How ADT embraces AI to make every second count.

For over 150 years, ADT has been a leader in home security, empowering customers to protect what matters most – their families, homes and businesses.

When Wayne Thorsen, ADT's Chief Business Officer, joined in 2023, his mission was clear: to sharpen ADT's competitive edge. His first step was launching the proprietary ADT+ platform, enabling the introduction of new services and products to customers, catering to a wider range of needs and getting to market faster. At the same time, ADT has been undergoing a transformation, focused on harnessing AI and other technologies to enhance products and customer care for their customers.

With the ADT+ platform and app now earning glowing reviews, especially following the launch of Trusted Neighbor, ADT broadened their ambitions to delivering step changes in the care experience for any customer requiring ADT’s assistance.

Delivering faster, more flexible customer care

In addition to the ADT+ mobile app, ADT manages millions of customer interactions each month, including two million care requests. Enhancing customer care interactions – whether it be password resets, account management or service appointments – to match the quality of product interactions, requires alignment across technology, channels and teams, with clearly defined performance metrics.

‘Our employees are deeply committed to our mission of keeping customers safe and helping them improve their lives as they wish. Any technology investment has to amplify that commitment.’ says Nadou Lawson, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships. ‘We weren’t going to rush into AI for the sake of doing something new. We wanted to be deliberate – what problems could we solve with AI, and how could we do it in a way that brought real value to both our customers and employees?’

In defining target experience and goals, Wayne, Nadou and ADT’s Care/CX leaders continuously come back to ‘every second counts’ as the anchor for what an AI solution has to enable. ‘We need to have the right information and tools in place so that when customers need us, their issues are resolved quickly and effectively, especially when they want to self-service,’ Nadou emphasises. ‘And ideally, we consistently exceed their expectations.’

Finding a partner

Knowing that AI will play a key role in their ongoing customer experience transformation, ADT has been laying much of the groundwork for this shift by unifying data. But a strong data foundation isn’t enough. ADT needs partners who are experts not only in the technology but also know how to strategically apply it to customer care.

‘Sierra stood out in many ways,’ Wayne shares. ‘We spoke to several companies, but Sierra brought unrivalled strategic insight and relevant expertise. Sierra didn’t just offer a technical solution – they helped us rethink our approach to the customer experience.’

Nadou elaborates, ‘A lot of providers will give you a generic solution and say, "Here, plug this in." But with Sierra, it’s different. They helped us to integrate our brand and customer requirements to deploy an AI agent that can adapt and support multiple areas of our business over time. This is a key distinction between a provider/vendor and a strategic partner, which is how we see Sierra – we have a mutual commitment to innovating and scaling, in the ways that are right for ADT’s customers, agents and business.’

Accelerating beyond customer support

As part of their transformation, ADT has launched a Sierra AI agent to handle a variety of customer Help Centre queries – from troubleshooting enquiries like ‘Why is my system beeping?’ to account and billing questions such as ‘How do I sign up for EasyPay?’ or ‘How do I change my password?’ Soon, their AI agent will have expanded capabilities, offering customers the ability to make a payment, reschedule a service visit, order garden signs or batteries, and more.

This is just the start for ADT. Customer care was chosen as the place to start the company’s AI journey. Given the scale of impact possible, however, ADT intends to assess and explore new ways to evolve many parts of the business, harnessing AI and technology. Early partners, like Sierra, are key to setting the right vision, pace and proof points for what can be achieved. ‘Sierra has been a real game-changer for us,’ Wayne says. ‘Sierra is not only helping us improve today’s customer experience but inspiring where we want to go tomorrow.’