Verizon Wireless’ Smart Stores – Enhancing the Customer Experience and Mobile Lifestyle through the Reinvention of Retail

Las Vegas, Nev. West Deptford, N.J. Burbank, Calif. Troy, Mich. What do these cities have in common?

If you guessed that they’re the locations of some recent Verizon Wireless Smart Store openings, you are correct.

Verizon Wireless’ vision incorporates a new approach to retail by enhancing the customer experience, centered on the 4G LTE network, Verizon Wireless’ foundation for all technology innovation and advancements. This is a 360-degree process that starts with the devices and accessories, and educates the customer about incorporating them into their daily lifestyle. The company is reinventing retail via the Smart Store through many aspects such as lifestyle zones, workshops and more.

The Verizon Wireless Smart Store is geared to showcase mobile lifestyles – such as fitness or music-focused lifestyles – and the devices and accessories that make these lifestyles a reality.

“Creating the best customer experience – at every touch point – is our goal as we reinvent retail,” said Domenico D’Ambrosio, executive director national retail operations at Verizon Wireless. “We listened to our customers’ feedback and incorporated many of their suggestions into the initiative. This encompasses everything a customer sees, as well as tools which help our professional retail specialists provide top level service and share knowledge with customers. To make the education process easier for the customer, all of our Experience Specialists are trained in a hands-on environment so they can provide real-world examples to customers when talking about accessories and devices.”

Over the next few years, Verizon Wireless is transforming all 1700+ existing retail stores into Smart Stores. Later this year, the addition of two more Destination Stores in Chicago and Houston are set to open.

To keep the momentum going, the company is taking an agile approach and extending the new Smart Design elements into stores awaiting the full transition. This will ensure the customers and employees share the same experience along with a consistent look and feel of a Smart Store. To mirror the current Smart Stores, design elements include the lifestyle zones like Get Fit, which focuses on fitness and Amplify It, which focuses on music; two of the most popular areas our customers gravitate towards in their mobile lifestyles. Depending on the layout and the store, other zones include:

• Have Fun – for gamers

• Home and On The Go – for home monitoring and energy management
• Anywhere Business – for the mobile professional and entrepreneur

For store operations, Verizon Wireless added real-time resource management tools to help the stores run efficiently including scheduling, important news updates, new promotions and training content used during store meetings and metrics designed to keep wait times down and customer satisfaction up. 

One key focus for the sales team is to deliver value to the customer. Verizon Wireless recrafted several titles and roles to Operations, Solutions and Experience Specialists which will help transition our sales approach from transactional to experience-based. Verizon Wireless has found that customers love the Wireless Workshops where they learn about the cool features available on their phones and other devices. 

Verizon Wireless is also up-to-date on the latest fashion!  The employees’ wardrobe has been revamped and features diverse gear that allows them to personalize their look to reflect their individual style. 

As Verizon Wireless continues to add additional features to the retail fleet, customers will be able to benefit from recent additions including: 

• Paying a landline bill in the store. Payments are now accepted using Verizon Wireless’ Bill Payment automated kiosks, which also accept payment for wireless services. 

• Verizon Wireless Content Transfer. Verizon Wireless now provides a high-speed transfer which moves content (pictures, video, music, etc.) from one device to another in a significantly faster and virtually hassle-free manner for any Android and iOS devices. The Verizon Wireless Content Transfer service is built into the Verizon Cloud application for Verizon Wireless devices and will be available as a standalone app for competitor devices that are porting in.

Have you visited a Smart Store lately? Let us know what you liked and what kind of experience you had @VZWNews.