What Do Mastercard And Verizon Anticipate Will Be The Next Major Breakthrough In Ai-

Benzinga

Join Benzinga for a Live, Virtual Summit spotlighting the Titans of AI - featuring the hottest innovators, platforms and providers reshaping business and finance today.  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)

Transcript

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.

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