During the week of Nov 13, Verint convened its Analyst Days event, providing the opportunity for an august group of technology and marketing mavens with detailed descriptions of current and forthcoming products and services as well as opportunity to share insights, perspectives and critiques of the opportunities surrounding OpenCCaaS™ and an ever-growing army of single-purpose bots.

Amy Stapleton: Verint’s Pragmatic Approach to Enterprise AI

Earlier this month, Verint hosted an insightful analyst day event that provided a deep dive into the company’s new marketing concepts, overall product strategy, and current offerings. At the core of their presentation were insights into Verint’s philosophy of Open CCaaS, along with an explanation of how it is creating specialized “bots” to power “CX automation.”

As an attendee of Verint’s Analyst Days, my key takeaway from the event was Verint’s pragmatic approach in offering powerful AI tools to both existing customers and new prospects.

Verint understands the competitive advantage that companies gain by leveraging data from diverse domains, ranging from direct customer calls to internal communications. The company recognizes the transformative power of sharing these data-driven insights across the entire organization. Moreover, Verint acknowledges the prowess of the latest AI-powered tools in automating tasks, providing employees with intelligent assistants that enhance efficiency and save time.

The company’s mission is clear: to empower businesses with the combined force of AI and access to their data insights, ultimately propelling them into a new era of CX automation. However, what sets Verint apart is its pragmatic approach to implementation. Recognizing that companies often face budget constraints and are hesitant to embark on extensive technology transformations, Verint offers a simple yet powerful solution. They enable companies to start small, introducing specialized bots tailored to assist specific roles within an organization. For instance, a call containment bot can seamlessly integrate into an existing telephony/contact center stack, handling customer calls and chats with efficiency across various intents.

Verint’s “start small” option provides customers with an accessible and affordable on-ramp to the potent AI tools that can significantly elevate their customer experience offerings. Whether opting for a call summarization bot, an agent coaching bot, or any other application powered by robust language models, businesses can tailor their approach to suit their unique needs. This flexibility not only enhances customer experiences but also enables brands to achieve more without the need for extensive staffing increases. Verint’s commitment to practical, scalable solutions marks a significant stride towards bringing powerful AI tools into the contact center and beyond.

Dan Miller: The Genius of OpenCCaaS™

Established firms do not often wander from their founding purpose; but it remains a potentially profitable possibility. Google (now Alphabet), over the years added YouTube, Android, a suite of office productivity and even a browser to shed its image as a mere search engine. Amazon moved from bookseller to mega-marketplace, while also capturing much of the fast-growing revenue from cloud computing. There is even hope for Facebook, whose metamorphosis from an Ivy League rendition of “Hot or Not” into the firm that defines Virtual Reality and “the Metaverse” is well on its way.

Over the years Verint established a leadership position in Contact Center Workforce Optimization (WFO). However, like the category leaders mentioned above, Verint is making a methodical move to embrace a bigger share of the revenue associated with bringing AI into CX automation. In so doing, it takes for granted its leadership in employee engagement and leverages existing resources for capturing, aggregating, normalizing and analyzing enterprise data. All carried out in the cloud. All operating under the umbrella brand Open CCaaS™

Large enterprises are under pressure to integrate Conversational AI into their IT and Contact Center infrastructures in relatively short order. Verint is packaging solutions as a platform that incorporates the Enterprise Data Hub (as a point of aggregation from multiple data and metadata sources) and Da Vinci (its set of AI resources) free of additional charges. This approach enables Verint customers to train purpose-specific bots using the company’s own data. Each single-purpose bots will carry its own price tag based on their economic value to the buyer.

This bot-based consumption model emphasizes the need for taking an “open” platform approach that benefits from management tools that coordinate how humans (both customers and agents) can best work with bots in their personal workflows. With bots in the workforce, Verint’s success and legacy in workforce optimization and workforce engagement creates a formidable point of entry into the Conversational AI realm and a long-term barrier to entry for a diverse set of cloud-based competitors.

Pete Headrick: A Bot for Every Employee

Verint has developed 35 specialized bot personas, with plans to have up to 50 by the end of the year. That’s covering a lot of different enterprise roles and, if successful, establishes inroads into multiple business units within large companies. Specialized bots are intended automate a single human function and do it well. But the constant stream of more bots has me wondering where does it end? Why stop at 50? 100? 200?

Executive presentations at Verint’s Analyst Days made the hiring of a bot akin to an employee. The bots are leveraged for self-service to assist customers in an informed and cost-effective way.  Directionally we’re not far from every aspect of an enterprise, internal and external, having bots that can help. What I think might get interesting is to determine a point at which bots get assigned to each employee, as opposed to a specific function.

Verint already provided an example of a personal bot capable of assisting across both internal and public-facing enterprise functions. Ultimately, bots will work alongside employees throughout the duration of their employment — from screening and hiring, to onboarding and training, to serving as a fundamental assistant in agent’s everyday role. With turnover and retention incurring huge costs for contact centers, this hybrid workforce could go a long way is providing an immediate business impact and improving customer experiences.

Categories: Intelligent Assistants