One of my favourite parts of the New Year is to hear from our customers. We ask them each year about their priorities, challenges—and of course, we celebrate successes! I’d like to share some of what I’ve heard so far in 2020.

Many of these customers are advisory board members or other significant brands you would recognize. They have challenges just like the rest of us, but they’re looking forward to what’s next as they address those challenges. As one of them told me a couple weeks ago: “Always building!”

Not surprisingly, balancing customer experience and operational efficiency was at the top of the list. Most organizations these days are trying to do more with less—and efficiency never goes out of style.  As one financial services firm put it: “Trying to reach goals with limited staffing and push to digital.”

And like most forward-thinking companies out there, they want to modernize their businesses. Whether it’s moving to the cloud as one investment management firm has prioritized early in the year, using IVAs for simple requests so customer service agents can address more complex issues, or automating repeatable processes to drive efficiencies and reduce costs—solving problems in modern ways is the goal. 

As part of their modernization initiative, one global financial institution had completely revamped its agent desktop and is now adding chat to better serve its customers. “It’s a priority but it’s also a huge challenge. This broadens our market reach and gives us customers speaking 50 new languages to serve.”

Let’s not overlook analytics—who doesn’t still want to identify trends quickly and track down evidence of problems? Given today’s customers are more demanding than ever, the sooner you fix your problems, the better your chances of keeping the customers you already have.  According to one utility provider, they are starting to understand the customer journey and determine how an omnichannel approach will best meet customer needs. Verint speech analytics software is at the heart of this effort as they “listen to the voice of the customer, determine opportunities, and develop business processes.”

Finally, don’t forget the people who serve those customers. Employee engagement is still hot, and our customers understand that happy employees are much more likely to create satisfied customers. As one large insurance company said, turnover remains an issue because their contact centre is a “feeding ground” for other parts of the organization. As a result, they’re trying to give more growth opportunities within and outside of the contact centre.  They will be defining an “Employee Value Proposition” that demonstrates how the company is making it a better place to work.

That’s just a small taste of what Verint customers are up to. Want to find out a whole lot more about what Verint customers are doing—and how they’re thriving in today’s always-changing marketplace? Learn more about Engage, our global customer and partner conference.