CMSWire TV
The Gist
- Customer obsession as culture. John Miller says it’s not a slogan — it’s a company-wide commitment that links customer experience, employee experience and brand experience.
- AI that listens. AT&T uses artificial intelligence to remove friction, reduce stress and empower employees — not replace them.
- 2026 vision: agentic AI. Miller envisions a future where managers lead both humans and AI agents, each coached to deliver moments that matter.
In this episode of The Digital Experience Show, I sit down with John Miller, vice president of consumer and business solutions at AT&T and recipient of Forrester’s Customer Obsession leadership award.
From empowering frontline agents to designing digital-first (but never digital-only) experiences, Miller explains how AT&T connects empathy and engineering — and why the next frontier for customer obsession lies in agentic AI that learns, listens and leads alongside humans.
Editor's note: This transcript was edited for brevity and clarity.
Customer Obsession, AT&T Style
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro, Editor-in-Chief of CMSWire.com here for our latest CMSWire TV, The Digital Experience Show. We’re bringing on an award-winning person in the digital customer experience world, John Miller, Vice President of Consumer and Business Solutions for AT&T. What’s going on, John?
John Miller: Hey, how’s it going, Dom?
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Good, good to have you dialing up from Texas. I’m in New England — totally different worlds, but we can relate.
John Miller: Yeah, the weather is perfect here — 80 degrees, sunny. I’m sure it’s the same way in the Boston area.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, I had a hat on this morning for my 39-degree walk with my dog. Totally different worlds for real. But we’re here to talk about customer obsession — because you kind of nailed it. As Forrester says, you got a nice award from that research firm, the Customer Obsessed Leadership Award. At first glance, you think, “Is that creepy? This guy’s obsessed with somebody?” But in our CX world, that’s a good thing — so congrats.
John Miller: Well, thank you. Good news — I didn’t get arrested at all. I was not peeking in any customer’s windows, so it was all good.
Inside Miller’s Role at AT&T
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: How are customers using AT&T’s digital properties? What are you doing to meet them where they are? Before we get into the details, tell me about your role, your team, and how you landed in this position.
John Miller: My role is that I own the technology for the human-assisted channels across AT&T. So if you pick up the phone and call us, which a million customers do a day, if you walk into a retail store, or if you chat with us online — my team provides all the engineering and product expertise to answer those questions and serve our customers.
Before AT&T, I worked at companies like General Motors, Advanced Micro Devices, Cisco, and Dell Computer. I’ve done everything from development to architecture — even served as a chief engineer for a while. Each time, I’ve noticed that when you put the customer first, amazing things happen. It’s been really cool.
Where Tech Meets Experience
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: You’re coming from a technical background — engineering and systems design. So you’re looking at customer experience through a technical lens as well, right?
John Miller: Yeah, one of the coolest things from my time at General Motors was that, even though I was a technical leader for most of my career, I always wanted to understand the business side — to walk a mile in our business partner’s shoes. My last role at GM was actually inside the business, running a unit and driving the digital product management efforts. So I’ve been on both sides of the system. I love it all because helping customers is the biggest thing we can do.
Defining Customer Obsession
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: When we talk about customer obsession, it can sound like a buzzword — journalists like me use it, analysts talk about it, but in your world, it has to mean something real. What does being customer obsessed truly mean to you and to AT&T?
John Miller: Being customer obsessed means putting the customer first — period. There’s no other part to that sentence. When you do that, everything else falls into place. One of the best lessons I learned at General Motors — and we’ve carried that into AT&T — is that we really need to know our customers. We need to understand them, and by doing that, we can serve them better.
I love that AT&T is a service-oriented company. We focus on servant leadership — helping and serving customers in everything we do. That’s what customer obsession really means to me.
The Employee Connection
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: You’ve said before that customer obsession starts with the employee experience — making sure everyone understands what it means to put the customer first. You told Forrester that AT&T’s service delivery has fostered meaningful emotional connections, not just between customers and the brand, but internally, too.
John Miller: Right.
From Employee Empowerment to Customer Experience
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: But also between our employees and the people they serve. What does that look like in action? How do you get that done?
John Miller: One of the biggest things we had to do is—well, we’re a big company with a lot of customers. One of our biggest challenges was creating a culture that’s truly customer first. So we started looking at our brand experience, the AT&T Guarantee, which promises the best prices, the best service, and a focus on the customer. We wanted to make sure that message reached every single employee — from the people digging cables for fiber to those answering phones in call centers or helping customers in retail stores. That had to be our unifying message.
