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Earlier this week, I attended my first Verint customer/partner event in Orlando. I’ve been to the last two analyst-only events, but Engage is where you get to meet and hear from customers and partners. Much bigger-picture, and nothing beats hearing success stories directly from customers.

Am not able to get a full writeup done while in between travel to various events, but the main takeaway to share is that when done right, chatbots can be effective, and Verint is front of the line for showcasing real benefits and financial impact. Every vendor in the contact center space has its own way of spelling success, and Verint’s approach is pretty simple - get tasks done faster with chatbots, and your agents can deal with more customers and do so more effectively. Time is money, and the ROI can be impressive, especially at scale.

What I’ve come to learn and like about Verint is their focused approach on using chatbots to help contact centers address real, long-standing problems. Yes, the bots are AI-driven, but this isn’t about selling an AI solution. It’s about identifying problems and outcomes, and attacking each one in a manageable way - with CX Automation being their go-to-market branding.

Rather than pushing a bunch of chatbots out there to streamline operations and make CX more seamless in a general way, Verint takes a bottom-up approach. They have dozens of chatbots ready to go, supported by their Da Vinci AI Data Hub. The key here is being an open platform, meaning that it can integrate with all CCaaS platforms. Verint is not competing to displace Genesys, Avaya, Five9, etc. Instead, they bring best-in-class chatbots that enhance these platforms.

The other key thing about being bottom-up, is that each chatbot is purpose-built to address a specific task. This allows customers to take a very targeted approach, and optimize the mix of chatbots for where they can bring the most value. Prime chatbot examples include Wrap Up, Coaching, Knowledge Automation, Smart Transfer, Copilot, and TimeFlex (WFM).

Each does one thing very well, and when deploying a suite of these, the incremental gains from automation and time savings add up quickly, translating into a fast ROI. It’s a great approach for contact centers who are taking a cautious approach with AI, along with being skeptical of chatbots - fair enough, but that reflects experiences with earlier generation chatbots, not what they can do today.

One more takeaway that may not be that evident - based on what vendors are selling, it’s easy to think that all contact centers are cloud-based, or well on their way. The reality, of course, is much different, with premises-based deployment still being the norm - in whole or in part. A key message to share is that contact centers do not need to be cloud-based to benefit from what Verint is offering. Their chatbots can work just fine with legacy deployments - what Verint does is based in their cloud, so any contact center can deploy this.

That’s the wrap for now, but more is coming in other forums, so stay tuned.

I’ll leave you with some of my photos, along with links to some LinkedIn posts during the events. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you probably didn’t see these, as I had a login glitch, and these were not posted to my main LinkedIn account. Subsequent posts are there, though, so I won’t bother with those links here. Feel free to give these a look, as there is some additional in-the-moment commentary not included here.

LinkedIn posts from Day 1 - here, here and here.

Almost forgot - bonus link - I was interviewed by Verint as part of their Blue Lounge series during the event. It’s just four minutes, where I’m talking about the role of AI in the contact center and how it’s being used to improve CX. I hope you check it out - here’s the link.

Below, CEO Dan Bodner - first in analyst-only session, then main stage.