VRNT Verint Systems Inc

British businesses are sitting on an untapped well of customer information in their contact centers—information that has the potential to provide missing, vital intelligence. This powerful insight could inform everything from customer service strategy and product development to improved customer experiences, the Customer Contact Association (CCA) claims today. However, according to a recent survey of senior customer service and contact center management carried out by the CCA and sponsored by Verint® Systems (NASDAQ: VRNT), just one in five businesses are satisfied they are using their customer data to its full potential.

The majority of respondents to the CCA study believed that they could gain more insights from the customer service data they hold (voiced by 79 percent of respondents), and 82 percent agreed that insights gleaned from customer interactions could influence the products their companies provide.

The study also suggests customer service is currently not evaluated in a meaningful way. While nearly nine respondents in 10 (87 percent) use abandonment rates and 79 percent use call waiting times as key measures, perceptions of their value to the business are far lower (see table below). An astounding 63 percent of respondents said they evaluate customer satisfaction via their complaints procedure. In comparison, only two in five use professionally-organized third-party surveys to gauge satisfaction.

The study further places the disconnect between customer service and the rest of the business into sharp focus. Less than half the respondents (42 percent) agreed their management board understood customer service, and a similar proportion (49 percent) said their executives’ compensation was not linked to customer satisfaction metrics. Further, one respondent in three was unable to quantify the saving in financial terms of a 10 percent reduction in the amount of calls taken by the contact center.

David Parcell, managing director and corporate officer EMEA, Verint, says, “There is huge potential in the information companies capture every day—insights into how customers are feeling, the suggestions they have for making things better, and the sources of frustration which can fast become a brand threat via social media. This survey clearly shows businesses are striving to better understand their customers, with 73 percent wanting to know how they could make customers happier.”

“A more qualitative approach to evaluating customer service can deliver even greater value,” adds Parcell. “Verint can help companies gather and analyze invaluable customer interaction data and turn it into Actionable Intelligence® to detect trends and provide early warnings to improve customer service.”

Commenting on the study, Anne Marie Forsyth, chief executive, CCA, notes, “Companies can now expect customers to engage with them via the full range of communications media—including today’s growing and wide-reaching social media channels. When it comes to the customer experience, it's no longer sufficient to draw conclusions from structured data and simple metrics alone. Organizations dealing with today's complex, rapidly evolving communications environments must adopt new strategies. They need to gather, analyze and interpret all customer data to extract intelligence which can drive business decisions, improve the customer experience, and deliver on growth and profitability objectives.”

Helping capture, analyze and act on both structured and unstructured customer feedback is powerful Voice of the Customer (VoC) Analytics technology. With such solutions, organizations can deploy a flexible platform that delivers customer insight and feedback across channels. Verint’s VoC Analytics, for instance, is designed to combine all sources of customer interaction data into a single platform with the capability to track individual customer interactions and view the customer journey across channels, providing automatic trend analysis, combined root cause analysis and the ability to forecast customer behavior. It helps companies understand critical customer experience information, along with sentiment analysis and emotion detection, giving them an automated and intelligent means of gathering, analyzing, presenting and acting on customer intelligence they would not otherwise know.

Learn more about Verint’s Voice of the Customer Analytics platform by clicking here.

Table: Comparison of customer service metrics used, and their perceived value to the business:

Metric    

Used by (% ofrespondents)

   

Seen as valuable (% ofrespondents)

Abandonment rates     86.6%     54.9% Call waiting times     79.3%     51.2% Time to answer     79.3%     40.2%

Average handling times(AHT)

    75.6%     42.7% First contact resolution     70.7%     73.2%

Notes to Editors:

The research referenced was conducted via the Customer Contact Association member database. It took place in June 2011, with 80 respondents completing the questionnaire.

About the CCA

CCA is the leading independent authority on customer contact. Almost 900 organizations currently subscribe to CCA membership services. This equates to a network of over 5,000 senior practitioners, employing between 35%-45% of the contact center population in the UK. Around 20%-25% of people working in a contact center in the UK are working in a center accredited with CCA Global Standard©. www.cca-global.com

About Verint Witness Actionable Solutions

Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions® is the worldwide leader in enterprise workforce optimization (WFO) software and services. As the market’s first 5th-Generation WFO solution, its unified Impact 360® suite enables organizations of all sizes to capture, analyze and act on customer, business and market intelligence, and optimize customer experiences. Impact 360 Workforce Optimization™—comprised of quality monitoring and recording, voice of the customer analytics (including speech analytics, text analytics and customer feedback surveys), desktop and process analytics, workforce management, performance management, eLearning, coaching and more—serves as a strategic asset across front- and back-office sales and service operations that help shape the customer experience. Used by thousands of organizations around the globe, Verint solutions help improve the entire customer service delivery network, powering decisions Real Time at the Right Time™ to advance service excellence across today’s customer-centric enterprises.

About Verint Systems Inc.

Verint® Systems Inc. is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence® solutions and value-added services. Our solutions enable organizations of all sizes to make timely and effective decisions to improve enterprise performance and make the world a safer place. More than 10,000 organizations in over 150 countries—including over 85 percent of the Fortune 100—use Verint solutions to capture, distill and analyze complex and underused information sources, such as voice, video and unstructured text. Headquartered in Melville, New York, we support our customers around the globe directly and with an extensive network of selling and support partners. Verint is listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol “VRNT.” Visit us at our website www.verint.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding expectations, predictions, views, opportunities, plans, strategies, beliefs, and statements of similar effect relating to Verint Systems Inc. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and they are based on management's expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended January 31, 2011 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2011. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and, except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them or to provide reasons why actual results may differ.

VERINT, the VERINT logo, ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE, POWERING ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE IN ACTION, ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE FOR A SMARTER WORKFORCE, VERINT VERIFIED, WITNESS ACTIONABLE SOLUTIONS, STAR-GATE, RELIANT, VANTAGE, X-TRACT, NEXTIVA, EDGEVR, ULTRA, AUDIOLOG, WITNESS, the WITNESS logo, IMPACT 360, the IMPACT 360 logo, IMPROVE EVERYTHING, EQUALITY, CONTACTSTORE, and CLICK2STAFF are trademarks or registered trademarks of Verint Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.