In the following text, you will find profiles of the 2009 Wireless Week Leadership Award recipients. While we recognize that it takes many individuals to make for a successful organization or endeavor, these are the industry professionals the editorial staff chose to celebrate at this time. Each brings his or her own unique perspective to the wireless industry, and none of them are afraid to take risks and make an impact.
~ Click On Award Winners Name For Corresponding Article ~
Dan Hesse | Sue Nokes | Ralph de la Vega | Sue Spradley | Ben Wolff | Anthony Lewis
Dan Hesse: Turning It Around, Day by Day
By Monica Alleven
Sprint Nextel’s CEO resolves to see it through.
The scene at Sprint Nextel would seem pretty grim, by most standards. The company trimmed its head count by almost 4,000 last year, and this year, added another 8,000 job cuts on top of that. It has been losing thousands of customers quarter after quarter, and still gets knocks for trying to merge the Nextel Communications iDEN network with the Sprint CDMA network and culture.
That’s the situation. Yet CEO Dan Hesse, who took the helm about 15 months ago, received the highest employee satisfaction score – 50 percent – among carrier CEOs in a Glassdoor survey earlier this year. CEOs of better-performing wireless companies received lower scores than Hesse. So what’s going on? Are those TV commercials working a little magic on employees?
PLAYING IT STRAIGHT
Hesse says people are looking for pragmatic direction, not sugar-coated rhetoric, and it’s crucial for leaders to be positive and optimistic in their communications with employees. There’s a balance between being realistic and optimistic, and pessimism doesn’t help, he says, referring to famous quotes such as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Pessimism never won any battle” and “Worry does not empty today of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”
Hesse is making progress. Customer satisfaction improved sequentially every month in 2008, and first-call resolution improved month-over-month throughout the year. Calls per subscriber were down 25 percent from January 2008 to December 2008. J.D. Power and Associates reported a 50 percent improvement in customer service against the industry average in the second half of 2008.
Employees are probably more tuned into the results as much or more so than outside investors. “They know we’re serious and they know we’ve got a game plan that’s working,” Hesse says.
Of course, Hesse didn’t need to take the CEO job at Sprint Nextel in December of 2007, when the carrier was facing an exodus of customers. Before his current gig, he was chairman and CEO of communications provider Embarq, and he was OK there. So why leave a good situation to take on what could be considered the toughest telecom challenge of the day? “It was because I thought I could make a difference,” he says.
It also goes back to a theme to which Hesse has subscribed for many years – business leadership as a vocation. As an under grad at Notre Dame, he and fellow students were encouraged to look at what their life was all about. A business leader affects many lives and livelihoods, not just direct employees but suppliers, shareholders and customers. Providing great customer service is an obligation, and companies have an obligation to their local communities as well.
He reflects back to his days playing sports while growing up. The best coaches made their athletes do their homework when it came to the other team, and “you never take the other team lightly,” which applies to competitors in business as well.
Hesse earned a master of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in business administration from Cornell University and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Notre Dame. But it wasn’t just his academic training that led him to his current role. A lot of his experience came from his years at AT&T, where he had a number of mentors, including Gus Blanchard, with whom he still keeps in touch.
LOOKING AHEAD
Sprint had the foresight to put renewed emphasis on its Boost Mobile prepaid division at a time when consumers are looking more closely at their budgets. Boost launched an aggressive $50 unlimited plan and the initial response exceeded expectations, with six times more customers porting into Boost iDEN than porting out since the launch. Sprint has some other things in the works on the device side. The upcoming Palm Pre launch is generating excitement, and the company plans to continue pursuing opportunities in the wholesale market by providing network services for devices like the Amazon Kindle 2.
Consultant and blogger P.J. Louis, president of P.J. Louis LLC, who in the past has been an adviser on corporate restructurings, describes Hesse as one of the few CEOs with the temperament and presence of mind to lead a restructuring. “He has the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade, a huge opportunity here,” he says. “Restructuring only works when you have time. He’s the right man for the right time.”
WHAT IF?
So does Hesse ever think about what he would do if Sprint isn’t successful in the turn-around? Well, he deadpans, he has been asked to join the Screen Actors Guild. But no, that’s not an option. “I have no trouble, I sleep very well at night, and it’s because I believe we absolutely will turn this around,” he says. “We’re on the right course.”
