Elan Moriah, President, Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions® and Verint Video Intelligence Solutions™
1. What contact center market trends do you expect in 2009?
From a market perspective, we’re finding that businesses across the board are taking a renewed look at their operations, including their approaches to service quality and the customer experience. Focusing on customer relationships and retention, as well as how best to maximize resources and reduce operational costs are the priorities. Workforce Optimization (WFO) software can have a significant return on investment – from building and growing customer relations through better service, to supporting revenue generation, to helping contact center agents and other enterprise staff become more efficient, productive and knowledgeable. WFO solutions—ranging from quality monitoring and workforce management, to performance management, learning and coaching, to powerful analytics—can deliver solid return and support the business, both in up and down economies.
Within the WFO market, speech analytics is transformational, and we believe this segment will continue to attract interest in 2009. Speech analytics gives organizations the ability to tap into existing recorded customer interactions, gaining actionable intelligence for improving business performance. Typically collected in the contact center, recorded calls have historically been used for monitoring the quality of service provided by agents or ascertaining how quickly calls are answered. Now, enterprises are taking an external perspective and examining captured interactions for insightful business intelligence like the drivers of rising call volumes into the contact center, the reasons customers complain, trends that are taking form and key issues that need to be addressed.
Uptake of WFO technology into other customer-affecting areas of the business—such as branch and back-office departments—represents another great opportunity for organizations today. Many companies underestimate the impact back-office operations have on the customer experience and even the contact center itself. Inefficiencies in any one department can ripple into others, resulting in call volume spikes or mounting customer frustration. For instance, when companies identify the underlying motives for repeat visits or calls into their stores, branches and centers, they may find incorrect order fulfillment, processing delays and improper billing prompting customer calls. This not only impacts the bottom line, but also can signal declines in customer satisfaction.
2. Verint Witness Actionable Solutions’ Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite encompasses a vast array of solutions, i.e., Workforce Management, Call Recording, Speech and Data Analytics, Performance Management. Which applications do you expect to attract the most interest in 2009?
Workforce optimization (WFO) is continuing to peak the interest of global organizations, especially those looking for a unified offering with native integrations. Customer interaction analytics, as well as coaching and training, are impactful solutions in and of themselves.
Customer Interaction Analytics
Knowing what customers think about your business is important—but knowing why is equally important, since it opens the door to processes, products, services and even staffing that may need closer examination and refinement. Speech analytics can provide that insight by converting conversations from unstructured audio data into data that is structured in an index that can be readily searched and analyzed. By automatically building an index of words and phrases exchanged with customers, companies can mine calls for insights to find out why customers feel and act the way they do.
Coaching and Training
Historically, many contact centers have done a poor job of creating environments rich with learning and training opportunities for agents. With so much to do and so little time, staff development can quickly fall toward the bottom of the priority list. This is especially important today given agents are doing more than ever—handling diverse and complex customer interactions, multi-tasking across multiple applications and systems, meeting up-sell and cross-sell targets, and adhering to what can be very rigorous and sometimes regulated processes. By placing more emphasis on training agents to handle calls effectively, companies can experience a direct connection between developing and retaining professional, skilled staff and delivering high-caliber customer experiences.
3. Verint has offerings that address the larger contact centers, Impact 360 Workforce Optimization, and the small to mid sized center, Impact 360 Express. What lead Verint to launch the latter in 2008, and how are the two solutions different?
Delivering a solution that makes it possible for companies of all sizes to boost productivity, reduce attrition, and capture and evaluate interactions, as well as satisfy compliance and risk management requirements, was a key priority for Verint. That is why the company launched Impact 360® Express, a workforce optimization (WFO) solution for customers with small and medium-sized (SMB) contact centers.
SMB centers can have unique needs and constraints, and Impact 360 Express is designed with simplicity in mind for that very reason. Its intuitive interface can help contact center staff become more productive right away, while built-in health monitoring tools and auto diagnostics can streamline management and minimize maintenance. The solution doesn’t require expensive hardware, middleware, or desktop applications; it can be up-and-running quickly.
The requirements associated with the larger enterprise are usually defined as having a higher number of agent seats. Larger centers and those with multi-site centralized and/or virtual environments benefit from the Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite’s enterprise architecture, which features a host of solutions and functions that larger operations require.
4. What impact does the current tight economy have on Verint‘s goals for 2009? How has the downturn affected the decision making process?
All companies are challenged today to invest in solutions, processes and people that produce results, keep customers at the forefront and deliver a strong, tangible return on investment. Workforce optimization (WFO) software continues to be a prioritized investment area among business and IT decision makers—one that industry analysts have singled out for its ability to help drive down costs, maximize resources, increase sales, heighten service quality and retain customers. This represents a significant opportunity for our business and our market as a whole.
WFO solutions have delivered proven results that support each of these areas in terms of staffing, service, quality, efficiency and productivity. From forecasting and scheduling employees, to recording customer interactions for compliance, quality and training, to leveraging analytics that automatically categorize and analyze call content to reveal the root causes of customer perceptions, business outcomes, and call volume drivers, companies can respond to customer needs and learn not only what customers are calling about, but why—and in turn make appropriate adjustments.
