It just after you do it for so long, it’s just how you kind of conduct yourself when you’re going through the steps of whatever it is you’re doing on any given day or during any given conversation or interaction.

12:54
Ellie Tehrani
Right. And you focus on customer retention, customer experiences. But in terms of the work that you do at Verizon, how does your organization use the data that you gather to improve and enhance the customer’s experience?

13:12
Don Spaulding
Yeah, so today I’m really focused on helping other people do that. So taking the experiences, the tools, the resources, the assets that we have as a company to help other enterprises and businesses really deliver the quality that they want back to their customers, whether those customers, again, be consumers, internal customers, whatever the customers may be. So, first of all, one of the things that we really try to do is just strategically understand the context of where a customer may be today and where the delta is between where they are today and where it is that they really want to kind of take the organization and learning really where the gaps are, really dictates the tools or the resources or the information or intelligence or data that need to be plugged in.

14:14
Don Spaulding
But it really starts with a fundamental understanding of as much about a customer as you can and really spending time with them in a deep and meaningful way. So I’ll do a lot of work where we’ll go into their contact centers and we’ll listen to calls, customers that call in and we’ll listen to calls, we’ll listen to how the people are trying to service the customers. We’ll look at the systems that they have in place, we’ll look at the processes that they have in place. We’ll do interviews, we’ll talk to as many people as we can with as many different perspectives, different roles in that organization. We really try to look at how does that connect to services that are delivered by other channels like the digital channels or social channels, and do the same kind of things with each of those channels.

15:16
Don Spaulding
So it really starts with gaining as much deep knowledge as you can. And really, and I have to honestly say one of the best ways to really learn a lot about a company is just to really see what that interface or what that kind of face forward position is with their customers. And you do that by sitting and listening to how they’re interacting with their customers or observing. And that’s really how I like to try to start. And that’s a, you know, that really, that generates a lot of data itself, you know, and that is, that’s kind of usually the beginning of the process of how we help.

16:01
Ellie Tehrani
So you’re combining a bit of the qualitative and quantitative. But in terms of the buy in from the customers, once you’ve gathered all this data and then telling the story of what they need to do next, how do you go about doing that to ensure that they see the ROI in that and that they follow through?

16:21
Don Spaulding
Yeah, so part of that assessment is we also do, we’ll do ROI analysis. So basically we’ll look at some data like call volume, average handle time, we’ll look at things like repeat calls, first call resolution. So there’s a lot of other more hard data elements that are part of that too. And that’s generally where you generate most of the ROI when you start to look at the interventions that you have in systems. So I think the best way to get buy in it starts with like really be able to demonstrate the benefits. But I think there’s more to it in that you’ve got to have some credibility and you’ve got to have some examples that you can point to that are very concrete and very real.

17:16
Don Spaulding
And so I think you have to be able to go back in and demonstrate so it’s great to see the ROI on a spreadsheet and a report, but I think it’s always been helpful when they can talk to someone who’s really got some very similar responsibilities or talk with an organization’s its mission is really similar, especially when they face similar challenges from the onset. The challenges that they had to overcome and finding different paths to overcome those challenges. One of the most affirming things I think, you know, whether you’re an individual or a business, is to really feel that there’s someone, another organization out there who’s experienced some of the same things that you’ve experienced and also ultimately found some success as they traveled through the journey of dealing with any challenges they might have.

18:12
Don Spaulding
So I think that’s super important to be able to engage customers in that respect as well.

18:18
Ellie Tehrani
And as we become increasingly more exposed to things like AI across various different verticals, what role do you think that technology will play when it comes to customer interactions and personalizing customer interactions?

18:40
Don Spaulding
I think there’s a huge opportunity for, to improve a lot of the self service aspects and even expand more of the self service capabilities that we have today. I think we’ve all been in situations where we experienced some of those interactions that are just not what we want them to be. You know, whether that’s, you know, some kind of conversational IVR or something that’s related to a bot or whatever it might be, we’ve seen the shortcomings. And I think just from an interactions perspective, there’s just, there’s a long ways that I think AI can take us to make that better. I think even in terms of what we can do with AI to help make people better.

19:30
Don Spaulding
So if you’re a contact center agent and someone’s calling in and you may find today that you’re kind of flying by the seat of your pants trying to see 9, 10, 12 different pop up screens on your computer to try to figure out how to solve that customer’s problem. I just, I think of all the things that we could do in terms of just knowledge management, being able to provide contextual questions and data around a caller and what that does to actually help empower a contact center agent to really, you know, service that customer the best way they can because they have all the information and all the tools and the capabilities, you know, kind of at their fingertips.

