Engage 2023, Verint’s event focused on The Art of Innovation, was the platform for several new product introductions. Openness, AI, and Automation were top themes.

“It’s not about technology, but transforming technology into business outcomes,” says Dan Bodner, Verint CEO.

Announcements from Verint Engage 2023

The News:

Verint made a splash with the demonstration of its Open Contact Center as a Service Platform (Open CCaaS). Designed to openly integrate with existing customer ecosystems, the solution allows companies to start anywhere and ramp up their CX automation at their own pace. The Verint Engagement Data Hub is at the core of the platform, and helps to bring together data from all parts of the contact center.

This could include interactions across different channels, contact center employee performance, and customer experience. Verint’s Da Vinci AI is central to the platform as well, with the company announcing a slew of specialized bots. Other commercially available AI could also be leveraged. See full press release.

Verint also announced some new capabilities found in Da Vinci AI. Interaction Wrap Up and Interaction Transfer are now available. Da Vinci AI uses both commercially available models as well as Verint’s own proprietary AI capabilities. Verint has 20 years of customer engagement data that its AI models can be trained on in addition to real time data coming in through the Open CCaaS Platform. See full Verint press release.

Verint Engagement Data Insights was also launched. Described as a way for contact center users to have a no-code, no-training, self-service entry to all their engagement data, the solution is powered by Verint Da Vinci AI for natural language search. It allows people to simply ask or type a question into the application.to get the insights needed on what actions would benefit company operations. Full Verint press release is here.

Finally, the company launched Verint Enterprise Experience Management which allows for a consolidated view of customer listening touchpoints across the enterprise. Verint Enterprise XM has a broad set of features including direct and inferred feedback collection, advanced CX analysis, rich reporting, and automated actions. See full Verint press release here.

Analyst Take:

Verint announced several new products and capabilities, all of which are designed to make it easier for customers to follow their own path to digital transformation and automation at their own pace. Many systems have been built around the voice channel, and digital transformation may be slow for some and faster for others.

A common theme throughout the conference was using technology to close the engagement capacity gap, or the gap between customers’ expectations for service and an organization’s ability to fulfill them. Offering a completely open platform is a step in the right direction to make this happen. Customers can pick and choose the integrations that work best for them based on need or perhaps on the investments they have already made. An open system allows for that freedom and for companies to be able to start their digital transformation from whatever point they are currently at in their journey.

Another way to deliver better digital CX is to lean into automation as much as possible, which Open CCaaS helps to maximize. Digital interactions are rising, while companies struggle with staffing levels. Verint focused on channel automation in many of its sessions, and rightly so. Digital self-service saves money and time and can be supported by integrating bots and human assisted interactions.

At the opening keynote, Verint President Elan Moriah pointed to data the company is seeing from customers using Open CCaaS, such as sizeable increases in NPS, agent performance and self-service uptake.

One of the more talked-about areas, both in the keynote and in the conference hallways, was Verint’s creation of a team of specialized bots powered by Verint Da Vinci AI. They are created to take care of specific customer engagement tasks including containment, forecasting, compliance, agent coaching, and interaction wrap-up.

It was also good to see experience management enhancements and how the Verint XM solution fits into the Open CCaaS approach, and I will be writing more on in a coming article.

A lot is going on at Verint, but the company remains laser-focused on closing the engagement capacity gap, which will likely get worse this year. At an analyst briefing, VP, GTM Strategy, Heather Richards summed it up: “Verint is absolutely focused on closing the engagement capacity via an open platform. Data and AI are so important in orchestrating the customer journey end to end and helping to close that engagement capacity gap, and with our army of bots, companies can inject specialist AI into every part of the customer journey.”