Arguably, no function within the modern enterprise harbours more valuable consumer data than contact centres. Every day formal and informal contact centres hear from customers, prospects, investors, employees, vendors, and other constituents. 

Unfortunately, these organizations often function like libraries in reverse. Valuable content is deposited every day but seldom withdrawn. The information is squirreled away in various data lockers accessible only with different keys controlled by different individuals and departments. Successful enterprises require timely and accurate customer information. It needs to be cultivated, harvested, and shared.

The challenge is to collect and assess data from multiple sources, not just the contact centre. Customers interact with the organization at many levels, both in person and remotely through voice and data communications.  Examples include contact centres, corporate websites, tech support centres, credit and collections, field services, retail stores, and branch offices. While interaction data may be collected from some or all of these contact points, it is rarely in a consistent form and channelled to a central repository where it can be analysed in a holistic manner.

Leading vendors recognize this. We see this in the trend to cloud architecture which provides the agility and scalability to accommodate vastly increased information capture and storage—as well as the growing maturity of advanced analytics to extract meaning from this data. However, these initial efforts are still limited in the number of touch points connected and the variety of channels that are captured. 

Verint’s solution is the Customer Engagement Hub. The hub serves as a universal collection point for data from multiple channels and touch points. Verint’s Da Vinci engine leverages artificial intelligence to distil actionable intelligence from the vast volumes of data channelled through the Customer Engagement Hub.  

The software is built on an open architecture, which makes it possible for technology partners to create unique applications that serve specific needs of enterprise class customers. According to Senior VP of Global Marketing, Ryan Hollenbeck, Verint is uniquely qualified to pioneer the concept of the Customer Engagement Hub because of the company’s long history of serving not just contact centres but also back office operations, retail storefronts, and branch offices. Hollenbeck said, “We understand every touch point and have data for both contact centre and back office interactions. We call this Boundless Customer Engagement.”

Looking to the future, we can see the evolution from what we have long known as the Workforce Optimization (WFO) suite to a model similar to what Verint has introduced. WFO has been around for 15 years. The technology ties together individual solutions such as interaction recording, quality management, workforce management, e-learning, and speech analytics. The applications communicate with each other and share a common database. A simple example is automatically scheduling training sessions based on a combination of quality scores, WFM schedules, and e-learning resources. 

Think of Verint’s “Boundless Customer Engagement” as WFO reimagined. The value is easy to understand.

A common data hub aggregates information from multiple touch points, then summarizes it into actionable information by leveraging advanced analytics powered by artificial intelligence. This process can uncover cost savings opportunities, potential compliance violations, and the most important drivers and constraints for accomplishing customer engagement objectives. 

Dick Bucci

Founder and Chief Analyst

Pelorus Associates

www.pelorusreports.com