He acknowledges the company did have customer service and network issues, and the brand took a hit. That’s part of the reason he agreed to be in the TV commercials – advertising professionals recommended the CEO be out in front. He’s not in the next round of commercials, but he doesn’t rule out the possibility he might return in the future.
While Sprint doesn’t have an indefinite amount of time and clearly, there’s a sense of urgency, it’s not as if it’s on the brink of bankruptcy. The company paid down $2 billion in debt in the second half of 2008 and renegotiated covenants. It has liquidity currently available to repay debt at least through the end of 2010, and it generated $1.8 billion in free cash flow in 2008. “We have a very stable financial foundation,” he says.
The company’s 3G deployment was largely completed in 2007, a move for which he gives credit to former CEO Gary Forsee. Sprint’s 3G network is triple the size of AT&T’s today, he says. Cap ex spending in 2009 should be consistent with the 2008 level. Sprint’s 4G play is in Clearwire, of which it owns 51 percent. While other carriers are directing funds toward next-gen buildouts, Sprint is engaged in a venture that includes some big outside investors – think Google and Intel – so it isn’t the only one with a vested interest and its own risk is mitigated.
Louis says he doesn’t want to see Hesse “throw in the towel.” And that doesn’t appear to be in Hesse’s game plan. Granted, the hill got a little steeper when the economy took a nosedive. “It may take longer to turn things around than I had originally hoped,” Hesse says. “We’re making slow, steady progress.”
Sue Nokes: A Fixer with Flair
By Monica Alleven
She’s been called feisty, flashy and a fixer, but never a push-over.
Sue Nokes certainly will not take credit for single-handedly turning around T-Mobile USA’s customer service record. But she played a key role in it.
Nokes arrived at T-Mobile in April 2002 after a stint as vice president for Wal-Mart.com, a company she loved. As you might expect, most of her friends and family thought she was nuts to leave a hugely popular company for what was then a relative unknown and much smaller T-Mobile.
But after meeting with Robert Dotson, who at the time was just starting his role as CEO of the wireless carrier, she knew their objectives were in line. They shared the same values around putting customers first and giving front-line employees the tools they need. Not only that, but “I love a challenge,” she says. “I love to turn something around. I am a turn-around girl.”
WORST TO FIRST
Nokes didn’t just talk the talk, although she’s a dynamite speaker. She led T-Mobile from worst in wireless customer service satisfaction to first, as deemed by the coveted J.D. Power and Associates award for Highest Ranked Wireless Customer Service Provider in eight out of the last nine Customer Care Performance Studies.
“I was very, very fortunate,” she says, adding the entire team, from boss to peers to engineering and sales, got behind the goal.
One of the first steps toward improving customer care meant she had to make sure the customer service representatives were getting what they needed, even down to fairly basic things like assigned seating. While the customer is No. 1, the front-line employee is 1A, she says. They are the company’s most important assets because they’re facing the customer every day, either in a store or on the phone. “They carry my brand in their hand every day.”
She’s also been described as one of those rare individuals who can be perfectly direct and honest (read: critical) about employees’ performance and then receive a standing ovation afterward.
At one of her town hall meetings at a call center in Maine, she stood in front of an audience of brand-new customer service representatives. As she was speaking, her handset rang and she answered it, according to one person’s account. Nokes commented that she had been put on hold by the person calling her. Then she stood in front of that crowd for two full minutes without saying another word. (After about 45 seconds of this, people get pretty fidgety, Nokes says.) People shifted in their seats and wondered what was going on. After two minutes, Nokes said “that’s what it feels like to be a customer being put on hold for two minutes.”
Nokes is known for the drama and the flair, and employees love her. She originally arrived at T-Mobile as senior vice president of customer care. But since November 2007, she has been chief customer and operations officer, so she oversees about 30,000 of T-Mobile’s 40,000 employees, as well as the retail, sales and supply chain channels and business operations.
How do you communicate with an organization that large? Well, you go to them. Nokes holds town hall meetings at customer care call centers, of which there are 24 around the country. She will schedule meetings so that both day and night crews can attend. She figures that if she’s asking employees to work at night, she should at least be able to stay up late or get up early to meet with them. She also holds Webcasts; she did one in January on a Sunday so retail employees could make it.
She listens a lot; she’s even been known to listen to customer service calls while cooking in her kitchen. (You know how callers are advised that a call may be monitored for training or quality assurance purposes? That’s part of her job.)