The other part was giving employees the right tools and technology to make that customer-first mindset real. We hadn’t always done that. As we started walking in our employees’ shoes, we found gaps. We had to pivot — go out in the field, listen to hundreds of thousands of calls, and figure out where our technology was creating friction instead of enabling those “moments that matter.” We’ve had to re-engineer a lot of our systems to improve employee experience, because we know great employee experience enables great customer experience. As Forrester says, customer experience plus employee experience equals brand experience — and we truly believe that at AT&T.
Related Article: Creating Great Customer Experiences Starts With Employees
Reducing Friction for Agents and Customers
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: You make a great point about empowering those frontline agents. I was at a recent industry conference and asked a CEO what their agents complain about the most — and they said it’s not having access to customer history when a customer calls. We need great tech to fix that. Do you have a sense of what your agents have been most challenged with over the past year, and what they want from their technology to serve customers better?
John Miller: Sure. There were two things we heard directly from employees and customers. First, customers don’t like to repeat themselves — they want us to listen. I mean, we’re the phone company, right? We should be listening — not in that way — but when it matters, we should be listening.
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Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, just like active listening, John. Active listening.
John Miller: Exactly. And customers talk to us in all these different ways — online, in stores, or by calling our contact centers. So we started building an interaction history system that connects those touchpoints. We use AI to create a 45-day summary so agents can instantly see the key bullet points — the last few issues, recent marketing messages, store visits — without digging through five minutes of history. That lets customers avoid repeating themselves.
The second thing we found was billing confusion. Many calls and store visits came down to “Why is my bill different this month?” We used AI to compare bills and identify the cause — sometimes it’s actually good news, like a cruise package added last month that saved money on roaming. Customers would say, “Oh right, I forgot about that.” So now agents can explain bills clearly and show when the changes are positive — or fix things when they’re not.
Human Conversations, Not Transactions
John Miller: This enabled more human-to-human conversations rather than transactional ones. Instead of a customer saying, “My bill’s $5 more, give me $5 back,” it became, “Here’s why, and here’s how we can make this right.”
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I love those calls where you can tell the agent is on your side — trying to save you money, not rush you off the phone, remembering things about you. I like to chat with agents sometimes just to check in — ask how they’re doing — because being in this space, we know what they go through.
John Miller: Right.
Supporting Agents and Reducing Turnover
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: It’s almost like asking, “You doing okay?” It’s not an easy job — high turnover, tough retention rates. It’s 2025 and we still haven’t cracked the code on keeping agents long-term. What does agent experience mean to you, and what are you doing to help agents feel happier in their jobs?
John Miller: It’s a challenge. There’s always going to be attrition in contact centers and retail. But we’re leaning into two main areas. First, making our systems so easy to use that they don’t require extensive training. I always joke with my team — how many hours of training did you need to buy something on Amazon or perform a Google search? None. So why can’t our tools be that simple?
Second, I’ve sat in on a lot of calls, including some of the hardest — like collections calls. Those can be heartbreaking, and we’re focused on making the systems and scripts as human and supportive as possible to ease that emotional strain for agents.
Finding the Right Balance Between AI and Human Interaction
John Miller: Some of our agents face really stressful moments, especially on collections calls. One thing we’re doing is looking closely at where to use AI the right way — and where to prioritize human-to-human interactions. In many cases, customers don’t actually want to talk to a person when they’re setting up a payment plan or making a simple transaction like a cash payment in-store. We’ve listened to that customer feedback.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Mm. Yeah.
John Miller: From both the customer and employee perspective, this was a perfect place to introduce AI for lower-value but high-impact tasks. It relieves stress for everyone. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to an AI or a chatbot to set up a payment plan — “I can do $20 a week” — without the pressure of a human interaction.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah.
John Miller: We’ve also added kiosk options where customers can feed payments directly, like an ATM, to restore service quickly. Another innovation is “split pay,” where multiple people sharing an account can each pay their portion. We heard from employees and customers that they wanted that flexibility, so we built it. It’s an industry first that helps customers manage shared lines easily.
By listening to both sides — employees and customers — we’re creating software that’s incredibly simple to use. It’s paying off: we now have some of the lowest churn rates in the industry, reduced attrition in our contact centers and retail stores, and a reputation for being easy to do business with. And who doesn’t want easy?