20:17
Don Spaulding
So that’s a big piece of, just in terms of the interaction that I believe it can support, the things that I think it can do to help free people to be able to focus on people, you know, so focus on having a conversation. Focus on being able to listen better, to connect and engage better. Because I’m not multitasking and I’m not doing five other things because I’ve got tools to help me do a lot of those things that otherwise I needed to do myself.

20:53
Don Spaulding
I also think it can help us elevate the really important and challenging types of conversations that have to be had between two people and really be able to help, again, utilize all the things that, you know, that we need people to do, while we have other types of tools to can help with some of the less challenging types of tasks. I see it as, and I know there’s a lot out there in terms of really trying to understand the risk and the rewards. And there’s definitely a need to really look at that very carefully and continually look at it too. It’s not something that I think you ever just can. Cannot attend to.

21:44
Don Spaulding
But I do believe that there’s enough upside and enough potential there that it’s really worth the efforts and the energies to keep doing it and keep trying to do it right. Do it in a way where you feel confident, you feel that the data that’s feeding some of these systems and these technologies is good data. You put in place checks and balances to be able to assess and measure, to test, to continually monitor the quality of the data, the quality of the responses. It’s an enormous area with enormous potential, but a lot of responsibility and a lot of effort and thoughtful consideration around how we want to really manage it and use it is going to be required.

22:37
Ellie Tehrani
So you’re talking about scenario where the automation sort of supports the human and allows the human touch to continue in that customer service approach. What are your thoughts on the idea of an AI agent who’s becoming increasingly more human and has not only the facts but also the tone and can do that same work as the human currently is doing? What are your thoughts on that in terms of customer service?

23:14
Don Spaulding
If that avails the opportunity for people to be able to do things that require deeper thinking, kind of more spontaneous thinking, you know, kind of divergent approaches to how you approach problems, I think that’s where there’s a good fit for that. And I do think that as you get, as the quality of those types of tools improve, it’s only going to better for consumers and customers because, you know, we want it to go well. We want it to, you know, to be natural. You know, you want it to be just Like I was talking to someone else. And if we can get there, I think that’s a benefit. I’m not really one of those people that it’s too concerned that we as people won’t find higher order things to do.

24:18
Don Spaulding
You know, it’s, I mean, if you just think historically, if you look at how we’ve evolved over the technology that’s developed over hundreds and hundreds of years, we just become better thinkers and better doers. And I really don’t have a lot of doubt that wouldn’t continue to happen. So I’m not as worried about that as I think some people are.

24:50
Ellie Tehrani
Next, I want to talk a little bit about a topic that has been increasingly concerning to a lot of consumers, which is the rise of the AI powered voice cloning and the increase in voice fraud. With these threats becoming more sophisticated and so many different websites that offer this technology. What steps are you in the industry as well as the government taking to create safety measures and better protect the general population?

25:28
Don Spaulding
Yeah, definitely. It’s a rising threat and it’s a real threat. And the level of sophistication that’s going into tools that really are being used for bad purposes are availed to a lot of people. So it’s not too hard to find the technology. In fact, I believe there’s some technologies out there that we’ve kind of played around a little bit with just to understand better what that some of these fraudsters and some of these people have access to when there’s actually free services to go out and clone voices. And it’s not terribly difficult to do. So it’s definitely something that we have to be in front of. Part of the issues that are presented today and why fraud has really grown so much across the voice and the text channels is largely because we’ve treated those channels a little bit differently than we’ve treated digital.

26:43
Don Spaulding
And not that there’s not some of those same things that are happening in digital, but any major institution has very strict frameworks and standards around cyber security. And there’s lots of practices and there’s things that related to adherence. Adherence, things that are related. You know, as an organization that you practice and follow that’s just like good cybersecurity hygiene. We haven’t seen those same practices largely around the voice and the SMS channels. So I think that they’re. And then often if you go to an organization, you’ll find that the fraud and voice teams are completely separate organizations and then the cyber teams are another separate organization. So you often find that they’re kind of divided across the company.

