AI Bots' Benefits Cut Across Enterprises: Verint Engage 2024 Speakers Stress

ORLANDO, Fla. --- AI-powered bots are delivering numerous benefits for contact centers and their agents, Dan Bodner, chairman and CEO of Verint, told the audience at the opening general session of his company’s Engage 2024 conference Tuesday.

"AI has huge potential to change many industries," Bodner said. "What does AI really mean for us? For the CX industry, the only way to know is to look at measurable AI results within your own organizations."

Companies can start small, then expand once they are comfortable with the results of the initial trial, he urged.

"Our industry has been looking to increase CX automation for the last two decades," Bodner said. "Increasing CX automation results in reducing labor and at the same time elevating [customer and employee experiences]. As you reduce the labor cost, you would also want to increase your customer experience and employee experience."

The industry turned to offshoring. Doing so resulted in lower costs, but CX was poor, so the industry had to reverse course, Bodner recalled. But simply adding more people wasn't a sustainable solution.

"So CX automation is the only way forward, and AI technology is changing the game," Bodner said. "Brands need a platform that can turn AI technology into AI business outcomes."

At last year's Engage conference, Verint introduced its open platform, to help companies increase automation, Bodner said. The solution includes a behavioral data hub and Verint's DaVinci AI at the core.

"Placing AI at the core is a game-changer, because every application running in the platform has access to ubiquitous data and AI," Bodner said. "We also designed the platform with a completely open architecture so that it seamlessly fits into your organization. Your IT can leverage data and AI within our platform to accelerate their AI developed initiatives."

Verint offers several bots on the platform, with each handling a specific task.

"Our bots have become stronger and faster, so the ROI will be improved," Bodner said, pointing to one customer that cut average call handling time in half using a combination of smart transfer bot, automated knowledge bot, best decision bot, and wrap-up (summarization) bot. This gives agents more time to build customer relationships or upsell and cross-sell customers.

AI also leads to better self-service, which in turn leads to higher usage and far fewer calls going to human agents, according to Bodner. This results in the cost of a call falling from as high as $5 to as little as 20 cents.

Outlook for AI

"We believe that more and more contact centers are being designed around data." Bodner said. "The data is being used to train the bots to be more effective and enabling business users to make data-centric decisions."

This data is not just for the contact center; it’s helping connect all the CX touchpoints, Bodner added. "We believe that contact centers, websites, branches, and back offices will optimize CX automation, not only in silos but also as one unified CX platform.

Bodner did offer one caveat, though: "If you don't start today, you will be left behind, By partnering with Verint, we can accelerate your adoption of AI to get you ahead of your competitors."

Jamie Merritt, Verint's chief product officer, and Kelly Koelliker, Verint's vice president of content marketing, gave several examples of how AI-powered bots are benefitting customers:

• AI helps a company that recently increased prices to determine from customer interactions how that price increase impacted customer churn.
• Marketers can query the AI for specific advice, such as the best messaging to drive customer retention.
• A bank with 2,000 agents used a coaching-on-objection bot to provide better, quicker answers on customer complaints, saving 20 seconds per call and a total of $5 million in revenue.
• A knowledge bot rolled out to a financial services firm with 4,500 agents saved 20 seconds per call, a total savings of $9 million.
• An AI-powered workforce management bot helped one company reduce attrition by 30 percent.

More benefits for more companies are expected because many businesses are still in the nascent stages of AI adoption, they said further.

Hesitation by companies to start working with AI is not surprising, Derek Top, Opus Research's principal analyst and research director, said during a breakout session on generative AI. Many firms hesitate when it comes to new technology. For example, though conversational AI has been available for a few years, some firms are just starting to implement it. Generative AI is much newer.

Knowledge Bot Unveiled

Verint also used the Engage conference to unveil the Verint Knowledge Automation Bot to help companies increase worker productivity. Rather than a human agent searching for an answer to a customer query, the bot automatically searches across multiple enterprise content sources and leverages generative AI to summarize the search results into a single, quick response.

"The Verint Knowledge Automation Bot is a unique and compelling offering that increases agent capacity and can reduce average call duration by 45 seconds," Heather Richards, Verint's vice president of go-to-market, said in a statemet. "Brands can now revamp their approach to knowledge in days instead of months. Contact centers can significantly reduce average call duration while elevating both agent experience and customer experience, driving stronger and faster AI business outcomes."

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