In addition to the features that comprise WFO, companies are increasingly demanding integrated, single source technology solutions. We’ve found the same among our customers who are choosing to invest in a unified suite from one technology provider that features the robust functionality they want with the cost-saving and less-resource intensive technical aspects that are inherent. As a result, companies can experience easier installation and implementation, and reduced learning curves and training expenses—which translate into lower cost of ownership and a faster return, not to mention solutions and services that draw on a structured upgrade path and single support organization. This is all in line with the mandate businesses have around working smarter, maximizing resources, cutting costs, and increasing the drive toward productivity and efficiency.
5. There are several competitors that appear to be offering suite solutions. How do you differentiate your solutions from your competitors?
Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions® is a recognized innovator and market share leader, featuring the most unified workforce optimization (WFO) solution with pre-built native business integrations and corresponding services. Our next-generation Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite is comprised of proven, robust software and services for enterprises and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as the public safety sector. It provides a combination of unified, analytics-driven, enterprise-enabled WFO solutions that are used across verticals, around the globe—helping organizations enhance and optimize their operations, sales, service and customer relationships.
Vision, strategy, technology and executional qualities that differentiate Verint include:
• Industry’s Most Unified Suite
Software and services from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions comprise the industry’s broadest portfolio of innovative solutions for workforce optimization, quality monitoring and call recording, speech and data analytics, workforce management, eLearning and coaching, performance management and customer feedback surveys—all operating on a single architecture and delivered by a single provider.
• Enterprise Architecture
The next-generation Impact 360 suite is analytics-driven and built on a unified, single enterprise architecture. This is truly unique to Verint and is not something others in the market offer.
Impact 360 is also enterprise-enabled. WFO technology that is proven and has long been successfully used in contact center environments is now moving into the broader enterprise. Verint was the first in the market to extend its technology into these customer-impacting areas of the business—which include remote and branch office, and back-office operations. It’s been said that for every one customer-facing service representative, there are up to 10 back-office workers in customer-affecting roles. As such, in many organizations, this area represents a great opportunity for improvements in cost reduction and operational excellence.
• Robust Patent Portfolio
With solutions backed by industry-leading research and development investments, Verint surpassed its 400th patent and patent applications worldwide in 2008. Behind our market leadership is a history of innovation and market-firsts, backed by a robust patent portfolio that provides competitive advantages in the market, increasing barriers to entry for our competitors, and affording great advantages to our global customers.
• Customer Success
Customer satisfaction continues to be an important gauge in how Verint measures its success. Throughout the year, we perform a host of internal satisfaction trackers, surveys and measures to closely gauge customer satisfaction across a scorecard of metrics that we feel are vital to our company as we continue to evolve and important to our customers. From an external measure perspective, we’ve continued to receive positive market reaction to our customer satisfaction focus. In 2008, we were named #1 in vendor reputation by the National Association of Call Centers (NACC). And in April 2009, CRM magazine named Verint #1 through the “Workforce Optimization Leader” award in its highly competitive “Service Leaders” competition for the second consecutive year. According to the publication, the awards are designed to profile “the year’s best, brightest and most successful efforts in the support and service sectors.” Evaluations were formulated on weighted criteria consisting of industry analyst ratings based on company direction, depth of functionality/services and scores reflecting company reputation for customer satisfaction.
6. Verint offers data and speech analytics, as well as customer feedback surveys. What information are users finding most valuable for their centers? Is the information obtained from your analytics solutions being used by the enterprise?
Speech analytics, data analytics and customer feedback surveys bring forth pivotal “moment of truth” interactions that can shape customer relationships and provide valuable insight for areas of opportunity and improvement. A valued customer today remains a source of repeat revenue tomorrow. Analytics-driven customer service can help make this goal a reality.
Designed to help organizations develop a more thorough understanding of customers’ wants and needs, these Impact 360 analytics solutions not only help optimize customer interactions but also promote lasting and profitable customer relationships. Speech analytics combines structured and unstructured data, analyzing and identifying key circumstances that may positively or negatively impact business performance, including the root causes of customer perceptions, high-volume call drivers, rising trends and market opportunities. Data analytics identifies anomalies that can positively or negatively impact performance. Customer feedback surveys capture direct customer feedback on products, processes and staff performance, helping gather critical “outside in” data, and identify and measure the drivers of customer behavior. Together, the three help organizations make better decisions faster..
7. Multi tasking has become commonplace in the contact center. For instance, a quality monitoring specialist may now be taking on additional responsibilities such as the performance management function. Please comment on what appears to be a growing trend.
As the industry continues to evolve, contact centers must change the way they operate to transition from tactical to strategic—a must in today’s highly competitive market. Whether it’s from a broader, more enterprise view or specific down to a role within the contact center, functions are no longer completely siloed. In the case of quality monitoring (QM) and performance management, the ties are strong and logical.
Take packaged technology solutions like Impact 360. Today’s key performance indicators (KPIs) that are displayed in role appropriate scorecards include QM and evaluation statistics and data – in addition to other customer experience metrics. When looking at performance scorecards, such specialists can tap into QM recordings and adherence views for more insights and help identify trends and areas for improvement. Similarly, they can identify skills gaps and proficiency areas that need to be countered – and can flag, automate and have eLearning and coaching scheduled and delivered to help staff take their quality metrics and skill proficiencies to the next level.
We see this as partly a multi-tasking trend, but even more so in how manager roles in the contact center have changed, and how technology solutions have advanced. As such, users have access to high-level dashboard views, detailed, drill-down views, and a more holistic team and center performance view across agent activity and center operations – all of which fosters faster, more informed decision making.