Mobile and Home Rewards
Overview
Verizon’s Mobile + Home Rewards program gives customers a monthly discount when they combine Verizon Wireless and Fios internet services.
Although the program offered meaningful savings, enrolling required customers to navigate a separate experience, understand how two Verizon accounts worked together, and determine when and where their discount would appear. These points of friction made the program difficult to understand and easy to overlook during checkout.
As the content strategist for Mobile + Home Rewards 2.0, I helped redesign the wireless sales experience so eligible Fios customers could discover, understand, and enroll in the program without leaving the purchase flow.
The business opportunity
Only 40.8% of Fios internet customers also subscribed to Verizon Wireless.
Verizon saw an opportunity to increase wireless adoption among its existing Fios customer base by making the value of combining services more visible during checkout.
Our guiding question was:
How might we convert more existing Fios customers into Verizon Wireless customers by making the Mobile + Home Rewards program easier to understand and join?
My role
I was responsible for developing the content strategy across the program’s primary enrollment touchpoints.
My work included:
Auditing the existing enrollment experience
Identifying customer questions and content gaps
Defining where and when savings messaging should appear
Mapping content across three potential enrollment paths
Conducting a targeted usability test
Recommending changes based on customer behavior
Partnering with experience, and design team
Understanding the existing experience
I partnered with the experience manager and my manager to audit the existing enrollment journey.
The audit revealed three central customer questions.
“Do I need to download another app?”
Customers previously had to complete a separate process to receive the discount. This created unnecessary effort and made the program feel disconnected from wireless checkout.
Strategic response: Integrate enrollment directly into the sales flow so eligible customers could join without downloading another app or navigating to a separate experience.
“How much am I actually saving?”
The value of the program was not consistently visible while customers compared wireless plans or reviewed their carts.
Strategic response: Place discount messaging next to plan pricing and show the savings again in the shopping cart.
“Why is my discount divided between two bills?”
Applying portions of the discount to separate Fios and wireless bills made the total savings difficult to understand.
Strategic response: Apply the full discount to the customer’s new wireless service bill, creating a clearer connection between the offer and the service being purchased
Designing the enrollment strategy
To receive the discount, customers needed to authenticate themselves as existing Fios subscribers.
I identified three points in the wireless purchase journey where customers could discover or enroll in the program.
Entry point 1: Authenticated Fios experience
Customers who entered the sales flow while signed into their Fios accounts automatically saw discounted wireless pricing on the plan-selection page.
Their Mobile + Home Rewards savings also appeared in the shopping cart, reinforcing the offer before checkout
Entry point 2: Fios authentication modal
Customers who were not signed in entered their ZIP code early in the wireless sales flow.
When the ZIP code was within a Fios service area, eligible customers received a modal inviting them to sign in with their Fios credentials to view discounted wireless pricing.
This allowed Verizon to identify Fios customers before they selected a plan and personalize the experience accordingly.
Entry point 3: Order confirmation
If a Fios customer chooses to skip authenticating themselves, they will not see the reduced plan prices at all during the sales flow. They will still be able to enroll in the program from the order confirmation page if they chose an eligible wireless plan.
Positioning the program’s value
Because Mobile + Home Rewards savings were tied directly to the wireless plan, I recommended placing the discount as close to the plan price as possible.
Rather than treating the program as a separate promotion, the content connected the savings to the customer’s immediate decision:
Which wireless plan should I choose?
What will that plan cost?
How much will I save as a Fios customer?
The savings appeared consistently at the moments when customers evaluated pricing, reviewed their selections, and completed their purchases.
Identifying a customer mental-model problem
The Fios authentication modal initially depended on customers identifying themselves as either a “new” or “existing” Verizon customer.
This presented a problem.
Research showed that many customers believed their Verizon Wireless and Fios accounts were the same. In reality, the services used separate account systems.
A customer who had Fios but had never purchased Verizon Wireless could reasonably consider themselves an existing Verizon customer. However, the wireless checkout system classified that person as a new customer.
Choosing the wrong option prevented the Fios authentication modal from appearing and made the customer’s savings more difficult to access.
Testing the experience
I conducted a targeted spot test to determine how Fios-only customers interpreted the new-versus-existing-customer question.
12 of 14 participants identified themselves incorrectly.
The result demonstrated that the existing language did not align with customers’ understanding of their relationship with Verizon.
We considered two possible solutions:
Rewrite the new-versus-existing-customer question across the website.
Allow customers to authenticate with their Fios credentials directly within the wireless experience.
Changing the question would have affected every customer and sales journey across Verizon’s website. It would also have required a much broader implementation effort.
Based on the test results and technical constraints, we recommended allowing customers to sign in with their Fios credentials from the wireless flow. This addressed the immediate enrollment problem without introducing unnecessary changes to unrelated journeys.
Results
Within one week of launch, Verizon saw a substantial improvement in the close rate among Fios customers using the Mobile + Home Rewards offer.
57% increase among customers who began by shopping for phones
233% increase among customers who began by shopping for plans
Increased premium-plan selection among participating customers
The redesigned experience made the program easier to discover, reduced the effort required to enroll, and connected the offer’s value directly to the customer’s wireless purchase.