A Q&A with Verint CEO Dan Bodner

CRM: Much has happened in the 30 years since you started as CEO of Verint: the rise of the internet, the dotcom craze, then the dotcom crash, the rise of social media, and the continuing rise of artificial intelligence. Can you discuss how Verint has grown technologically and as a business over that time frame?

Bodner:The Verint journey is very similar to the journey that you described. We continued to change fast as the technology moved fast. From the very beginning in 1994, we were a business outcome company. We try to put together technology to create outcomes.

When I founded Verint, it was based on the fact that contact centers were recording calls on tape recorders. My idea was to put these recordings on computers so that we could capture unstructured data (speech), do some analysis, and capture some insights. It was focused on compliance insights at the beginning, especially bank customers disputing trades. It was almost impossible to find those conversations on tape recorders for thousands of agents.

As technology changed and moved, we changed the applications that we provided our customers. We did our IPO in 2002. We had two different businesses: the connection business and the cybersecurity business. The two businesses were part of Verint for the next 20 years.

Verint became a leader in workforce optimization (WFO) after we merged with Witness. In 2006, we created the WFO category. In 2021, we spun off the cybersecurity business and became a pure-play customer experience automation company. We saw the opportunity that data in AI can bring into the contact center, so we decided that we needed to focus on just one thing: becoming the clear leader in CX automation.

CRM: Beyond moving from putting conversations on tape recorders to putting them on computers, how else have contact centers changed, and what has Verint's involvement been?

Bodner: The challenge for contact centers hasn't changed: How do we elevate the customer experience, but at the same time, reduce our operating costs, which is mostly labor? The industry has tried to solve this in many different ways.

When interactive voice response systems came out, we thought customers would get answers via touchtone and costs would be reduced, but you wound up with not-so-great customer experience. Then we thought offshoring would be great to reduce costs. But again, it was resulting in very poor customer experience, so offshoring was reversed.

The problem has grown because the number of transactions is going up. And it's not just voice, it's also digital and social. As the number of interactions went up, the industry faced increasing the number of employees. The industry couldn't keep up with the labor costs, so CX went down.

We were focusing on workflows and software to create processes that would be more repeatable to increase first call resolution. I think we helped quite a bit with business outcomes, and CX is getting a bit better.

CX still needs to get better. That's why we spun off the cybersecurity business and created a new platform centered on data and AI. There is the same challenge of reducing costs and improving CX. AI, by itself, doesn't create business outcomes. There are a lot of things you need to do to transform technology into real business outcomes and deliver them in a non-disruptive way.

CRM: How will contact centers change by 2030, and what will Verint';s involvement be?

Bodner:I'm very optimistic about the future. There is a lot of AI noise and AI hype. AI technology is very helpful. If it's harnessed correctly, then it will change the contact center quite a bit. I believe the contact center will become a revenue center. I don't know if they'll change the name, but it will really become a revenue center because the agents will become much more productive.

Organizations might choose to reduce costs by reducing labor, but they will also choose to give agents more time to develop relationships. They will use this time to increase revenue with cross-selling and upselling. When customers call, they'll be engaging in a much nicer conversation and eventually being offered opportunities for something that they really need based on context and historical patterns. Organizations that will adopt this will see that they can actually leverage this to be able to turn contact centers into revenue centers.

CRM: You mentioned turning the contact center into a revenue center. Business and tech executives have talked about this for at least 10 years. What will be different in the next five years?

Bodner: You need to give your workforce time to engage in selling. If an agent is told to be off the phone in a certain amount of time, it doesn't give time to sell. They're not being given the time because labor costs are going up and interactions are going up.

Agents will have more time because AI will do a big chunk of the work that agents are doing today. Most agents are not trained as salespeople, so you need to give them the training. Give people the time and the tools to get better and they will generate revenue.

CRM: Where do you see Verint in the next five to 10 years?

Bodner: We see ourselves cutting through the AI noise. Customers are confused. Everybody says they have AI. Everybody says they can do wonderful things with AI. We chose to become an AI business outcomes company. That's the foundation for the next five to 10 years. We are the company that is going to demonstrate real outcomes with the latest and greatest AI to do that. We realized that we need to have an open platform because AI moves so quickly. That foundation will carry us for the next five to 10 years.