At times, she will invite customers to meetings, usually one group representing the happy ones and two groups representing unhappy folks. That way, employees can learn what they need to do to improve. T-Mobile’s goal is to become America’s most highly regarded service – not just wireless, but any service.
She is admired outside of the company as well. She has been a participant in Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women in Business” programs and was featured in a Fortune profile in 2007 in which she was called T-Mobile’s “secret weapon” in a cutthroat industry. She is a nationally recognized speaker on quality improvement, call center operations and customer service.
THE FRONT LINE
No doubt, her dedication to the front-line employee is a direct result of her own experience. She grew up in a suburb of Detroit, where her folks were blue-collar and after high school, she worked in an entry level clerk’s job at a phone company, going to college in the evenings. Her DNA comes from her parents and the way she was raised with a strong work ethic and the mandate to treat others as you want to be treated.
Having been a front-line employee makes her appreciate what they’re asked to do day in and day out, talking with 50, 60 or 70 customers a day, making each customer feel they’re special and they’re asking the most important question, even when the customer service rep has been asked the same question all day long.
Her competitive spirit comes clearly from her mother, whom she describes as someone who will “love ya,” but won’t pick you if you’re no good and she’s playing a card game to win.
Some people wonder if she ever sleeps. She doesn’t have a lot of time outside work for hobbies, but she is an avid fan of the Lady Vols, the University of Tennessee’s women’s basketball team coached by friend Pat Summit, and she’s also a University of Michigan football fan.
Does she worry about things? “Sure, I worry about how do we take our level of service to the next level of play,” she says. “We’ve now created a higher level of expectation.” More importantly, she adds, she understands that her decisions make an impact on many other people’s lives.
For her most recent birthday, she received cards, e-mails and her house and office looked like a florist had taken over. “I am very fortunate,” she says. “I have wonderful people around me.” And apparently, wonderful people like to have Nokes around them.
Ralph de la Vega Thrives as Game-Changing Leader
By Andrew Berg
AT&T Mobility CEO’s career didn’t take the typical path of a revered American executive.
Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO for AT&T’s Mobility and Consumer Markets, was not born with the usual pedigree of an American executive. When people from other countries talk about the United States as a land of opportunity, they’re undoubtedly envisioning the hard-earned bootstrap epic that is de la Vega’s life story.
A Cuban native, de la Vega’s parents sent him to the United States to live with friends at the age of 10. He expected the rest of his family to arrive a few days after him. However, due to bureaucratic red tape, fours years passed before his parents were able to join him.
Looking back, de la Vega sees that experience as one of growth and opportunity, which is in keeping with the way he approaches adversity in the corporate world. An inspiration to the Cuban community, de la Vega was voted one of Hispanic Business Magazine’s Corporate Elite, as well as one of Latino Leaders Magazine’s 101 Top Hispanic Leaders.
WORK NEVER STOPS
Yet de la Vega is an exceptional leader by any standards. His background is diverse and grounded in nothing but hard work, optimism and perseverance. “He’s an incredibly hard worker,” says Roger Entner, senior vice president of communications for Nielsen. “I’ve exchanged e-mails with him at 5:30 in the morning, and talked to him on the phone at 11:30 at night.”
de la Vega told BNET in a 2006 interview that as a child, he recalled his grandmother saying, “Do whatever you have to do to go to college.” And he did. Long before entering the ranks of the corporate elite, de la Vega worked odd jobs to put himself through college.
He started his career in 1974 with BellSouth (then Southern Bell) as a management assistant. He has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in network planning, consumer services, engineering and operations – including a rotational assignment at Telcordia – and was responsible for all BellSouth Telecommunications Network Operations in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
He also has served as BellSouth’s president of Broadband and Internet Services. In that position, he had overall responsibility for the deployment, marketing and operations of broadband services. In addition, he had responsibility for BellSouth Internet Services and BellSouth’s rapidly growing data support groups.
Before joining Cingular in January 2004, he served as president of BellSouth Latin America, with overall responsibility for BellSouth’s operations in 11 countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil and Guatemala.
In October 2007, he was appointed president and CEO of AT&T Mobility. He had previously served as COO of Cingular Wireless from 2004 to 2006, responsible for technology planning, network operations, marketing, sales and customer care.
EXPANDED RESPONSIBILITIES
He is now responsible for all consumer marketing, sales, content and converged services, customer care and operations for wireless and wireline services. He also represents AT&T’s entire wireless business to industry and financial markets. He was appointed to this expanded role in October 2008.
