Verint Analyst Days – Lots and Lots of Bots

With the stunning Camelback Mountain (Scottsdale, AZ) in the background, Verint recently hosted its industry analyst event, focusing on CX Automation, Open CCaaS, data, and bots – lots and lots of bots.

CEO Dan Bodner explained that Verint has gone through several transformations in its long history. What started as a data company, and then became known as a workforce optimization (WFO) and workforce engagement management (WEM) company is now a CX Automation company. Verint (or Verint 4.0 as Bodner jokingly referred to it) is focused on expanding the workforce to include both people and bots working side by side. Bodner noted that Verint’s Open CCaaS platform works across channels and orchestrates the workforce and bots, which is the key to success in CX Automation.

I spoke with Jaime Meritt, chief product officer, who provided some important background about Verint’s transformation to become a CX Automation vendor. Meritt noted that the company made a huge investment to create a new architecture leveraging advancements in AI. Verint’s focus on AI and CX Automation led to the development of the Open CCaaS Platform and a large number of new specialized bots.

Verint Open CCaaS Platform

The Verint Open CCaaS Platform was designed with data and AI at the core to increase CX automation (for more on the Open CCaaS Platform read here). Key elements of the Open CCaaS platform are Verint’s Engagement Data Hub (EDH), Verint’s Da Vinci AI, and Verint Workflows that bring “AI to agents’ fingertips.” At the core of the platform, the Engagement Data Hub empowers customer operations with real-time behavioral data, while Verint Da Vinci AI provides AI innovation to augment the human workforce.

I spoke with Heather Richards, VP, Go to Market Strategy, about the Open CCaaS platform – what it does, what Verint means by openness, and the role of telephony in the platform.

Bots and More Bots

Bodner noted that bots are a new way to consume AI to achieve CX automation. Verint currently offers 35 bots, with 50 expected by the end of the year. Each of these bots automates one specific function and augments specific contact center roles, such as agents, supervisors, managers, analysts, compliance teams, etc. The bots bring AI into the workflow and don’t have to disrupt the existing business processes.

The bots assisting agents include advanced containment, wrap-up, performance coaching, knowledge suggestion, sentiment coaching, agent virtual assistant, agent transfer, and self-service transfer. The bots for the enterprise include workload forecasting, CX scoring, extended workload forecasting, intent discovery, knowledge creation, performance scoring, quality, template, and transcription tuning.

What was most interesting was Verint’s ability to quantify the ROI of its bots and CX automation. Bodner emphasized that CX automation lets brands increase labor productivity and elevate CX, while bots increase workforce capacity. As mentioned, the bots are intended to augment humans in the contact center, leading to a combination of bots and agents working together to boost agent productivity and deliver enhanced self-service capabilities. Verint has been focused on the Engagement Capacity Gap in contact centers, and notes that bots will create extra capacity to help close this gap.

For example, the company claims that deploying a team of bots, such as Interaction Wrap-Up, Knowledge Suggestion, Performance Coaching, and Voice Containment bots for all or a portion of interactions in a 2,000-seat contact center can drive a 20% increase in agent capacity.

Going a step further, Bodner noted that one customer found that adding a team of bots instead of hiring an additional 400 agents to meet its growing needs resulted in $14.7 million annual savings (the cost of the potential $16 million incremental labor cost minus the incremental bot cost).

Meritt provided additional data based on real uses of the bots:

For agents:

• Containment bots can reduce agent calls by up to 30%
• Interaction wrap-up bot can reduce agent after call work by 90 seconds
• Transfer bots can reduce agent handle time by 20 seconds
• Sentiment scoring bot can reduce agent handle time by 10 seconds
• Knowledge suggestion bot can reduce agent handle time by 20 seconds

For the enterprise:

• Performance scoring bot for managers can reduce evaluation time by 50%
• Interviewing bot for managers provide an 80% reduction in 90-day attrition
• CX prediction bot for analysts provide improved CSAT

In this video, Meritt discusses bots, how they’re trained, and how they’re being priced (for example, some are included in apps, others are standalone that can be purchased), as well as the ROI. Meritt also discusses how the bots can be used with customers’ on-prem solutions without any operational disruption.

Engagement Data Hub

As mentioned, a key element of the Open CCaaS platform is Verint’s Engagement Data Hub (EDH). The Engagement Data Hub is considered “the bot gym,” where bots become experts when trained on relevant data, including workforce data from the contact center, back office, and branches; interaction data from voice, digital, social, CCaaS, and UCaaS; and experience data from email surveys, post-call surveys, and digital experience.

Associated with the EDH is the Data Insights bot, which delivers actionable insights with intuitive queries powered by generative AI. The Data Insights bot can provide personalized headlines to give managers information on what they care about. Managers can ask questions in the language of the contact center, such as “What is the AHT by month,” or “What is the service level vs. forecasted service level by organization?” The bot responds with data from all channels and applications connected to the EDH, and answers can include rich graphics and video. This all helps to accelerate speed to decision and reduce operational costs.

In this video, Dave Singer, GVP, Go to Market Strategy discusses the Engagement Data hub, as well as Verint’s Data Insights Bot.

Engagement CX

Another new addition is Enterprise CX, an app that uses the speech and text data in the Data Hub to provide insights for CX leaders in an organization. It’s aimed not just at the contact center but for people responsible for CX across the enterprise who need to see the bigger picture. Enterprise CX automatically combines direct, indirect and inferred voice, text, and third-party insights, and then automates actions on customer feedback and sentiment. It provides a unified view while providing insights and answers in one place, while automating alerts and workflow with case management to ensure customer resolution. Sentiment is tied to every experience and interaction thanks to a Sentiment Bot that understands overall sentiment trends and impact by category and channel. The goal is to impact CX across the enterprise.

In this video, Daniel Ziv, VP, Go to Market Strategy, discusses Enterprise CX and how it benefits CX leaders.

Final Thoughts

Verint now considers itself a platform company, as opposed to an application company, although it’s still a leader in workforce optimization and workforce engagement management applications. The company has certainly been busy – in addition to adding new bots, it also introduced a new Open CCaaS Mobile app with a natural language interface, as well as several Open CCaaS packages for partners to resell. The company is working on appropriate pricing of the bots, as well as ensuring that its channel and system integrator partners have the right packaging and offers for customers to provide their desired business outcomes.

Verint’s messaging has changed since its Engage customer event last June when it introduced the Open CCaaS platform and specialized bots and is still a work in process. The company’s key focus is on helping organizations close the Engagement Capacity Gap, add innovation in their environments at the pace that’s right for them, and most of all, increasing CX automation. And yes, there’s a bot for that.