One in three Americans is a Verizon customer. How does the best network stay on top and keep people coming back for more?

Seven months after launch, metrics were astounding for the newly overhauled My Verizon app. The in-app conversion rate was especially notable.

Every great program begins with masterful master planning.

Verizon is America's largest wireless provider and has helped create a world where every service imaginable is available on demand. In the connected age, everything is instant. It’s an expectation that’s left traditional customer service models behind. Intelligent and easy to use, we designed the My Verizon app to meet the needs of 110 million subscribers, providing complete self-service through its intuitive, instantaneous design and conversational interface. Featuring a simplified bill, personalized control center, on-demand support and shopping functionality, the app has achieved record-breaking sales, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.

In 2015, the My Verizon program had been underway for 11 months. In November, the CMO made it clear, we were not moving in the right direction and needed to start over.

From that moment on we re-evaluated everything. We looked at the work, we looked at the agencies, we looked at our own people. We then started to look at our processes, our frequency of meetings, the attendees at those meeting.

We uncovered that the old way of throwing shit over the wall would not work anymore.

We reset the program in December, spending that month laying out the must have features, organizing the teams, and aligning how we would work. It wasn't pretty. (Neither were the white boards.)

We kept our development teams moving with some of the backend functionality as we started in January with the UI layer from the ground up. We collaborated closely. Verizon employees made weekly trips to NYC to work at the AKQA offices. The talented team at AKQA traveled weekly to NJ for a weekly work share/ demo and team time.

Organized into 4 agile teams to start, we kept the teams as small as possible. We thought about how we would move information within the team, across the teams, and ultimately up to the executive level.

Weekly work share included in participation from in person and virtual team members. (Cameras on, everybody!)

Teams were encouraged to provide a meaningful update every week that showed progress. This sometimes included the 5 ways they learned wouldn't work for a particular problem!

The only people talking were the presenters and no, there was no time for questions.

All feedback and questions went on a post-it and were addressed in the team level working session - later in the day.

It was exhausting.

It was uncomfortable.

It was extremely rewarding.

We operated like this for 9 months, that got us to launch + 3 releases. The team maintained the working model in some way for more than 18 months when the product reached maturity.

A good design system can withstand the test of time. What we built has survived three brand refreshes.

Company Broadcast where I highlighted some new features coming to the My Verizon App in 2018