But beyond the jargon involved in describing de la Vega’s current role at AT&T, he’s responsible for some very real changes in the industry that will have a lasting effect. Of course, he’s the guy that headed the deal with Apple to get sole rights to the iPhone. Entner says de la Vega is humble when it comes to that BIG deal with Apple. “He’s very modest in that regard, but I would give him significant credit on really shaping that deal,” Entner says.
Most recently, de la Vega has been working on the massive undertaking that is the rollout of AT&T’s Uverse service. The IP-based service just surpassed the 1 millionth subscriber mark and took top spot in three regions in a 2008 J.D. Power and Associates survey that ranked customer satisfaction among cable TV customers.
When you think about where AT&T sits right now, with the iPhone snagging new customers even as the rest of the industry feels the pinch of a recession, and how far de la Vega has come from his meager beginnings, the story seems more a fairytale than a mere career path.
It’s perhaps icing on the cake that de la Vega gives back. His involvement with the community is extensive. He is a member of the Board of Directors of both Junior Achievement Worldwide and the Boy Scouts of America. He plays a leadership role in helping both organizations recruit Hispanic youth.
As AT&T promises further integration of mobile with Uverse and vice versa, highlighting the quad play, it will be interesting to watch where de la Vega sees his next opportunity to overcome adversity. Increasing data speeds? Evolution to LTE? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, with continued leadership like they’ve found in de la Vega, they can hardly go wrong.
While de la Vega’s grandmother, who urged him to attend college at all costs, would be proud of his achievements in the business world, she would undoubtedly be equally proud of what people say about her grandson’s character. “You know, I think you see it in the numbers, but with Ralph you see it more than in the numbers,” Entner says. “He gets the best out of people without being mean. People give him their best because they don’t want to disappoint him.”
Sue Spradley Looks to Push Forward
By Maisie Ramsay
She’s responsible for building Nokia Siemens’ North Americanpresence in tenuous times.
When Sue Spradley gets home from work, she likes to garden. But she’s often still on the job, answering business calls while pulling weeds from her flower beds. Spradley says it can be hard to balance life and work, but then again, she is head of Nokia Siemens Networks’ North America region.
From her start at Nokia Siemens in 2007, Spradley has built up the joint venture’s client base across Canada and the United States. Telecom giants Telus, Bell Canada, Videotron and Verizon are some of her customers, a sign of Spradley’s determination to build Nokia Siemens’ once-diminutive North American presence.
SCALE, R&D
Spradley came to Nokia Siemens as an outsider, attracted to the company’s long-term potential. “I saw a company on the verge of growth,” she says. “I like the fact that the company has the scale to compete. That’s really not a small feat right now in this industry. When we go into commitments with our customers, we have the R&D wherewithal to stand behind it.”
Spradley has had success building the company’s North American client base, but she says the work is hardly finished. “Our biggest thing now is for people in North America at the senior executive level to let them know we can work with them now,” she says.
A key part of her business strategy is to present Nokia Siemens as a partner. “The reason why you’re choosing Nokia Siemens is because you want a technology partner, a business partner, not someone who tells you to run your business,” she says. “It really benefits the operators.”
She doesn’t take part in religious debates about LTE versus WiMAX, and she doesn’t have to: Nokia Siemens Networks has flexible technology, which means that the company is not solely vested in either LTE or WiMAX.
The company’s eco-friendly Flexi base station, which consumes over 70 percent less power than previous generations, can be switched from WiMAX to LTE with simple software upgrades and recently won Best Network Technology Advance at the GSMA Global Mobile Awards.
Weighing barely one-fifth of conventional models, the Flexi base station is so small and so light that Spradley has carried it in high heels. “We carry that product into see customers and it just blows them away… It’s a forward-leaning technology that means a lot to operators,” Spradley says.
BUILDING PRODUCT FOR THE WORLD
In part, the device spawned out of the company’s deployment in India, where it was important to have energy-efficient base stations because of the country’s inconsistent power supply. The Flexi has endured through India’s suffocating heat and has survived the coldest parts of Finland and Edmonton, Canada. “You don’t just build a product just for India,” Spradley says. “You build it for the world.”
Spradley’s North America division brought in $198 million in the fourth quarter and accounts for about five percent of the Nokia Siemens Networks’ global sales. The North America division has not been immune from the recession, with fourth-quarter sales 18.5 percent lower than last year’s sales of $243 million.
