Verizon’s cloud strategy is dispersing as it pulls together distinct services from different vendors. The operator today announced a customer service pilot with Google Cloud to provide artificial intelligence(AI)-driven insights that allows for quicker and more effective responses.

The varied and more colorful approach to cloud services, wherein Verizon makes deals with multiple hyperscale public cloud providers, follows an internal unraveling of its own aspirations in private cloud, data centers, and managed hosting. Verizon shut down its public cloud service in 2016 and, in 2017, sold 29 of its data centers to Equinix and sold its private cloud and managed hosting business to IBM.

The operator’s new, albeit limited foray into the cloud with Google is notable because it previously turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the No. 1 cloud provider’s Wavelength edge compute service as the foundation for the Verizon Edge platform. AWS provides a call center service dubbed Amazon Connect, but Verizon opted instead to go with Google Cloud Contact Center AI.

Integrating disparate services from multiple vendors increases complexity, but many mobile network operators are making deals with multiple public cloud providers to achieve different goals. 

AT&T last year inked a deal, reportedly valued at more than $2 billion, that called for Microsoft Azure to be its preferred cloud provider for non-network applications. However, the week prior in a nod to its multicloud strategy, AT&T announced a deal with IBM that will see AT&T’s Business unit become IBM’s primary provider of SDN and for IBM to help AT&T improve and migrate its business applications to IBM Cloud. 

Verizon hasn’t yet committed to making the improved contact center commercially available, but it claims natural-language processing and real-time access to customer data will lead to shorter call times and improved outcomes for its customers.

“These customer service enhancements, powered by the Verizon collaboration with Google Cloud, offer a faster and more personalized digital experience for our customers while empowering our customer support agents to provide a higher level of service,” Shankar Arumugavelu, global CIO and SVP at Verizon, said in a statement.

Kirsten Kliphouse, president of Google Cloud’s business in North America, last week during a press conference said the companies are also using AI and machine learning to “help deliver more insights to [Verizon] based on the past experiences in millions and millions of customer service interactions they’ve had as a way to improve the future customer service interactions.”

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle contributed reporting for this story.