Verint, known for its expertise in workforce engagement management and conversational analytics, made a surprising announcement at its annual customer and partner conference, Engage 23.
The company unveiled its new “Open CCaaS” solution, marking its foray into the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) market.
This move has raised eyebrows among analysts and Verint’s partners, particularly those whose primary focus is CCaaS.
After all, Verint’s traditional business model hinges on augmenting various other CCaaS platforms with its comprehensive product portfolio. That includes conversational analytics, Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs), Da Vinci AI, workforce orchestration solutions, and more.
Thankfully, during a solutions tour at Engage 23, Verint connected the dots.
Its overarching objective is to open the door for businesses to construct a contact center stack tailored to particular business processes and goals rather than relying on a specific vendor.
Yet, Verint also aims to put data at the heart of its platform. Why? Because Verint believes that data holds the key to enhancing efficiency and boosting team productivity.
As such, the vendor embedded a new data hub into the core of its solution, with automation tools deriving insights and generative AI driving additional value from this central repository.
What Exactly Is Open CCaaS?
For many, CCaaS has replaced traditional contact center platforms, serving as a cloud-based alternative.
So, what does Verint’s Open CCaaS entail? Essentially, it adopts a “bring your own telephony” approach, allowing businesses to integrate virtually any Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) / call routing platform with the Verint platform – an ‘open stack’ trend we’ve seen in adjacent industries for a while now.
Here’s a breakdown of the foundational elements within Verint’s Open CCaaS (see the above image for the official diagram):
1. Bring your own Telephony: Encompassing call control, ACD, and intelligent routing capabilities from third-party providers
2. Bring your own CRM: Handling customer data records and passing crucial data back and forth
3. Verint AI, Bots, and Automation: Leveraging generative AI and various integrations/APIs.
4. Verint WFM/Analytics: Incorporating workforce management, conversational analytics, and data insights.
How Does Open CCaaS Work?
Imagine a scenario where Verint becomes the beating heart of a contact center strategy, with data running through its veins. This data-centric “open CCaaS” model allows businesses to select best-of-breed vendors for each engagement channel, such as voice, chat, social, and email, while seamlessly integrating them into Verint’s platform.
For instance, if a business possesses a legacy on-premises Avaya contact center that it’s hesitant to replace, Verint Open CCaaS enables integration and future upgrades or changes at its convenience.
In this setup, Verint provides a consolidated user interface (UI) to agents. Rather than navigating separate interfaces like Five9, Avaya, or Microsoft Teams, agents can now utilize Verint’s model as the central operating system.
For enterprises with contact centers across multiple locations, each with mixed bags of vendor technologies, this is especially useful.
Now, some may wonder if Verint’s Data Hub is a new Customer Data Platform (CDP). According to Verint, the Data Hub is not intended to replace a CDP but rather coexist alongside it.
Instead, the primary question should center around where to store engagement data. If a business already has a CDP, Verint can seamlessly channel engagement data into it through a simple adapter, ensuring a harmonious integration.
The introduction of Open CCaaS not only brings transformative capabilities but also paves the way for greater adoption of AI.
With that said, Verint acknowledges that not all businesses are prepared for immediate digital transformation, as it takes time to elevate engagement channels to new heights.
Nevertheless, by embracing the Open CCaaS approach, organizations can leverage Verint’s latest technologies without needing a forklift upgrade of their core contact center platform.
Open CCaaS Paves the Way to AI
Is it wrong to place voice at the core of a CCaaS solution? This is what many more vendors are now mulling over.
Compare this to other software stacks, like Martech, where many enterprises are moving towards centralized data lakes that allow their performance and analytics solutions to feed off.
If CCaaS vendors follow a similar path to Verint, they may pave the way for increased AI adoption, endless automation possibilities, and next-level data insights.
Such a trend could spark a discussion around the need to re-evaluate how we approach CCaaS.
Instead of making telephony and routing the primary focus, the argument for placing data, reporting, and intelligence at the core of CCaaS models may gain momentum.
So, hats off to Verint for this is a bold move. Let’s see what comes next!
