With a tricky macro-economy and a converging tech stack the talk of the CX town in late 2022, “best-of-breed” vendors faced an uncertain start to 2023.
As perhaps the most prominent best-of-breed CX vendor – offering workforce engagement management (WEM), conversational AI, and voice of the customer (VoC) solutions – the top team at Verint may have felt hot under the collar.
However, revenues at Verint haven’t stuttered. Instead – following the launch of its Open CCaaS platform and specialized bot strategy – they have accelerated.
Indeed, Verint overachieved its financial year 2024 revenue forecast of $910MN and raised its fiscal year 2025 revenue outlook to $930MN.
Moreover, Verint’s stock is up 42 percent from six months ago, and it has already – in 2024 – announced several high-profile megadeals – including a $49MN healthcare win.
Now, with market tailwinds behind the vendor, Dan Bodner, CEO of Verint, believes that the business “is uniquely positioned to lead the emerging CX automation category.”
In doing so, he outlined three core accelerators during an earnings call:
- Verint has a large customer base across many industries and geographies, which consists of four million agents currently using the Verint platform and looking to add AI-powered bots.
- The customer data Verint has on the platform is critical for training the bots.
- The Verint Open CCaaS platform is designed to deliver AI business outcomes “better than any other vendor in our market”.
That first point is particularly noteworthy. After all, 12 months ago, many likely predicted that holding on to its large customer base would be Verint’s chief objective. Now, it wants to build upon it.
Selling Outcomes, Not Tech: How Verint Flipped the Script
As 2023 beckoned, many enterprise tech vendors converged on the customer experience space, bringing their own WEM, conversational AI, and VoC solutions.
These promised to converge the CX stack, and Verint came under more pressure to demonstrate that its applications drive significantly higher value than those available within all-in-one CX platforms.
That seemed an almost existential battle. Yet, in its attempts to showcase superior value, Verint recognized an opportunity to stand out from the CX crowd: to lead with the impact on outcomes, not the tech. As Bodner says:
You’re not buying Verint AI technologies. You are buying Verint AI business outcomes, and you should be able to measure the ROI.
That thought inspired the November 2023 launch of Verint’s specialized bot strategy.
With this strategy, Verint has released 40 specialized bots, each augmenting a specific role, automating one function, and “automating without disruption”.
In addition, each bot strives aims to drive targeted value. For instance, there is a “Wrap-up Bot” that summarizes customer interactions, a “Transfer Bot” that adds context to contact transfers and a “TimeFlex Bot” that increases agent schedule autonomy.
“Customers can choose the one that is most compelling for them at any given time, and they can expand,” added Bodner.
Moreover, customers can buy those bots “at any given time” and enable them on the Verint Open CCaaS Platform – another solution that has also helped Verint flip the script.
Indeed, the CCaaS Platform rethinks contact center infrastructure beyond the SaaS revolution.
In doing so, Verint aims to change its role within the enterprise. No longer is it a third-party specialist; it’s now a business’s chief contact center tech partner.
The Hunted Becomes the Hunter
The Open CCaaS Platform allows contact centers to design their own workflows and wrap operational systems around those. In contrast, most CCaaS providers are systems-first.
For many businesses, that’s a winning proposition – like the healthcare company that signed the $49MN deal with Verint.
“This customer has tens of thousands of employees,” explained Bodner. “Other vendors in our market… told this customer, hey, if you want to move forward, you have to move your entire infrastructure to the cloud first.
“The customer realized that it would take them several years, cause a huge disruption, and be a risky project.
Verint told them: “You can have AI business outcomes now and avoid this very long, risky, and disruptive rip and replace project.” We are very differentiated in that sense.
As a result, the company will leverage the Open CCaaS Platform, moving its telephony and other on-premise applications to the cloud, but at its own pace.
Meanwhile, it will implement several of Verint’s SaaS-based specialized bots within a hybrid contact center environment.
“AI innovation connects to everything they have now,” continued Bodner. “It’s working, and they like it.”
“They don’t see the urgency to do anything with what’s working, and they can look forward to AI business outcomes now.”
That message may resonate with many enterprise contact centers, which want to innovate on customer experience but have concerns over an accelerated cloud migration.
As a result, Verint may take business away from the very vendors that have increasingly encroached on its turf – turning defense into attack.
That’s quite the narrative, but not one that Verint has given much air time, as it also aims to strengthen its partnership with these brands to support mutual customers.
Yet, with the Open CCaaS Platform already gaining customers – and performing well in analyst reports like Ventana Research’s Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide 2023 – the hunted seems to have become the hunter.
For more on the Open CCaaS Platform, check out our exclusive interview with Jamie Meritt, Chief Product Officer at Verint.
