Twenty-eight thousand people. That’s how many customer care reps and retail associates Verizon has answering questions every day. For years, the job looked the same for all of them: a customer asks something, the rep digs through a knowledge base, the customer waits. Sometimes the answer is right. Sometimes it isn’t. Either way, it’s slow.
Verizon didn’t set out to replace those people. The goal was simpler and harder: make all 28,000 of them as effective as the best ones.
The Personal Research Assistant
The solution Verizon built with Google Cloud is called the “Personal Research Assistant.” It runs on Vertex AI and Gemini, and it works the way a good colleague would: listening in on the conversation, figuring out what the customer probably needs next, and having the answer ready before the rep has to ask. No switching tabs. No digging through documentation. The agent types a question and gets an immediate response.
Verizon also deployed a second tool called “Problem Solver,” which handles more complex troubleshooting cases. It’s especially useful for newer reps who haven’t yet built up the experience to navigate complicated issues quickly.
The results Verizon announced in April 2025 put a number on it: 95% comprehensive answerability across their customer inquiries. That’s not a benchmark. That’s a daily operational reality for 28,000 frontline workers.
What 95% Actually Means
A stat like that is easy to gloss over. Here’s what it actually means: a customer who calls about a billing dispute, a technical problem, or a plan upgrade is almost certain to reach someone who has the right answer immediately. Not after the rep puts them on hold. Not after a supervisor gets involved. Right there in the conversation.
The downstream effects are real. Faster resolution times. Better first-call close rates. Less after-call documentation. Newer reps who can handle complex cases from their first week instead of their first year. These are the kinds of improvements that show up in contact center economics in ways that are very easy to measure.
The same AI infrastructure has since been extended to customer-facing virtual assistants in the My Verizon app, where customers can now get the same quality of answer through natural language conversation instead of a phone call.
Want to go deeper?
- Verizon + Google Cloud press release (April 2025), The official announcement with full details on the Personal Research Assistant, Problem Solver, and the 95% answerability outcome.
- Google Cloud Agent Assist, The real-time AI assistance platform at the core of Verizon’s customer care transformation.