During the MIXX conference in NYC last week, Jerri DeVard, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Management for Verizon announced that the firm is planning to launch a blog that will encourage an “all issues on the table” dialogue with consumers. Given the proposed scope, it’s not surprising that Verizon also has plans in place to support it with a round-the-clock response team.

Pretty heady stuff – and very gutsy of Verizon. This will make an absolutely fascinating case study, and may well be the tipping point at which many firms finally realise that actually speaking with their customers may not be so scary after all!

When asked how Verizon plans to measure the success of the initiative, DeVard replied: “When we did podcasting there was no metric of success. But we knew we had to be there. Understand who your customer is and where they are.”

I encourage you to read the full article on the Media Post website here!

Update: a nice bit of additional analysis re: how Verizon’s decision will allow consumers to learn from each other’s questions and therefore create collective knowledge about products, services and other issues, this from Micro Persuasion. Definitely worth a read.