27:43
Don Spaulding
So the first thing that I think we really have to do is to develop frameworks and methodologies and practices to be able to be more thorough and more consistent and being able to stay ahead of those threats. Because you have all the same threats in the cyber world. We’ve just done a little bit better at staying in front of them there. And I do believe that a lot of it is because the voice and the SMS and some of the things you’re seeing around deepfakes, around voice and video, they’re emerging, they’re newer threats. So we’re still trying to work through that.

28:20
Don Spaulding
The other thing too is that one of the things I’m really focused on, and in fact I spend a great deal of my time right now is trying to work collaboratively with banking, retail, other organizations, in conjunction with law enforcement and regulatory agencies, and really trying together to pull all the pieces together to be able to better detect and defend against fraud. So, for example, if, you know, if I get a text message to click a link because someone wants me to approve a purchase with Walmart and my bank is, I don’t know, bank ABC of America or whatever it is. So if I click that link and I go through and turns out that was fraud and I, I lose money from my account or whatever may happen. So in my mind, a lot of different entities are affected by that.

29:31
Don Spaulding
So if you got the retailer whose name was used, you’ve got the bank who basically held the trust of the consumer who had to protect that consumer, and then you’ve got the mobile carriers who basically really kind of carry the whole platform to, you know, to be able to enable the voice and the text. And so if you think about all those different entities and how today they all fall in kind of little different places. I mean, they’re in different spaces. They really isn’t a lot of opportunity for all those entities to intersect today.

30:08
Don Spaulding
I’m trying really hard to work with organizations that help us to bring all of those entities together because ultimately the way we’re going to stop this is we’re going to have to be able to, to find people who are perpetrating the fraud and we’ve got to be able to prove the effect that they’re having and we ought to be able to build a case like we do anything else legally to be able to go after and stop it. And so we work with several different organizations today that actually they’re nonprofit organizations that their job is to bring all those entities together. And so I like to really do what we can do to help, you know, lift our participation in those types of activities.

30:54
Don Spaulding
So to answer your question, it’s going to start with us, you know, of course, having tools and technologies that help us better detect, you know, fraudulent activities. And there are tools out there that actually, that we use today that actually can tell when a voice has been synthesized or a video has been synthesized with a great deal of assurance. And we continue to tune and make sure those products become better and better. So we do have to look at the tools and those capabilities.

31:23
Don Spaulding
But more importantly, we’ve got to work together across industries to really combat the things that are going on out there and make sure that we all take our piece of the puzzle, bring it together, to assemble the whole puzzle, to be able to allow law enforcement and folks to get out there and find the people and the organizations that are doing that. And it’s not easy to do. A lot of these organizations that are backing a lot of this are organizations that are associated with horrible things. The, the. A lot of this activity is not related to, you know, people just putting money in their pockets. The funding is often used to support terrorism, human trafficking, drug cartels. A lot of the really horrible things that unfortunately go on in our world, they get funded out of some of this activity.

32:17
Don Spaulding
So it’s a, it’s a challenge. But it starts with us all trying to work together to solve it together.

32:24
Ellie Tehrani
I guess the partnership as well works because the objective of those different stakeholders is aligned. And I think that’s the difficulty sometimes with making partnerships and collaborations work. The objectives are widely different, but in this case, everyone wins from this being successful. But what role do you think the government should play? For instance, I’ve heard there is legislation coming, assuming the bill passes, that would require companies to watermark AI generated content so consumers could get a warning if they’re, for instance, listening to a fake audio. And somehow if they are harmed by the fake content, they could sue. Now, who they sue, we don’t know. But do you think measures like these could be implemented and enforced?

33:19
Don Spaulding
I think to a degree they could be. The problem with mandating a technical solution is that by the time you get it mandated and you get the technology in place, the technology is no longer relevant or it’s not meeting its purpose. So I think the government, to the largest extent possible, should do everything it can to create standards around how organizations and companies need to behave and what they really need to be able to do, to be responsible both to one another and to the consumers. But I do think that a lot of what needs to take place really does kind of fall in the hands of like minded people who really want to put an end to what is a very difficult and terrible problem. It affects so many people in such terrible ways.

34:19
Don Spaulding
And I’ve always thought that when you get committed people to solving a problem, I think that probably does a lot more than regulation does. Not that there isn’t a role for regulation and I definitely think regulation should be a part of enabling organizations and people to address the problem. But I wouldn’t, I don’t think I want to sit around and wait for that.

34:45
Ellie Tehrani
You mentioned tools to try to detect some of these frauds. Sometimes when new technology is implemented to improve security, it comes at a price for the customer experience, so to speak. How do you balance that in terms of building trust while maintaining that ease of use and innovation and overall improved customer experience?

