Communications firm Verizon Business has won a 10-year US$145.7 million contract to modernise and digitalise the US Postal Service’s IT systems with cloud technology, including AI-enabled customer support.
As part of the deal, Verizon will provide support for 80 million annual interactions with 4,500 contact centre agents across 10 business units. This contract builds on a successful, 25-year partnership between the two parties.
Infrastructure upgrades
Under the terms of the agreement, Verizon will deliver several infrastructure upgrades, including a transition to cloud solutions supported by real-time reporting, monitoring and administration, as well as ongoing physical infrastructure enhancements for host servers, storage arrays, and other equipment.
Verizon’s solutions will help eliminate the need for premise infrastructure, software licenses, or hardware, thereby reducing the burden on USPS’ IT personnel and lowering operational costs, the firm noted.
According to Verizon, its technology solutions will deliver an agile, robust, scalable, and flexible infrastructure that will provide significant business value in the near term and prepare USPS strategically for the future.
Additionally, the migration to the new cloud platform will expedite USPS’ integration of artificial intelligence capabilities, which will improve customer satisfaction by providing more intelligent, high-quality responses to inquiries. Verizon will also help USPS move to a multichannel platform that supports email, SMS, chat and more.
Smart customer service
“Working with our USPS partners, Verizon will bring our Network as a Service offering to life, making their customer service network smarter and to make the customer support systems run more efficiently,” said Maggie Hallbach, Senior Vice President of Verizon Public Sector and President of Verizon Frontline.
“It’s no secret, today’s consumers expect immediate, personalized support. That’s a very high bar when you’re serving tens of millions of customers. Our digital solutions will relieve some of that administrative burden so USPS can focus on providing an invaluable service for our country,” Hallbach added.
