Tami, welcome,
and thank you for agreeing to talk with us today
about your experiences with COVID at Verizon.
Of course.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
I just want to get started and talk a little bit about
how Verizon has managed
through this crisis overall
and how it's gone for you from
an overall business perspective.
What are the highlights that you'd point out?
We start first with, how do we protect the 135,000
of Verizon employees that are represented around the world?
And that was the common framing and infrastructure
that we had at Verizon was to say,
"Our employees' safety has to be first and foremost."
But it was followed very quickly thereafter
by the responsibility, the acknowledgement
that our core connectivity, and so many of the other
services that we provide, are essential to our customers
and that as we thought about how we manage this crisis,
recognizing the responsibility to shareholders.
But also to a fourth stakeholder
we've spent a lot of time at Verizon
talking about over the last year,
and that is society at large.
How was it that you were able to move so quickly
on so many different fronts during the crisis?
There's a line in our credo that says we run to a crisis,
and we have practiced that year, after year, after year,
whether it's hurricanes or wildfires.
This was a different crisis.
This was a health crisis,
and the way that the entire organization rallied to say,
"We have a single priority,
which is employee safety above all else."
We knew that we had that responsibility,
and I think our ability to galvanize and say,
"It's all hands on deck around protecting the health
and well-being of our employees"
gave us the ability to say,
"Do whatever is required to make sure that we deliver on
that as the first priority,"
because we knew that if we could do that,
we then would have the assets with which
to serve our customers.
We, as the senior leadership team,
had daily briefings where we were all plugged in
and engaged in a way that said,
"How do we have a common framework,
and then how do we have really good communication?"
We had a noon broadcast, five days a week,
that went out to the world
that talked about what we were doing
and what actions we were taking,
and I think that was super important as well.
So everybody had the same information,
everybody had the same objective and goal,
and speed was essential.
What about your customers?
What were some of the challenges you faced
in supporting and serving your customers
as the crisis unfolded?
How could we be the partner of choice
to make sure they had the bandwidth capability,
they had VPN capability,
they had call center capability?
Because so many businesses went from
a retail front-door presence, to having
to have a call center functionality
and expanded capability,
and so really being there to help provide
their business continuity, disaster recovery acceleration.
You know, it's interesting in small
and medium businesses, are
small and medium businesses greater than 50%
when they closed that front door,
they did not have a digital front door.
So their business was essentially completely shut,
and we've done a lot of work for small businesses.
I'm really proud of the work that we've done here to say,
"How do we show up on behalf of giving them
the tools that are required to be successful?"
Are there any other things you want to highlight
in terms of how you've engaged either with the public
or the social sector, in terms of the impact you're having
in communities or society as a whole?
We go into schools; we go into communities;
we provide teachers and students with technology
to be able to learn electronically;
we teach teachers how to use curriculum
that is delivered via video and platforming capability;
and it's a game-changer.
And part of doing that is, we're delivering it now on 5G
and with the BlueJeans platforming capabilities.
As you reflect back on the successes that you've had,
which are the lessons that you've learned
through this crisis and some of the successes
that you will want to take forward as part
of your overall strategy or how you operate?
What I think we will carry into a post-COVID environment,
is the expectation that we can do things
faster than we could have ever imagined.
We proved that anything was possible
and that everything we do needs to be balanced
on who we're serving across all four of our stakeholders.
Customers have always been important;
employees are core to everything we do;
shareholders are why we do what we do;
but at the end of the day, bringing society in
and making sure that as a corporation,
we have accountability for doing what's right
for our business,
doing what's right for our employees,
and doing what's right on behalf of society is so important.
What are the key questions that you and the team
are trying to answer
in terms of the path forward for Verizon?
There's a couple that, for me, really stand out.
One is healthcare.
I will never sit in a doctor's office sick again,
nor will you,
because 70%, 80% of visits are now being done
via video platforms.
Think about building the capability that's in,
that biometrics that you can easily use,
and it changes the availability of healthcare for everyone,
and I think that is a game-changer.
Tami,
thanks again for speaking with us today,
we really appreciate it.
Of course.
Thanks so much for the opportunity to tell our story.