Still, Nokia Siemens as a whole has fared better than infrastructure giants Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel. Nokia Siemens lost $301 million in 2008, but Alcatel-Lucent has been hemorrhaging cash for eight quarters; the company lost $6.71 billion in 2008 as it continued to write down its assets. Nortel is in even worse shape. It lost $2.14 billion in its last quarter before it filed for bankruptcy and continues to be plagued by the credit crunch, weak sales and low liquidity. The company is in talks to sell off two main units and it is not clear whether it will emerge from bankruptcy.
Nokia Siemens plans to weather the storm by making strategic cutbacks in nonessential items while investing in key areas like research and development. The company is building an LTE laboratory in Dallas to build up R&D expertise, but is cutting back on travel and other miscellaneous expenses. “We’re really focused on remaining as lean as we can be,” Spradley says. “We’re just not allowing ourselves to spend like tomorrow is a sunny day.”
Ben Wolff, The Deal Guy, Makes “The Impossible, Possible”
By Monica Alleven
The co-founder of Clearwire turns his focus on strategy and financing opportunities.
Last May, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel announced a 7-way deal that involved combining their WiMAX businesses and a $3.2 billion investment from Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. By November, the landmark transaction was finalized.
Few would have believed anyone could pull off a deal of that magnitude. And the one at the center of it all was Ben Wolff, co-founder and co-chairman of Clearwire, a position he shares with founder Craig McCaw, who last month said Wolff routinely “made the impossible, possible.”
No doubt, Wolff was instrumental in leading the company from its inception to where it is today, raising more than $6 billion in equity and debt financing and poised to deploy its mobile WiMAX technology in more than 80 markets by the end of 2010. Wolff recently helped recruit Bill Morrow to take on the CEO role while Wolff focuses his attention on Clearwire’s strategic and financing opportunities.
EARLY INTERESTS
Wolff met McCaw years ago when Wolff was practicing law at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, where he represented a number of communications and technology companies in mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and strategic alliance transactions. There, he had primary responsibility for representing clients such as Allied Signal, Intel and Starbucks, as well as McCaw’s private investment company, Eagle River. In 2003, Wolff, who is now 40, was named one of the top 45 lawyers in the country under the age of 45 by American Lawyer magazine.
Wolff continues to work with McCaw not only on Clearwire but also with Eagle River. The down economy could lead to new opportunities for Eagle River. Historically, it has invested in companies at all levels, from smaller venture capital-funded types to those with more distressed assets. ICO, for one, was going through bankruptcy when Eagle River stepped in to provide backing. Going back further, McCaw stepped in to help Nextel Communications back in the mid-’90s when it was in need of cash.
Like some of McCaw’s prior investments, Clearwire has been a source of great skepticism. Wolff acknowledges the risk involved. “I think all entrepreneurs are risk takers by nature,” he says, and Clearwire is “the David versus many Goliaths.” That said, “we think it’s smart risk. This is not unnecessary or unwise risk.”
BUBBLES & CUPCAKES
Clearwire’s objectives for 2008 included finding a way to collaborate with Sprint, raising additional capital for network expansion, turning domestic markets EBITDA positive as a group and completing its first mobile WiMAX networks. Wolff reported in March that the company had achieved those goals.
Clearwire launched its commercial mobile WiMAX service, branded Clear, in Portland, Ore., in January, accompanied by a marketing blitz that includes TV commercials featuring bubbles, beer and cupcake sprinkles. One of the commercials features a scene showing a few sprinkles, designed to represent Wi-Fi hot spots. A few more sprinkles illustrates the laptop cards that phone companies offer – more coverage, but “they’re kinda slow,” the announcer says. Then the bakery is showered with sprinkles, representing WiMAX, designed to cover entire cities. “Welcome to the future,” the ads say.
Wolff says it’s early days for Portland, but initial network performance has exceeded the targets that Clearwire set. Early subscriber uptake in Portland in the first two months was more than double that of any of the company’s prior 47 U.S. market launches with pre-WiMAX.
What Wolff and his colleagues are trying to offer is an overall value proposition around a different class of service at a price that people can afford. “We don’t aspire to be the cheapest,” he says, but the company wants to provide a good value – a wireline type of experience on a mobile basis. Current 3G offerings are too slow, coupled with too high of a price, he says. Clearwire aims to be the disrupter, but to do so while generating a healthy revenue for the company and at prices that the average household can afford.