Smarter Contact Centers Through Thoughtful AI
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I love easy buttons, John. I’m sure the contact center and inbound calls are your biggest source of customer inquiries. That’s probably number one, right?
John Miller: It is. We get about a million calls a day in our consumer centers. It’s a huge volume. So again, we’re using AI in the right places — for repetitive, lower-value transactions. But we’re also learning where not to use AI. It’s often better to learn from competitors’ mistakes than make your own.
Instead of forcing AI on customers — like making them go through endless menus before they can reach a person — we give them options. If a wait time will exceed five minutes, they can keep their place in line for a callback or try AI assistance in the meantime. If the AI resolves it, great. If not, a human picks it up immediately. We’re not forcing automation; we’re using it to augment, not replace, service.
Everyone’s had moments when AI fails — like yelling at your car’s voice assistant that you said “Finch Street,” not “Fifth Street.” Customers have short fuses when technology doesn’t listen. So we’re designing AI that helps, not frustrates.
Digital First, Not Digital Only
John Miller: AI should never be the only option. That’s something the whole industry is learning, especially those who went too far and saw customer satisfaction plummet.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, anything that’s “AI only” or “email only” doesn’t work. If I have to email customer service for an issue, I’m gone. Customers can’t be forced into one channel. It’s about choice and meeting them where they are.
John Miller: Exactly. At AT&T, we want to be digital first — because many customers prefer that — but not digital only. We’re investing across channels so customers can choose the experience they want. Our goal is to make each channel exceptional at what it does, not push everyone into the same funnel.
Omnichannel Experiences That Build Trust
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Speaking of those other facets — outside of the contact center — what’s top of mind for you in terms of digital experience? Are website inquiries or social channels ramping up?
John Miller: Definitely. More customers want to engage digitally end to end, and we’re meeting them there. But many also tell us they don’t want to be digital only. They want seamless transitions — start in one channel, move to another without losing context.
For example, someone upgrading or porting their phone number can do the whole thing online. But some customers — maybe they’ve had their number for 20 years, or it’s tied to their business — want reassurance from a human that it’ll transfer correctly. That’s understandable. We have safeguards and a 30-day window to fix any porting issue, but we strive to get it right the first time.
Designing Seamless Human and Digital Experiences
John Miller: Sometimes there’s friction — things like needing a PIN code or extra verification steps. We walk through that with customers, but some people just say, “I’m not an expert at this. I want a human being who can help me make it work.” We want to enable those customers just as much as we support those who say, “I talk to people all day — I just want to use my app, click a few buttons, and be done.”
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah.
John Miller: So we’re working to ensure both experiences exist — and that customers can move seamlessly between them. They shouldn’t have to pick one channel and stay there.
Looking Ahead to 2026: Agentic AI and Human Connection
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I like that strategy, John. It’s been great getting an inside look at AT&T’s consumer side and what’s happening in your contact centers. Before we wrap up, what’s the big goal for 2026? What’s the moment where you come back next year and say, “Dom, we did it”?
John Miller: The biggest thing for us is leaning into agentic AI and guided workflows. We already use AI across our systems — that 45-day summary is one example — but now we’re focused on creating AI agents that can handle lower-value tasks reliably, without hallucinating or going off track. That frees our human teams to spend more time on the moments that truly matter.
We’re also rethinking management. In 2026, a manager might oversee six human employees and six AI agents. That means coaching both — reviewing what the AI did, checking if it created the right customer experience, and “correcting” it when it didn’t. It’s about using AI the right way to enable more human moments, not just chasing shiny efficiency metrics.
At AT&T, we’re staying focused on the customer. Whether an interaction happens through a human, a digital channel, or an AI agent, it has to deliver the same level of empathy, trust, and care. That’s what customer obsession means to us — and that’s the prize we’re chasing for 2026.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I love that perspective — AI as the smartest intern you have, but still an intern. It needs guidance. Well said, John. We really appreciate your time here on CMSWire TV’s Digital Experience Show. We’re looking forward to seeing what AT&T does next in customer experience — and keep being obsessed, because that’s a good thing. You even got awarded for it — the only guy who’s ever been celebrated for being obsessed with something.
John Miller: Yes.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Congrats, and thanks for joining us.
John Miller: Well done, thank you very much. Thanks.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Have a good one, John.
John Miller: You too. Thanks a lot.
