Verint Analyst Days – All About CX Automation

If you thought Verint was a legacy workforce optimization (WFO) or workforce engagement management (WEM) company, it’s time to think again. While WFO and WEM is still an important part of the company’s business and what it is best known for, Verint has positioned itself a “CX Automation” company. At its recent analyst conference in Dallas, TX, Verint discussed its new positioning and messaging, as well as its many customer wins based on this CX automation approach.

Verint has been on a mission to deliver AI business outcomes by increasing CX automation in the contact center to lower costs while improving the customer experience, and to create capacity (remember the engagement capacity gap Verint identified several years ago?).

At the analyst event, CEO Dan Bodner noted that while in the past, contact centers were focused on telephony-centric platforms and hiring more people to deliver on CX expectations, today it’s about data- and AI-centric platforms, AI-powered bots, augmenting workers, and elevating CX. Bodner noted that companies that want to improve their customer experiences no longer have to rip and replace their existing contact center systems, and can innovate at their own pace with measurable ROI.

Open Platform, Data, and Bots

Verint’s key to increasing CX Automation is the company’s open platform, AI-powered bots, and data-driven operations. Bodner stated that one of the reasons Verint is winning deals is because they can provide an open platform that works with the customers’ existing ACD or CCaaS solution, providing AI business outcomes without forcing customers to rip and replace what they have or go through a major disruption.

Data is, of course, critical, and Verint’s Data Hub brings all the various types of data (calls, SMS, emails, surveys, social, etc.) from various sources (contact center, back office, branch, etc.) into one place. Verint integrates its Data Hub with customers’ CRM, data lakes, and even large language models (LLMs) complementing what customers already use without requiring any replacement. Data is needed to constantly train Verint’s team of bots to create outcomes, and Verint Data Hub powers AI with fresh contact center data for continuous training.

Bots are essential to Verint’s AI strategy, with each bot designed to deliver ROI based on measurable AI outcomes. Each Verint bot is built to achieve one specific business outcome with tangible, measurable ROI. Each bot is designed with the most applicable AI model, including Verint proprietary models, leading AI vendor models, and open source models, with Verint Da Vinci AI balancing the requirements for bot performance and cost to run. The “bot factory” is open, enabling customers to bring their own LLMs.

The key to success is to continually train these bots on relevant data “in the gym” to maximize value, while embracing an AI platform that delivers AI models through workflows rather than discrete AI engines. Bots continually train on fresh behavioral data to ensure the bots’ performance improves over time. The bots are infused into contact center workflows to help drive adoption and ROI.

During the event, we heard about some of Verint’s key bots, including:

• Data Insights Bot, which acts as an advisor providing data-driven decision making and analysis. The bot provides AI insights for the contact center and creating reports and dashboards built on behavioral data, and allowing business users to have a conversation with the data using natural language
• Verint IVA for self service
• Quality Bot to automate compliance and quality
• Exact Transcription Bot with high accuracy
• Coaching Bot to improve agent outcomes and reduce call duration by assisting agents during interactions
• Interaction Wrap-Up Bot to increase agent capacity by reducing after-call work
• TimeFlex Bot to empower agents with unlimited schedule changes

Verint noted that each of these bots provide impactful business outcomes. For example, the Coaching Bots can reduce call duration by 20 seconds per interaction, increase sales conversion by 10%, provide 100% compliance adherence, and improve CSAT/NPS by 20%.

In this video, Dave Singer, Global VP, Go to Market Strategy, discusses CX Automation and how Verint automates various functions to drive AI business outcomes. He explains that by focusing on outcomes such as increasing agent capacity or improving sales, Verint can provide AI tools and bots to deliver the desired outcomes. Singer discusses how Verint makes AI real by continually training AI on the right data and then embedding the bots in the users’ workflow. He also describes how Verint bundles and packages various bots to provide value and outcomes to customers.

In this video, Daniel Ziv, Vice President, Go to Market Strategy, discusses how the Coaching Bot, Transcription Bot, Wrap Up Bot, IVA and Containment Bot, and others drive specific AI outcomes. As Ziv notes, Verint can turn on the bots in 30 days and customers can see ROI within a month or two.

Customer Momentum

What was particularly impactful at the event was hearing about Verint’s momentum and the number of customer wins based on this outcome-based approach. For example, Verint won a large deal with a Fortune 25 health care company that wanted to increase agent capacity, elevate compliance, and enhance supervisor productivity. While the health care company was basically told by various CCaaS vendors that it would need to replace its existing contact center platform in order to achieve these goals, Verint was able to provide a variety of bots without having to replace what the company already had, while providing value and ROI right away. Verint noted that of the seven RFP responses, it was the only vendor that was able to deliver AI business outcomes right away by integrating with the customer’s legacy on-prem and cloud ecosystem, including multiple CRMs and ACDs.

Verint also discussed recent successes with its Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) self-service bots used to improve containment and provide a unified self-service experience across voice, digital and social channels. The Verint IVA uses context and AI to resolve the customer issue, offer seamless resolution options, and route directly to the correct queue with context. Verint cited several customer examples of how the IVA increased containment rates and improved FCR. For example, a major credit card servicing and payments provider using Verint IVA for 14 million interactions annually was able to contain 80% of calls, while a multinational hotel chain using Verint IVA experienced a 60% increase in containment rates with a 20% improvement in Customer Effort Scores.

WEM? WFO?

While we heard a lot about bots, AI, automation, data platforms, etc., there was very little discussion about Verint’s bread and butter – WFO and WEM. When asked about this, Bodner explained that while Verint is still a workforce engagement management company, the workforce it helps to manage is no longer just humans. Noting that elevating CX requires more labor, Verint is staying true to its focus on increasing the capacity of the contact center workforce, but that workforce is now made up of both humans and bots.

While there is still work to be done (clarifying the packaging and pricing of the bots, scaling and helping partners identify the business outcomes that customers are trying to achieve and how to sell the various bots, for example), Verint is clearly gaining momentum and its new messaging is resonating.