FIXED & MOBILE
While some of Clearwire’s early customers are interested in DSL or other replacement of their existing service provider, the real crux of Clearwire’s value proposition is mobility. “I think the real appeal is it doesn’t have to fit in one category or another,” he says. Instead of buying one DSL service for the home and another 3G air card for the road, people can buy one product from Clearwire.
The company is testing dual-mode cards now and expects to have them out by this summer. That will allow customers to use Clearwire’s network where available and fall back onto Sprint’s 3G network outside those areas. The first dual-mode devices are expected sometime this year as well.
From start to finish, it averages anywhere from 12 to 24 months to build a market. For consumers who say they want Clear primarily as a home service, Clearwire offers its dealers a pre-qualification software tool whereby they can determine what the coverage is like in a given area.
While Clearwire has its hands full with the U.S. market rollouts, the opportunities for WiMAX in other countries are as great or greater. One of the benefits of being freed up from the operations side of the business is Wolff can devote his time to looking at the global opportunities for WiMAX. Clearwire offers pre-WiMAX service in Ireland, Belgium and Spain.
Anthony Lewis Opens Up About Open Networks
By Andrew Berg
Starting from zero, Verizon’s goal was to have one device certified through the
Open Development Initiative by the end of 2008. It ended the year with 36.
Anthony Lewis, vice president of Open Development for Verizon Wireless, is an easy-going, charismatic personality. His voice communicates an obvious tone of enthusiasm when he talks about his work in the wireless industry, and right now, Lewis has a lot to be enthusiastic about.
In no small part, the industry has Lewis to thank for changing the game and highlighting the very real and innovative possibilities of an open network. However, when Verizon first started talking about bringing down the walls, not everyone was ready to jump on board. In fact, some were downright skeptical.
“One of my greatest challenges was going out … to demonstrate what it means to open this market,” he says. “There was a general mistrust. It was fascinating and satisfying to go out and demonstrate Verizon’s intent to build a new wireless marketplace and then get the kind of positive reaction that we did.”
DIVERSE BACKGROUND
Lewis has a diverse background. In 1986, he joined The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia as a group manager in the operator services department. When Verizon took over at Chesapeake and Potomac, Lewis stayed on and has been with the company ever since. In March of 2004, Anthony was appointed president of the Verizon Washington, D.C., division, overseeing virtually all of Verizon’s regulatory, policy and financial matters in the nation’s capital.
In his most recent post, he says the diversity of his background has been a big help in tackling a project dependent upon creating a network of relationships. “One of the things that I brought was a diversity of talent and ability: public policy, sales, marketing, product line managing. All of those things have helped me in what is a new business opportunity inside Verizon Wireless,” he says.
Verizon now has more than 40 non-Verizon devices certified on the network. But he says the real possibilities are in M2M technologies. “As we started the open process, we were anxious to see how the marketplace was going to shake out. The M2M space has really been the growth segment. That’s to the credit of the manufacturers. They were the first to see the benefits of these kinds of partnerships.”
Anyone who has ever heard Lewis speak about the M2M side of the program knows why Verizon chose him to spearhead the effort. By the time he’s done talking, you’re envisioning a home that doesn’t require you to do any of the banal maintenance of old. In the Verizon-inspired home of the future, ailing refrigerators phone their own repairmen before they break down and spoil all your food, coffee pots start themselves and heating and cooling systems can be remotely controlled from your handset.
LIMITLESS OPPORTUNITIES
If it were all just fiction, one might be tempted to laugh it off, but it’s not and that’s the part that has all the other carriers carefully watching Verizon these days. By opening up its network, Verizon has spurred a flurry of research and development, from handsets to software and applications, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
The hubbub surrounding the initiative makes Lewis a happy man. But when asked what it is he likes about working in the wireless industry, it isn’t the technology that he mentions but the people and their ideas. “Every day I hear from a different customer, partner, peer, who has ideas about what we can do. The opportunities in the wireless industry are limitless.”
It’s no surprise that Lewis stresses customer service as the key to weathering the current economic storm. Verizon has consistently ranked at the top of the annual J.D. Power and Associates Wireless Customer Care Performance Study.
“This is the best place to be in corporate America,” Lewis says. “And we’re going to make it through this by doing what we do best: taking care of the customer and improving the quality of their lives. If we do what we have done and what we should be doing, we will maintain that customer base. Take care of the customer and the customer will take care of us,” he says.