Since its establishment in 2001, Verizon Data Services, the Indian subsidiary company of Verizon Communications, has been delivering innovation in communications, information and entertainment. The company works with its US team to develop IT applications for better operations support systems (OSS), business support systems (BSS), self-service solutions, mobile/field workforce solutions, enterprise resource planning, customer care, new products and services and remote infrastructure management. Vishal Bhasin, Senior Delivery Head, Verizon Data Services India talks about the company?s portfolio of products and the emerging trends in the adoption of IT solutions?
Could you talk about your journey at Verizon as well as what your current role entails?
My journey with Verizon started in 2001 when I was hired from the University of Southern California after I completed my master?s degree in Computer Science. I was selected to be part of a Verizon program designed to develop future leaders for the organisation. The journey, so far, has been exhilarating. There is hardly a dull day at work. Every day brings new challenges and new learning opportunities. The environment here is always bursting with energy and a passion to drive the business forward. Above all, we have unwavering focus on winning our customers, every day.
My current role as a senior delivery head involves defining and enabling the desired experience for customers who interact with Verizon through various touch points?online, mobile, TV or voice portal–by using technology and innovation. I also manage the enterprise data warehouse platform, which helps provide key insights into customer behavior and their expectations.
Could you talk about some of the innovative solutions that are being developed at VDS India?
At Verizon, customer experience is at the heart of all the innovations we work on. And our first touch point with customers is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) on our Voice Portal. We spearheaded the Voice Portal project, along with the technical transformations required to migrate dialogic to IP. From touch tone to speech and later from speech to natural language processing, we have revolutionised the entire experience for the customer. The Voice Portal is no longer a reactive application that tries to find the call intent from the customer but a proactive tool which is capable of providing predictive and personalised service by anticipating the next best action for the customer. Those days are well behind us when our customer care centers would be flooded with calls by customers during network outages. The Voice Portal is geared up to provide automated outage messaging and troubleshooting options whenever a customer calls during an outage.
How have the IT needs changed in the recent past? How has VDS India responded to these changes?
Today, customers are empowered with information at their fingertips and a multitude of choices for voice and data services. With the social media explosion, customers have an array of platforms to provide their feedback, share their experience, flag issues and influence decisions. Customer-focused organisations like Verizon must constantly listen to what our customers are telling us– and what they are sometimes not telling us. Data analytics equips us with insights that help us to make the right decisions and direct our efforts to where it matters the most for enhancing our customers? experience. We also stay abreast of technology advancements, which assist us to anticipate and cater to growing customer needs. When our customers are spoilt for choice, we know we have had a good day at work.
What technologies are likely to foresee increased adoption in the coming years? How has VDS India planned to tap these in the future?
Technological innovations as well as the information revolution have effected a major transformation in the communications industry in the last decade. This trend will continue in future and the communications industry will potentially play an active role in transforming other industries ? automotive, entertainment, home automation, etc. As the mobile communication penetration rate is quickly reaching 100 per cent, it is also opening avenues for machine-to-machine communication. A rough estimate suggests that by 2020, the ratio of machine-type communication to human-type communication would be 30:1. A series of innovations at Verizon IT, of which VDS India is a part, are directed to facilitate the Internet of Things. The ubiquity of broadband provides a basis for cloud computing. Subsequently, cloud computing will heavily rely on secure and reliable networks. Verizon will continue with its focus on providing its customers, with secure and reliable network options.
