Director, Multicultural Marketing
Verizon Communications
How does your organization use ethnic insights to drive growth? Consumer insight is an absolute must, if Verizon is to succeed with driving growth within the multicultural segments. We use a number of research tactics to understand customers’ needs and wants, such as primary and secondary research, focus groups, syndicated research, etc. Most importantly, however, is our desire to be close to the customer. To demonstrate that commitment, we have made and sustained a sizeable investment in sales and customer service centers dedicated to our customers with disabilities and our multilingual customers. Listening to the feedback from our employees and customers in these centers and our retail outlets ensures we are capturing the information we need to effectively respond to our customers’ requirements. in addition, we tap into the insights of our employee resource groups to aid us in these efforts.
How is your organization’s senior management engaged or involved in the multicultural marketing process? Our senior leadership has always supported, and continues to support, multicultural marketing initiatives—most obviously with the continued investment of resources. this commitment is further demonstrated by their “out-front” support of our multicultural initiatives; ensuring that diverse customer segments are considered at every phase of our marketing efforts—from product development, to securing content, to developing promotions, to building and strengthening our service infrastructure.
Headquarters: New York City
Web site: www.verizon.com
Primary Business: Telecommunications
Do you engage ethnic business partners in your multicultural marketing process? If so, how? Just like we do with our employee base, Verizon supports and encourages diversity within its business partners, as well. We work with agency partners that employ diverse talent, and thus ensure that we capture the best and most innovative solutions, whether they are assisting with marketing, advertising, promotions or events. From a supplier diversity perspective, we encourage our business partners to engage minority- and women-owned firms to support our work whenever possible. This provides opportunity for all of us to be more inclusive and positions us to capture the breadth of thoughts, ideas, and services that support Verizon’s efforts.
Is it important for the marketing team and frontline sales force to reflect the target markets? If so, why? Without question. Verizon understands and is responsive to all of our customers’ needs by reflecting the communities we serve, within our front-line on up to our leadership teams.
I’ll share an example. We have a center for customers with disabilities that is staffed, in part, by employees with disabilities. Their feedback and input led us to enhance our portal— Verizon.com—to ensure that it is fully accessible for our customers with disabilities. In addition, we introduced videophone-enabled customer service for our customers who prefer to communicate using American Sign Language. Verizon supports diversity in all aspects and at all levels of its business, from recruiting to procurement, to marketing.