35:18
Don Spaulding
Yeah, so I think that the balance is tipped a little bit right now in that I think that in an effort to protect our customers, we made doing business with us pretty difficult. And so what I, I think we’ll see happen is I believe that we’re going to find better technologies around identity and authentication. I think we’re going to be able to find ways in which we can, with greater assurance without like knowledge based questions, without a lot of the things that we know basically or floating around on most of us out on the dark web, it’s not very hard to, you know, go figure out what my birthday is and my street address and phone number. And that’s true of everybody. So I think as we start to find ways to better with digital identity, that path to authentication becomes much easier.

36:22
Don Spaulding
That’s where I think a lot of like the universal services that we all as consumers take part in, you know, like whether that’s a driver’s license or whether that’s my cell phone or whether that’s my, you know, my Social Security number, whatever it is, we start to get better at protecting and digitizing those things and create kind of a metadata profile for identity that is just very difficult for anyone but us to duplicate it. I do believe that’s probably the answer when the, you know, really the balance starts to flip back the other way where we make things easier for consumers. And a lot of that is, in some ways that’s scary for consumers because how do I give you my trust when today I found it very difficult, and not every business has earned it. We read about data breaches, like, every day.

37:31
Don Spaulding
So it’s a matter of us as corporations taking responsibility and more ownership of making sure that we’re protecting those consumers. So we have that trust so we can start to use the data and the information that comes out from a lot of those types of services and assets that I just rattled off a minute ago to be able to pull together that metadata, identity. That can only be me. And it’s a process. It’s going to take some time and it’s going to take some successes, smaller successes. So we started talking about being able to be more collaborative at detecting and being able to prevent fraud. That’s a good step forward.

38:20
Don Spaulding
If I get a phone call and I don’t recognize a phone call and I’m not afraid to pick it up because we’ve stopped spam calls, we’ve stopped scammers from calling me, that’s an incremental win, and that’s establishing trust. So let’s start to just knock off some of those things that we can, you know, make incremental winnings, wins, you know, as incremental wins, and start to reestablish trust. You know, it’s, it go again. We’ll take this back to the, you know, analogy that’s, that as a psychologist, you would use, you know, is, you know, when I, you know, I meet a new person, I don’t immediately establish trust. It’s something over time, through iterations of seeing that, you know, in that interaction with a person, that trust builds and grows.

39:10
Don Spaulding
And I think as businesses and corporations, the relationship we have with consumers, we have to just incrementally rebuild that trust. And that comes with showing some successes and wins and protecting them.

39:24
Ellie Tehrani
And do you think part of that trust at consumer level also has to do with the lack of knowledge or lack of information, rather that consumers aren’t as informed of what happens to their data. And when they give up some of their privacy rights, how does that benefit them? How is the data stored? Do you think it could benefit organizations to be a bit more transparent in that regard?

39:55
Don Spaulding
It could. And I, and I have to say that I don’t always, I don’t see that all the time today. So let me just use an example. So if I have the same set of data, and that data serves the purpose of helping me better protect my consumer, but it also serves the purpose of me helping to sell more things to my consumer if I’m A consumer. My, my trust in that business is going to be a lot higher if I’m seeing them use that data to protect me rather than to sell me something. I think we have to be clear when we actually use that data to say that’s what we’re doing with it. And if you don’t want us to do that, it should be really easy for you to tell me that. And I don’t do it anymore.

40:49
Don Spaulding
And we have to really. And, and it becomes so complicated. It’s so, it’s very complicated. If you really just look at the complexities of, like, digital marketing and, you know, how that all takes place, it’s very difficult for someone to, you know, to truly grasp that if that’s not something they’re immersed in every day. But quite simply, I could say I have your name, address and your phone number and I want to use that data. I promise to protect it and not let anyone else get it. And so the way I want to use it are these five different ways. And we’ll just use the example. I want to be able to use it to market to you. I want to use it to provide other people to market to you.

41:33
Don Spaulding
I want to use it to be able to protect your identity and help us to make sure that when you call us that we get you to the right person as quickly as it can or the right system or service. We should very clearly spell that out. And just like I’m ordering from a menu, you know, I’ll take these two items, but I’m not going to take, you know, that one. So that’s, that’s a really big start because not a lot of companies are doing that today. Not in a simple way.

