The 2017 CRM Service Rising Stars: Verint Makes Strong Moves Across Channels and into the Cloud

Capping off a year that began with its February acquisition of Contact Solutions, a provider of cloud-based voice and mobile customer self-service and business intelligence software, Verint Systems ended 2016 by acquiring OpinionLab, a provider of voice-of-the-customer (VoC) listening solutions for web and mobile customer experiences.

Neither acquisition was significant from a financial perspective, but both had a big impact on Verint’s product portfolio. The Contact Solutions acquisition bolstered Verint’s interactive voice response, mobile, and cloud-based contact center infrastructure as well as its Customer Engagement Optimization portfolio, with enhanced voice and mobile self-service and analytics-driven personalization. In Verint’s acquisition of OpinionLab, that portfolio was extended further, enabling companies to listen, analyze, and act on the VoC across digital, voice, text, and social channels in real time.

“Capturing, analyzing, and acting on the voice of the customer are critical for any organization in any industry,” said Verint’s Elan Moriah, president of customer engagement solutions, in a statement. “With the OpinionLab combination, we’re taking voice of the customer to a new level by giving organizations a complete solution for improving the customer experience across engagement channels.”

Verint was also hard at work adding to its Enterprise Feedback Management solution for measuring and analyzing relationships with customers and employees through feedback captured via phone, email, SMS, web, and mobile devices. The solution’s new geolocation data support includes a respondent map that depicts geographic distribution. Event-driven feedback enables users to deploy surveys at multiple customer engagement points. And the ability to embed questions from the first page of a survey into an email ensures that if customers are satisfied, no further questions will be delivered, but if they are unsatisfied, they can be directed to the next step.

“These latest enhancements reinforce Verint’s strong commitment to mobile customer engagement optimization strategies,” said Nancy Treaster, senior vice president and general manager of strategic operations at Verint, in a statement at the time of the release.

Verint also put out updates to its social engagement solution, which helps contact center agents provide customers with immediate personalized responses. The updates included accelerated routing, prioritization, allocation, and escalation of issues raised on social media, as well as collection, analysis, and reporting based on information from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, online forums, and messaging services.

“The Verint Engagement Management solutions are designed to help organizations coordinate and meet disparate social engagement needs, while also supporting the end-to-end management of customer care requirements, ultimately helping contribute to increased loyalty and customer satisfaction by providing fast, personal social service and reducing consumer frustration across the board,” said Kelly Koelliker, director of solutions marketing at Verint, in a statement at the time of the release.

Verint also launched Mobile Work View, an app that enables contact center agents to access their schedules, request time off, bid for shifts on auction, and receive notifications regarding schedule changes through their mobile devices.

And the vendor was very busy on the partnership front, teaming up with Content Guru, Five9, Workflex Solutions, TeleTech, and EMC to advance its workforce optimization and speech analytics solutions.

In June, Verint announced that its entire Customer Engagement Optimization portfolio was available for cloud deployment. The full solution set, which includes software for customer analytics, engagement management, call recording, performance management, feedback management, knowledge management, workforce optimization, and more, is now available in cloud, on-premises, and hybrid versions.

Having its entire portfolio available in the cloud “allows us to continue our specialized position,” says Kristyn Emenecker, senior vice president of product strategy at Verint. “Customers and partners can have all of their [contact center] solutions from one vendor, and now they can have them in whatever deployment model they want.” 

VERINT

CEO: Dan Bodner

Founded: 2002

Headquarters: Melville, N.Y.

Revenue: $848 million

Employees: 4,900

Customer Count: N/A