Summary
In this session, you will learn about Verizon’s model for transforming and scaling our CX operations and design practices, and how establishing a set of Experience Principles has played a critical role in elevating and democratizing CX across the organization.
Key Insights
-
•
Verizon’s design group is positioned under marketing, which influences design advocacy and resource allocation.
-
•
A company’s design maturity level dictates whether the focus is on evangelism or operationalization of design.
-
•
Distinguishing CX (customer experience) from UX (user experience) allows for a broader omni-channel approach.
-
•
Verizon created three core experience principles—meaningful, human, and responsible—with three attributes each to guide CX efforts.
-
•
Experience principles must align with company values, customer needs, and industry best practices to be effective.
-
•
Using familiar language tailored to a broad audience maximizes adoption beyond just design teams.
-
•
Leadership buy-in, especially from executives like the CMO, is crucial for promoting and embedding experience principles.
-
•
Collecting customer feedback via surveys based on experience principles enables quantitative measurement of design impact.
-
•
Experience principles act as high-level guiding stars, with product teams potentially needing more prescriptive, project-specific design principles beneath them.
-
•
Cross-functional collaboration and cultural readiness around customer-centricity are essential for successful CX transformation projects.
Notable Quotes
"Customer experience refers to the collection of interactions someone has with the brand, agnostic of channel or touchpoint."
"Our design group is positioned under marketing, which tells us a lot about who our design influencers are."
"Design maturity means the level of impact that design has across the organization, not just within design teams."
"We needed a set of experience principles as our North Star to define what customer experiences we are aspiring to deliver."
"The goal for experience principles was to align business goals with customer needs, not just create how-to design principles."
"Using familiar language from our company values like reliability made the principles feel more natural and adoptable."
"Getting leadership buy-in from our CMO was a lucky break that helped promote and amplify our experience principles at the brand level."
"We’re piloting customer surveys asking if experiences were honest, simple, and reliable to translate principles into metrics."
"Experience principles sit at the top and product teams create prescriptive design principles that ladder up to them."
"Culture that values customer focus is key before expecting widespread adoption of experience principles outside the design team."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We had no budget, no backing, but we started looking at competitors and created something ourselves."
Jennifer KanyamibwaCreating the Blueprint: Growing and Building Design Teams
November 8, 2018
"If you put more in than you take out of a repository, that’s a good rule of thumb."
Brigette Metzler Dana ChrisfieldResearch Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community (Videoconference)
August 27, 2020
"A cross-functional project in name only means people report back to their management silos, not to the project team."
Carl TurnerYou Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
March 28, 2023
"Sometimes you have to make something wrong on purpose to learn and improve it with others’ help."
John Mortimer Milan Guenther Lucy Ellis Patrick QuattlebaumPanel Discussion
December 3, 2024
"Fifty percent of our designers were already active in coaching or mentoring, yet there was a call for a different mentorship flavor."
Dante GuintuHow to Crush the Talent Crunch
September 8, 2022
"Fourth order design is about understanding the system structure and how we intervene to create new pathways of experience."
Richard BuchananCreativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Shemus Bern is going to talk about how you drop into a client site and grok what’s going on without losing why they hired you."
Dan WillisTheme 3: Intro
January 8, 2024
"I may have failed, but I am not a failure."
Dan WardFailure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
February 7, 2025
"Generative workshops such as design sprints can devolve into political theater if we’re not careful."
Chris GeisonTheme Two Intro
March 28, 2023