42:02
Ellie Tehrani
We’ll talk a little bit about the innovations that you’re seeing out of telecoms. What are some of the latest that you’re most excited about in this space?

42:12
Don Spaulding
Oh, yeah. So one that’s actually very cool is that. So when someone calls me, you know, I know that if I see a phone number come through and it, and it only will appear with a name if it’s in my contacts, I generally don’t answer it and I don’t think most people answer it. So things that we’re doing around branding calls to be able to really 100% sure that knows that, you know, if I’m for Verizon and I’m calling you, and if it says Verizon, it’s really Verizon, you know, and you know for sure when you pick it up that it is that I think that’s really cool. So we’re really, you know, we’re really developing a lot of cool things like that too.

42:56
Don Spaulding
And then some other things, like we’re, I know that we do like some, you know, like some spam filtering and some will actually brand some things that, you know, say, potential, you know, scam or potential spam or whatever that might be. But not everything is cut and dry. So just because an unknown call comes through over time, all of the things that are associated with the activity of that phone number actually builds a reputation. And so like, why not like really be able to give someone a score of the reputation of that phone call coming in? So that way I know whether I want to take it or not. Because if it is a call, it doesn’t happen to be branded and it’s important and it’s really coming from a reputable organization or whatever it might be.

43:53
Don Spaulding
As a consumer, I should be able to look at that and say, yeah, that’s legitimate. I don’t know who it is, but it’s legitimate. I’m pick it up. So those are some interesting things that we’re doing. Trying to really to merge the voice in the video world. I think is really exciting and being able to converge, you know, those different types of channel experiences together. A lot of what we’re really trying to do in terms of providing AI types of capabilities on device that a lot of the OEMs are doing today and introducing really quickly. I think that’s super exciting. I mean, we all have gone through the SM doing a text and it kind of autocorrect as you go along and not really correcting it the way you want it to be.

44:50
Don Spaulding
So like you can just think about like your experiences as a consumer and how like AI is. It could just be the difference of making it just so much better than what it is today. And I think in the next 12 to 18 months we’re going to see like a lot of that translate. So I think that’s super exciting because it just makes, when you’re making life easier to communicate, then you’re certainly winning the confidence of your consumers. And I think, you know, Verizon and the other carriers are doing some super great things all in those spaces and then just making things easier for people too.

45:35
Don Spaulding
You know, if I need to, you know, order a new device or I need to be able to, you know, be able to service A tech issue or whatever it might be that I need to as a customer just making that easier and part of what one of the things we’re really focused on is being able to make experiences similar across the channels. So you know, so basically it’s not like you’ve moved in a whole new world just because I went from my phone call to having to stop in the store and I had a colleague who was a customer experience designer and so he never really liked the term like omnichannel or cross channel.

46:22
Don Spaulding
He basically just would push past it and say my idea of cross channel or omni experiences, it’s just I don’t have to start over every time I move from one channel to the next. So if I can kind of just pick up from where I left off, then that’s a good experience. So you know, using the technology and a lot of the things that we have that’s available to us and developing today, I think is we’re going to see a lot more results from that.

46:51
Ellie Tehrani
You mentioned ensuring that you know, the technology works across different channels, different devices, et cetera. But how much emphasis are organizations within telecoms in particular putting on diversity of the consumer and ensuring that it works across different age groups, different backgrounds, different abilities and so forth. Particularly as we move towards more of the AI and the machine learning in customer service.

47:26
Don Spaulding
Yeah, I think that’s a really important question. And I, and I see it in terms of when you start looking at different groups. There’s you know, there’s age groups, there’s social, economic groups, you know, there’s there even your geospatially located groups, you know, where you live, there’s a lot of diversity there. One of the things that I think is really becoming a Great equalizer is 5G and the ability to provide super high bandwidth, low latency types of data services help. And like for example, if I’m say I’m an elderly person and you know, and I, you know, I may not understand how to use a particular application.

48:24
Don Spaulding
Well, because of some of the limitations of how you could connect, you probably wouldn’t have a lot of options to be able to do like an interactive video on the same device a person was trying to learn a new application that would be very difficult. So now if you have all this extra bandwidth to spare, like let’s start using those types of capabilities and technologies. So like let’s really try to expand upon on how we make, create like a service industry around the individual experiences and the unique experiences of People to meet them, where they’re at, you know, when we’re in urban communities, like the community that I used to be in when I was back up in the education world, you know, a student, for example, when they went home, most of them did not have Internet connectivity.

