While many are worried about AI replacing our jobs, Verizon is giving us a reason to worry. Verizon’s CEO, Dan Schulman, said at the Bloomberg Tech conference this week that he expects artificial intelligence to replace a “large percentage” of the work that customer service representatives do.
Obviously, this would be a way for Verizon to boost financial performance and improve customer satisfaction. There’s definitely a good amount of tasks that AI can do, faster and probably better, than a customer service agent in a call center. Like helping someone get back into their account, or getting an eSIM sent over to their new device.
Schulman also said that he’s certain AI will cause “disruption in certain job functions”. Though he does remain bullish on the technology’s ability to help customers get answers to easy queries.
Implementing AI is part of Schulman’s overall strategy to reinvigorate the largest US wireless carrier, which has had sluggish growth in recent years. A big part of that is the fact that most people don’t want to switch carriers, and most people already have phones.
Verizon is setting $20 million aside to help retrain employees for AI
Unlike some companies that are laying off employees so they can invest more in AI – looking at you, Meta – Verizon is instead setting aside around $20 million to help retrain employees for the AI era. This includes how to write effective prompts and create AI agents. About 7,000 Verizon employees have already applied for the assistance.
Verizon is currently one of the largest employers in the US, with just under 90,000 employees. Seeing around 7,000 already apply for this assistance is quite impressive actually, that’s about 7% of its workforce. It’ll be interesting to see how jobs are reallocated in the age of AI, especially at a place that relies so heavily on customer service agents.
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