Retailers Must Embrace Automation Throughout the Retail
Enterprise; Biggest Gaps Lie in the Contact Center, the Hiring
Process, and Private Messaging for Customer Engagement at
Scale
As U.S. retailers prepare for the busy holiday shopping season,
more than 60 percent say they are challenged to find qualified
candidates to staff their stores, while 45 percent are struggling
to fill contact center and back-office positions. These sobering
statistics are from new research from Verint® (NASDAQ: VRNT), The
Customer Engagement Company™.
Faced with labor shortages and challenged to meet consumer
demands for superior shopping experiences across numerous
engagement channels, Verint says this year’s holiday shopping
season may be a reckoning for retailers in realizing the new
reality of the automation imperative.
“Staffing shortages in stores, in the back-office, and contact
center roles will challenge retailers in their efforts to provide
exceptional customer experiences to satisfy shoppers during the
busy holiday shopping season this year,” says Verint’s Jenni
Palocsik, vice president, marketing insights, experience and
enablement. “Leveraging automation is absolutely critical to fill
workforce gaps and create a connected customer engagement strategy
of humans and bots.”
While 94 percent of retailers surveyed plan to hire new workers
for the holiday season, nearly 30 percent report not having enough
Human Resources (HR) staff to handle the number of vacancies that
need to be filled. Automation that helps retailers expand their
organizational capacity to interview and qualify candidates can
provide relief in this area.
The survey found that automation is either in place or planned
for retail activities such as tracking orders (81%), inventory
management (81%), sending customized offers or recommendations
(79%), and processing returns (69%). Just 56 percent of respondents
currently have automation in place for customer support, and 21
percent plan to implement it while 23 percent don't use or plan to
use that type of automation.
Retailers can leverage powerful private messaging channels as
the means to ubiquitously connect with shoppers at any place and
any time, yet 61 percent of retailers surveyed are missing out. Of
the 39 percent of retailers engaging with customers via private
messaging, 81 percent have automation on that channel, which can
automate customer engagement at scale via bots.
Retailers also need to scale customer interactions, which
requires bots to be on the frontline of the workforce. However,
only 34 percent of retailers said that chatbots play a key part in
their engagement strategy, which means 66 percent either don’t use
any kind of bot, or they only play a minor role in customer
engagement. Two-thirds of retailers with more than 1,000 employees
are missing the opportunity to use an incredibly powerful tool that
is vital for modern digital customer engagement.
Verint recommends that retailers consider the following:
Automate contact center operations. By automating
responses to common queries or deflecting conversations to FAQs or
community forums, the pressure on human agents is reduced, leaving
them free to handle more complex issues, as well as lowering the
cost to serve and creating a more seamless customer experience.
Employ intelligent hiring solutions for streamlined staff
acquisition and assessment. A virtual interviewing and hiring
process creates an extra layer of evaluation by pre-assessing
candidates and reducing the workload on HR and hiring managers.
Intelligent hiring solutions that streamline the hiring process are
becoming fundamental to talent acquisition strategies.
Lean into private messaging and automation to scale this
highly personalized channel. Bots can automate the use of
private messaging channels at scale for customer communications in
areas such as customized offers and recommendations and
returns.
Meet capacity through conversation containment. Service
bots and virtual assistants help brands manage high-volume,
low-effort queries. Used as a frontline triage, bots should resolve
repetitive, simple issues while highly skilled agents are dedicated
to high-value interactions—creating big savings in customer service
costs.
To learn more about how retailers can optimize customer
engagement strategies, relieve hiring pressures, and achieve
exceptional return on investment though intelligent automation,
download Verint’s Customer Experience Holiday Survival Guide.
About the Survey Methodology
Two surveys were conducted by a third-party research firm from
Sept. 23 through Oct. 5, 2022. Survey respondents were from U.S.
organizations with at least 1,000 employees selling retail products
and services to consumers in physical stores and/or online. More
than 200 organizations participated in each survey.
About Verint
Verint® (Nasdaq: VRNT) helps the world’s most iconic brands –
including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies – build enduring
customer relationships by connecting work, data and experiences
across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement portfolio
draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud
architecture, and The Science of Customer Engagement™ to help
customers close The Engagement Capacity Gap™.
Verint. The Customer Engagement Company™. Learn more at
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, uncertainties and assumptions, 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 fiscal year ended January 31, 2022, and other filings
we make with the SEC. 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, Verint assumes no obligation to
update or revise them or to provide reasons why actual results may
differ.
VERINT, VERINT DA VINCI THE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT COMPANY,
BOUNDLESS CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT, THE ENGAGEMENT CAPACITY GAP and THE
SCIENCE OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT are trademarks of Verint Systems
Inc. or its subsidiaries. Verint and other parties may also have
trademark rights in other terms used herein.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221107005174/en/
Media Relations Sue Huss sue.huss@verint.com
Investor Relations Matthew Frankel
matthew.frankel@verint.com
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