49:21
Don Spaulding
And so can we now, with more affordable wireless types of connectivity, try to see if we can make devices and some of the tools to access that more affordable. So how do we help fund some of those things and disadvantaged communities? We do a lot of work at Verizon. I know that we work with several of the largest urban districts here in the US and provide them a lot of technology, both the network access as well as a lot of the tools to be able to take and expand those experiences that students and teachers really can teach and learn around. The same is true where we need to do that more to address audiences, like you said, the elderly. How do we, how do we take a device?

50:17
Don Spaulding
And this is kind of something that the carriers and OEMs have to try to team up on. How do we take a device and be able to make it accessible? You know, make it so however that person needs to interact, they can do that in a successful way. I have an 81 year old mother who really struggled to see her cell phone and I just keep buying her bigger cell phones. But she has the font as large as you can get it. And the problem with that is it’s hard to navigate the device because you can’t see the home screen very well. You can’t see all the applications. So how do we take that and make that experience better? Not just like making the letters bigger, but how do we make the access different and bigger?

51:07
Don Spaulding
There’s much more opportunity out there than I think, I think the road to becoming successful that is longer than the journey we’ve taken so far. There’s a lot of opportunity to better at that.

51:23
Ellie Tehrani
I want touch a little bit about the customer retention lessons overall that you’ve learned over your career at Verizon. Could you talk us through some of the key lessons?

51:37
Don Spaulding
I’m really dating myself, but when I first started working at Verizon, customer acquisition and retention were two very separate things because today the smart device market is largely saturated. I forget what the statistic is, but very few people over the age of 12 don’t own some kind of smart device. So customer retention is the most important thing. So we want to make sure that we’re really optimizing everything we can do to help that customer be Happy and differentiating by providing better, higher quality experiences. And that’s looked different over time. It’s really changed a lot over time. Today, I think it’s largely focused on consistency of experience.

52:44
Don Spaulding
As we talked about a little bit before, making sure that I’ve learned the process on how to interact and I’ve learned the process and the mechanisms on how to go about getting what I need as a consumer and keeping that consistent across all of the channels. I think for most people, we’d rather be able to take care of a problem without having to get on a call and talk to somebody. So making sure those tools are there to be able to easily do that. And then if it is a problem that’s not easy to service yourself, being able to make that experience super easy and really successful when you do have to be able to take a different route than just being able to click something through an application or an app.

53:34
Don Spaulding
I also think continuing to understand your customer base and what their evolving needs are is super important. So it’s really essential that you have continual feedback loops between how you’re servicing and the way the customers want to be serviced and the tools that those feedback loops drive and being able to really access, develop and put those tools out and available to the consumer quickly. So we do a lot, I think, around trying to expedite getting things to customers that they want. I think it also has a lot to do with partnerships. You know, we kind of. We kind of exist. You know, we kind of exist in a world of. This is a large part of our world. So can we enhance and brighten all of the things that exist in that world that’s on your device?

54:39
Don Spaulding
So can we bring to you experiences through that device that differentiate? Can we enrich some of the things individuals want to really have experiences around through that device and keep that fresh and changing and relevant? I think there’s a lot of different dimensions to that. It’s, again, I’d kind of go back to the most important thing is understanding customer base and how it changes. Not taking a snapshot of what you think customers want today and then holding onto that snapshot a year from now and thinking that’s still what they want, because it probably will change much quicker than that.

55:27
Ellie Tehrani
Looking at pre pandemic, post pandemic has meant significant changes. So I think that’s a big risk that organizations take when they assume that things stay as they are for corporations and larger companies. They will have customer service strategies in there as part of their DNA. But what if I come to you And I have a small business startup and looking to improve our customer retention, how to better use our customers data and how to better protect that data. What advice would you give to a company like that?

56:07
Don Spaulding
I think a lot of the same resources and tools that are available to large corporations are there for small and medium businesses as well. I think the biggest challenge is that they’re not going to have a whole team of cybersecurity people. They’re not going to have a whole, you know, group of voice technicians. I mean, so they’re going to have to kind of be the jack of all trades. So I think like we can be a resource there. You know, we, we do one of the things that we do and one of the things I, I like to do is that I like to you like use us as an example of how we deal with something similar.

