Verizon
Enhancing the Bring Your Own Device Experience
Platform
Web
Role
Experience Designer
Duration
January - July 2026
Overview
We often struggle to pull customers through the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) experience since entering in their device’s individual identification number (IMEI) is often a tedious process that pulls them out of the buying experience. To create a frictionless experience, we enhanced the IMEI entry experience in waves.
What I started with
When I inherited the BYOD experience, customers were first required to tell us how many lines they were bring to Verizon. Following that, they were to fill out their device information, which would allow us to determine if their device was physical SIM (pSIM) or electronic SIM (eSIM) activated. The next page would depend on their device's SIM card type.
For devices that were pSIM activated, customers were simply notified that they would be getting a pSIM shipped to them and were navigated to select their plans and perks.
For eSIM-activated devices, we navigate them to enter in their IMEI to validate their device before moving them to select their plans and perks.
For devices that are eSIM and pSIM capable, we gave them the choice between simply adding the pSIM card to their cart or entering in their IMEI to opt-in for an eSIM card.
What changed
With the decline in pSIM-only activated devices, we decided that we no longer needed to create a specific experience for pSIM devices. This allowed us to consolidate the experiences by removing the device information page and defaulting all customers to entering in their IMEI.
The problem
With customers being defaulted to the IMEI entry page, this led to an increased risk of fallout, since this page had historically high points of churn. This is due to the fact that entering the IMEI required the customer to go into their device settings and type their 15-digit IMEI.
Goal
Reduce customer fatigue and churn during the BYOD experience.
Iteration #1: Quick Assist and vzGPT
While brainstorming new ways to enhance the BYOD experience with my product partner, one of our developers presented AI-made screens of "Quick Assist", an array of pills that answered customers' frequently asked questions and help clarify what steps they were completing and why. Quick Assist utilized our new tool vzGPT, Verizon's integrated AI assistant.
Upon clicking any of the vzGPT pills, the AI assistant would open as a modal, allowing the customer to get help with their question and prompt for further assistance.
Once we agreed upon the idea, I built the designs in Figma, making edits to the originally proposed idea to make the designs brand-adherent and applicable to many other points in the website.
Following our integration of Quick Assist into BYOD, my designs were then utilized in other high-friction points of the Buy experience, such as cart or bringing a number.
Expediting the IMEI entry process
In the original BYOD experience, customers had to navigate themselves to settings and manually type in the device's IMEI, but with vzGPT now at our disposal, we enabled customers to simply upload a screenshot of their IMEI into the vzGPT modal.
From there, the customer would copy and paste the results from the assistant into the IMEI entry field.
Although this enhancement was in the right direction, it still created friction on mobile devices, which is the viewport most Verizon customers use, since the modal would pull them out of the experience.
With launch only 1 week away, however, any further enhancements were tabled until after we'd handed off the initial designs to our developer team.
The results
For new customers, we saw a 6% increase in conversion for customesr who received the Quick Assist experience.
For existing customers, we saw a 26% increase in customer conversion for those had Quick Assist as part of their experience.
Iteration #2: Integrating vzGPT into the IMEI entry page
After launch, I was able to explore integrating the "Upload IMEI" experience into a drawer on the IMEI entry page. For this iteration, the customer would be able to upload the screenshot into the drawer directly, and we would paste IMEI2 into the text field for them.
These updates are still pending development.
Next steps: 1-Page BYOD
Following these updates with Quick Assist and vzGPT, my product partner and I wanted to condense the BYOD experience down to one page.
The goal with this new experience was to device editing more accessible, rather than making customers move back in the flow with the back button in the navigation bar of the webpage, which often feels unreliable to the customer.
Iteration 1
I started by simply adding in the IMEI entry pages as accordions underneath the "Add Lines" page, and I experimented with 2 different button patterns.
Version 2
However, I received feedback that pattern of the "Confirm" buttons was unnatural. Additionally, I received feedback that these iterations felt clunky and was directed to keep all the content condensed so the customer would not need to scroll to see the necessary steps.
After feedback from design leads, I designed a sleek, simple experience, where customers would complete a step and confirm their decisions. Then, the completed step's drawer would close, and the next step's drawer would automatically open. They would be able to access the drawers of previously completed steps once they moved to the next step.
For this final version, I also worked with our content strategist to elevate the copy.
When my time with Verizon ended, I had completed my designs and would have followed up with my product partner to discuss any further business requirements before redirecting the conversation to our development team for technical feasiblity.