Verint has released a Voice of the Employee (VoE) solution that lets companies manage employee engagement programs to improve employee and customer satisfaction, loyalty, and bottom-line performance.
“This launch is focused around voice of the employee, collecting data and feedback from employees about parts of the operation that relate to their engagement with the business and their impact on the overall customer experience,” says Dave Capuano, vice president of global digital marketing at Verint. “You can glean an invaluable amount of information from the employee who impacts that customer experience.”
The VoE software is the newest addition to Verint’s series of Business Impact Solutions, which combine the company’s workforce optimization (WFO) and voice-of-the-customer (VoC) analytics software. The solution uses the company’s Voice of the Customer Analytics technology to provide companies with a single, holistic view of both the VoE and VoC.
Capuano says that there has been a power shift in the market from companies to customers, thanks to the choices of available communication channels.
“Customers are deciding now how they want to engage the business across channels, and they have the expectation that you, as a business, will be able to follow them regardless of that channel,” he says. “You’re starting to see some recognition that requires a change in mindset of the business, to empower those employees that have that front-line interaction with the customer.”
With the growing awareness of employee importance, the solution also targets the areas that drive worker engagement.
“We’re seeing interest in understanding employee engagement and satisfaction, which gives a better understanding of perception and motivation about the company, the job, and really trying to understand what makes employees happy,” says Ellen Hannigan, solutions marketing manager at Verint.
The solution uses several employee feedback technologies, such as email, mobile, SMS surveys, and text analytics, and includes attributes such as employee tenure, demographics, management level, and departments, all which can lead to discoveries about what drives performance or areas that need improvement.
Additionally, the company said that there is a direct correlation to heightened customer satisfaction and increased company profitability with highly satisfied employees. Underlining the importance of this, Verint points to the recent Gallup 2013 State of the American Workplace Report, which said that 70 percent of American workers are not engaged or actively disengaged, which Gallup estimates costs the United States $450 billion to $550 billion each year in lost productivity.
With an increased focus on happy and productive employees and their influence on the customer experience, Capuano believes that the voice of the employee will continue to be heard.
“It is clearly a rising market,” he says. “We keep seeing more and more discussions from our customers about the opportunity to engage the employee base in a broader and deeper way. We have had more inbound customer queries about this from both operational and human resource sides of the business, and we think this will continue.”