Verint Pushing Hard On CX Innovation

Businesses have a lot to do when it comes to customer experience. Customers want their interactions to be easy and always right. And businesses want to contain costs, boost revenue and increase loyalty. These were the key messages Nancy Treaster, SVP and GM of Strategic Operations for Verint focussed on when looking at innovations the company is bringing to the way businesses interact with customers.

One of the keys, said Treaster during the recent Verint Engage conference, was the ability for customers to provide feedback easily. This was behind the company’s recent acquisition of OpinionLab, a tool that allows customers to provide a “+1” whenever they want during an interaction.

The capture of customer interactions extends to the use of real-time analytics on all communications including phone calls and video chats in order to better understand how to improve in all interactions. This means businesses can bring together recordings from multiple sources so they are stored together. Sources such as Jabber, Skype, IVR interactions and various video-chat solutions are supported.

This is important for security and compliance but also allows analysis to be carried out across the different media. Text and conversational analytics can be evaluated together. As speech is converted to text it means you can search across all those interactions.

When online channels were first used by companies, they typically operated as a district silo, separate from traditional bricks and mortar transactions. As a result, the performance of each different outlet was measured in isolation from the others. But with increased integration of the customer experience – such as through click-and-collect services – the number of ways for customers to interact has also increased. But many of those communications methods were separate leading to frustration for customers and support associates.

One of the other challenges Treaster discussed the way transactional volumes are decreasing at branch offices, as more customers conduct purchases and other interactions online, and transition into a different service offering.

For example, while banks conduct fewer traditional transactions at a counter, customers are going to branches for different things such as financial advice or more complex interactions such as planning the purchase pf a property.

This means businesses need to rethink how they manage their workforce. This covers mobile workforce management, but also the ability to better understand which resources are needed in specific situations. It extends to ensuring personnel have access to information they need whenever and wherever they are.

That ability to better understand the customer need and to seamlessly manage their experience as they move from one part for the sales or support channel to another will drive the next wave of customer experience.

Looking ahead, Treaster gave the audience a look at some of the products Verint is working on. They are currently testing automated quality management that can automatically review interactions and identify those that were good and others that represent “learning opportunities”. And, as the speech recognition is so strong, their system can provide coaching to assist people with filling in forms.