Dr. Natalie Petouhoff of Constellation Research recently wrote a blog post about Verint’s Acquisition of Contact Solutions. These are the insights she offered:
Cloud-Based Customer Service and Customer Experience
Verint® Systems Inc. announced its acquisition of Contact Solutions, a leading provider of real-time, contextual customer care solutions. The combination of Contact Solutions advances the Verint Customer Engagement Optimization™ portfolio with the addition of cloud-based solutions that enhance voice and mobile self-service through automation and analytics-driven personalization. By joining Contact Solutions’ strong self-service capabilities with its advanced customer analytics, engagement management and workforce optimization solutions, Verint is extending omnichannel engagement across the enterprise. With this acquisition, Verint is furthering its mission of being the world’s leading Actionable Intelligence® platform that enables organizations to provide crucial insights that empower decision makers to anticipate, respond and take action.
Cloud-based Voice and Mobile Self-Service
The combination of Contact Solutions and Verint will increase the value proposition that customers of both companies receive. Verint customers will be able to extend their investments in omnichannel customer engagement with expanded cloud-based voice and mobile self-service options. Contact Solutions’ dynamic customer base—including many public sector and commercial organizations—will have access to new world-class actionable intelligence with the ability to leverage leading customer engagement optimization solutions to help transform their end-to-end customer engagement.
Personalization Engine: Providing Intelligent One to One Service
Today’s forward-thinking organizations understand the value of delivering personalized and contextually relevant interactions that enhance the customer experience and heighten loyalty. Backed by a robust set of analytics, Contact Solutions’ personalization engine analyzes and adapts call flow and the pace of interactions based on caller behavior. For example, if a caller most frequently selects “account balance” from a set of menu options, the personalization engine can detect this behavior and dynamically rearrange the menu so “account balance” is always the first option presented to that caller. This reduces both time and effort, resulting in better experiences for customers, and decreasing interaction costs for the enterprise through higher automation rates and shorter calls.
Cloud-based Solutions Extends Engagement Optimization Across Smartphones, Tablets and Personal Computers.
The rise of “digital-first” approaches to customer engagement has opened the door for consumer engagement at any point in the customer journey. Thanks to the widespread adoption of smartphones, mobile self-service is on the rise and growing in popularity. To address customer demand and market dynamics, Contact Solutions delivers My:Time™ (its patented digital engagement platform.) This cloud-based solution extends engagement optimization across smartphones, tablets and personal computers. With advanced, cross-channel messaging functionality, it enables customers to start a digital interaction on one device and continue it on another, allowing continuity and continued personalization of interactions. Leveraging My:Time’s App2Agent™ functionality takes mobile customer service another step forward by enabling a seamless transition from self-service to live service within a mobile app, mobile web or web application. This will advancing mobile self-service and engagement.
Privacy and Security: Combating Contact Center Fraud
The combination with Contact Solutions also will add functionality to Verint’s solution set focused on mitigating risk, identifying fraud and reducing loss. For instance, Contact Solutions’ capabilities complement Verint Identity Authentication and Fraud Detection™, the innovative technology that delivers passive voice biometrics to profile and recognize the voiceprints of fraudulent callers—while makingcaller authentication faster, easier and more secure. Backed by advanced analytics, Contact Solutions brings advanced “upstream fraud detection” functionality that can identify suspicious caller behavior within voice self-service interactions. As potentially threatening interactions surface, red flag detection alerts users to problems and tailors appropriate responses. (End of Dr. Petouhoff's post)
Mark's Point of View
Businesses need to decide the evolution into the cloud, especially when it comes to customer engagement, customer service and especially mobile and self-service. As customers become more and more attached to their phone, and their expectations for customer engagement higher than ever, it’s really time businesses decide on their digital transformation strategy and start now. Tomorrow is too late!
