Verint CEO: The CCaaS Industry Was Looking for a Truly Open Platform

Discover how Verint is redefining what it means to be an “open” CCaaS provider

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Verint CEO: The CCaaS Industry Was Looking for a Truly Open Platform
Contact CenterWorkforce Engagement ManagementNews Analysis

Published: September 7, 2023

Charlie Mitchell

Open CCaaS is not a new term. Vendors have long used it to emphasize how customers can connect their cloud contact centers with the most prominent technologies in adjacent markets.

CRM, ERP, WFO… name the vendor, and CCaaS leaders will – in many cases – provide a marketplace API to plug into their platforms.

Yet, for Verint, Open CCaaS is much more than a burgeoning marketplace; it’s a new way to architect contact center platforms.

Just think about how CCaaS vendors currently do this. They start with telephony and the core operational systems before building contact center workflows.

Verint has flipped this equation with its Open CCaaS platform. Instead, it leads with creating the best possible workflows and then provides the open architecture for businesses to fit the best-placed around them.

Indeed, by de-emphasizing telephony and core routing in this way, businesses can better consider the merits of the applications they add to their contact center environments.

That may include CRM, AI & automation tools, workforce management, conversational intelligence, and many other solutions.

Discussing the approach in a previous CX Today article, Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, called it “a noble pursuit and one that has to happen.”

Many other industry observers agree. For instance, Ventana Research placed Verint third in its Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide 2023 – despite the platform only launching in June.

Moreover, Verint placed only behind NICE and Genesys.

Dan Bodner, Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board at Verint, appeared buoyed by the CCaaS solution’s early momentum.

“Customers and partners are really excited about an open platform,” Bodner said during a recent earnings call.

The industry was looking for a truly open platform that allows them to focus on CX automation, elevating customer experience, [and] reducing labor costs. This is exactly what the open platform is.

That vision didn’t go unnoticed by Microsoft, with the tech giant recently revealing it will add the Open CCaaS platform to its marketplace by “early fall”.

Bodner also revealed that Microsoft’s sales personnel played a significant role in that announcement, understanding how an open platform – coupled with Verint’s know-how – might prove disruptive.

Going further, the CEO stated:

Customers can keep their existing telephony, they can keep their existing CRM vendor, and they can move forward with innovation to deploy bots and help to augment the workforce with AI. I think that’s all very compelling.

Finally, such a solution may maximize the benefits of bring-your-own-telephony models. While mobility is still an issue here, it is improving – with vendors like Ericsson/Vonage leading the charge.

They are doing so by attempting to manage the complete network experience, which will enhance the performance of over-the-top (OTT) communications applications.

As they do so, bring-your-own-telephony models will likely gain momentum, a trend that may benefit the Verint Open CCaaS platform.

Yet, for now, Verint already seems satisfied with the market response to its Open CCaaS platform – which may prove crucial after the vendor missed its revenue estimates last quarter.

With that said, the WFO leader did increase its cloud revenues by approximately ten percent year-over-year, with heightened interest in its virtual agent platform.

 

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