56:55
Don Spaulding
So if you have someone who says I want to learn how to best look at things like a chatbot, we’ll just say for example, or how to, you know, optimize your website. Well, one of the great things about Verizon is that we’re an enormous consumer company which most people know us for. And you know, we do a lot of work and we support a lot of large enterprises, small, medium businesses, mom and pop shop, you know, we really support the gamut. So let use, utilize a lot of those experiences and that expertise to help you understand it. Because we had to go through it too, you know, we had to kind of walk that path as well, whatever that experience might be.

57:42
Don Spaulding
So I often try to utilize some of our own internal resources to kind of, you know, to talk about best practices and experiences and things like that. So we can certainly do that. We try to do that a lot, you know, to be able to do, you know, FAQs and things like that we put out there to help support. We do a lot to help educate our contact center agents to be able to ask questions, to be able to provide a lot of that support too. So we develop tons and tons of content and material around almost every conceivable topic that you could possibly think of. So I would really suggest, you know, pick up the phone and call if you’re not sure, you know, then, or if it’s not something that’s readily available on the website or that’s out there.

58:33
Don Spaulding
We, you know, we do have a lot of dedicated resources for small and medium business that are digital and people resources. But yeah, I mean you use your service providers and so if it’s not, I mean, not just like your carriers, but, you know, if you have a point of sale system, for example, you know, the small medium business folks are, you know, they’re an enormous part of the success of those businesses. I’d really recommend you go back and you tap your, the person who sold you that pos, the person who sold you that mobile device, you know, whoever sold you whatever you need to make your business operate, make them more than just a vendor, make them a partner in your success.

59:16
Don Spaulding
I mean, you know, advocate for yourself, get out there and basically say, a part of me giving you my business is that you need to help me be successful too. So I’m going to use you as a partner, not just someone I bought something from.

59:30
Ellie Tehrani
And as a consumer, you gave some great advice there to the organization. But as a consumer, what advice would you give all of us in the sense of if we have fears about privacy, of fraud, what would you say to the consumer to do today?

59:52
Don Spaulding
The one thing that I would suggest today is you minimize your digital exposure right now that you look at whether or not it’s really essential to have a card on file for a particular business, whatever it might be that you’re really careful about, where you share a lot of that information, a lot of those details. If you’re able to have services in place. You know, I know I use a couple of different services just to, I get like a monthly alert that fortunately always says, hey, it looks like you’re okay. There’s other services that are, everybody has that now. Today I think businesses are trying to help consumers by saying, hey, you know that password was using a data leak.

01:00:35
Don Spaulding
When that, you see that means something, it’s important, it’s inconvenient to have to keep going and changing them, can’t ever remember what you change them to. But you know, it’s, it goes back to the digital identity thing. So maybe someday we’ll not need to worry about that. But yeah, I mean, and also work on the assumption that the people who are out there doing very nefarious and bad things have a lot of information about us already. So don’t make their job any easier. So protect everything and assume that, you know, you have protected it, but know that there’s a possibility that you may not have, pay close attention to that. Yeah, I mean, I think those are a few of the things. The other thing too is that, you know, ask questions, you know, read things carefully.

01:01:27
Don Spaulding
When you make commitments to defer some of your information to someone. I know some of the terms and conditions. You have to be an attorney to understand them, but at least understand the highlights of who’s going to get your information and what’s going to be used for. You could just scan the document to at least look at that. And if there’s things there that make you uncomfortable, I don’t know of many things that are really worth signing those terms and conditions if it really is something that could be damaging to you. But yeah, inform yourself as much as you can.

01:02:04
Ellie Tehrani
Great advice. Don, before we wrap up for today, is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like our listeners to learn more about?

01:02:15
Don Spaulding
I think the one thing that again, I think I would kind of just restate is that recognize that as a consumer you have a lot of choices and as you make those choices, feel good about the people who you’re choosing to do business with, the people you’re choosing to share your information with. And sometimes it’s good to learn and understand what early is entailed and forming those relationships, but do everything you can to. Again, I’ll go back to the analogy. If you were going and you were meeting a new person for the first time and you were going through the process of establishing trust with that person.

01:02:58
Don Spaulding
That same process exists when you’re, you know, you’re really choosing to do business with a business, you know, and so make them earn your trust, you know, really, you know, make sure you have a level of comfort before you dive in, you know, with both feet. It really, in the long run, I think it’ll mean that you’ll have a much healthier and a longer term relationship with whoever it is that you’re doing business with.

01:03:28
Ellie Tehrani
Brilliant advice, everyone. Do your due diligence. Thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure to have you. Thanks once again. Sa.

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