The Verizon Value organization prides itself on understanding the needs of its diverse customer base and matching every single customer’s need through its portfolio of prepaid brands. Verizon Value Organization’s mission is to build a better-connected world with accessible, quality wireless for all.
“It’s a good time to jump into Verizon Value. We’re learning more every single day, tailoring our solutions to customer needs. We are in a great position to serve the customer — we can help people save money and help them live better through our products and services.”
Putting customers at the forefront.
Verizon Value was built to serve consumers looking for the flexibility of prepaid wireless service, on the network America relies on. This organization consists of all of Verizon’s Value brands: Verizon Prepaid, Visible, TracFone, StraightTalk, Safelink, Total by Verizon, Walmart Family Mobile and Simple Mobile.
Meet three Verizon Value leaders to learn about their approach to building our value customer base, and what they look for when growing their teams.
Retailer roots.
Jim Zimmerman (VP of Operations) leads the Customer Care Operations, Digital Operations, Customer Experience and Revenue Assurance/Compliance teams. These teams are responsible for the end-to-end customer service delivery and experience.
Jim began his career working in retail and later shifted to different buyer positions in fashion and technology. For him, taking on new challenges, learning new skills and having a “no fear” attitude is what propelled him to keep moving forward. This led him to TracFone, where he worked on building retailer product management and logistics capabilities. He often refers back to his retailer roots in his current role leading operations for Verizon Value and supporting the Distribution team.
“I’m privileged to manage the entire operations area for Value. Our end-to-end digital operations include all of our customer channels, automation, carrier operations, business assurance, process improvement and staying close to the customer,” Jim said. “We take a very complicated product — like wireless — and turn it into a product you can buy off the shelf at any retailer. Our ability to serve customers in a wide variety of locations connects people and helps make wireless accessible to everyone.”
A lifelong love of marketing.
When she was in high school, Cheryl Gresham discovered a love for marketing. This passion led her to a career journey across advertising and media agencies that taught her the fundamentals of marketing across various businesses and industries.
Today, Cheryl Gresham, VP of Marketing (Value), leads the team that’s responsible for each brand’s holistic marketing strategy. Her team brings campaigns to life with brand identity and awareness, demand generation and creative campaigns, media investment optimization, CRM and base management, and more. Her team has the opportunity to be thoughtful and intentional in their messaging, which allows each of Verizon’s Value brands to establish and maintain their uniqueness.
“The exciting part for me is having such a diverse group of brands to serve different customer segments. Sharpening our strategy and communications for why we exist and who we best serve is what we’re focused on to drive the growth – and win the category.” Cheryl shared.
Focusing on the customer.
David Lawing (Executive Director of Sales Operations & Enablement) leads the teams that are responsible for Sales and Operations across our 90k+ Value organization retail partners, including Walmart and other national retailers, exclusive and non-exclusive agents, and SafeLink grassroots. “Our national distribution teams have developed highly integrated relationships with our retailer partners and agents as we serve customers, and they truly appreciate the leadership Verizon Value brings to the industry,” David shared.
David Lawing began his career working in retail as a sales representative, which he says prepared him to take on many other roles by focusing on the customer. Working in consumer products for over two decades exposed him to best practices across multiple industries and channels. David’s career journey took him to TracFone in 2012, and he was inspired to take this path by his father who worked in the telecommunications industry. Since then, he has held various roles within our national distribution and agent channels as well as other positions in device engineering, and business-to-business. Each of these experiences provided an opportunity to get closer to customers and serve their needs, which is still a focus for him and his teams today.
David’s teams work on exciting projects, including recently standing up over 400 Total by Verizon stores in the US — from the design of the stores and the plans for distribution to the promotions and creating a unique, curated customer experience leveraging the strengths of Verizon.
“When you think about our Verizon Value organization, we have the power of the Verizon network supporting our incredible brands,” David shared. “We have a unique matrix organization. It plays on the strengths of all of the different areas of our organization. Operations, Marketing, IT, Distribution, Customer Experience — we collaborate and get the most out of everybody's expertise. I like to say that we have a purposeful overlap that makes us better in serving the customer.”
A world of opportunity.
You may not know where your career will take you — and that’s okay. When Jim moved his career from retail distribution, he was hesitant about starting fresh in an operations role. To his surprise, he loved the career shift and found his passion for serving customers. This is exactly what you might be able to expect when you take a role on Verizon’s Value team — a world of opportunities.
“Verizon’s Value organization gives you so many opportunities. You may not even know where you want to go but there are a lot of opportunities to help you find that place.”
“One minute I’m reviewing creative with an agency partner, and the next minute we’re talking about how to be more competitive in Search marketing. Then, I’m jumping into analytics and forecasting to figure out what marketing levers drive the most impact and shifting investments to drive the best yield,” Cheryl shared. “The Value team allows you to have so much more breadth of scope than many other organizations.”
The diversity of work that this team does ranges across multi-brand, multi-distribution and multi-service channels. This organization truly meets customers where they are — whether that’s online, in-exclusive stores, in national retail, indirect or over the phone.
With so many distribution points and channels, Verizon Value provides a unique opportunity for employees to find their fit, along with the flexibility to get exposure to different skills and projects that allow them to learn new skills.
Ready to be a Value Organization MVP?
Verizon Value is growing its team! If you’re driven, ambitious, and looking for a career that allows you to grow, then Verizon Value may be the right place for you.
“To be successful in this business, you have to be agile. You have to be tenacious and you can't give up,” David said. “As we look to hire folks, we're looking for people who have that agility — people who can collaborate cross-functionally and internally. We’re also looking for people who can think strategically and tactically.”
“Every brand is a little bit different, and they all have different needs. And every customer ad comes from a different perspective or maybe a different channel. We have the privilege of driving all the intent and delivering that value to the customer. There's never a dull day in our organization.” - Jim Zimmerman, VP of Operations
When you join Verizon’s Value team, you’re joining a group with 11 brands in its portfolio, serving millions of customers! There are lots of opportunities to make an impact on this team. The question is: Are you up for it?
