In April, Verizon's CEO of its consumer group, Sowmyanarayan Sampath, dropped a cryptic teaser on his LinkedIn Page: "Project 624. All about the customer. Coming soon." And then… nothing more about it. Until today.
Now we know that 624 represents the date, June 24, and the project is an ambitious customer service program intended to make it so subscribers can resolve issues by contacting Verizon just once. And yes, AI is involved, but don't roll your eyes just yet.
Sampath laid out changes to the customer experience that went live today just before revealing Project 624's details on a call. These changes include a team dedicated to satisfying customers in their first call (called the Customer Champion team) and improvements to the myVerizon app that leverage Google Gemini AI technology. There's also expanded live customer agent hours and 24/7 live chat and a larger footprint of physical Verizon stores. The company will also offer more perks and giveaways.
In an open letter laying out the carrier's new customer service initiative published today, the consumer group CEO also included a direct email address, [email protected], for customers to contact him.
But before we get into the specifics of what's new, I wondered if today's announcements were a direct reaction to the most recent quarter in which the company lost nearly 300,000 customers in the first quarter of 2025. Is the carrier boosting customer service to win back more subscribers?
"That's a very fair question," Sampath said. "The answer is quite straight: Every first quarter we lose customers, that's the seasonality of the business. So this has nothing to do with our first quarter of business. This has to do with the two, three year transformation that we are in the middle of."
He explained that improving customer experience is the next step after his prior efforts to revamp Verizon's sales infrastructure and price plans.
Verizon may be the first carrier to get AI in its customer service platforms, but it's not the only one thinking of including it. Last September, T-Mobile announced that it was partnering with OpenAI to include a new artificial intelligence offering to help customers, which would launch sometime in 2025. Whether Verizon's system will get a leg up depends on what it's got in store for helping subscribers get their essential questions answered.
Harnessing AI to create Customer Champions
Customer service for any industry is difficult, but that's compounded for large mobile players like Verizon that provide connectivity for millions of customers across large swathes of area and technological hardware. And because phones have gained outsized importance in our lives, having something go wrong with one's link to the outside world can ratchet up frustration.
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