NICE Systems Lands Among and Atop Fast Company's Innovation Rankings

For NICE Systems, February 12 was a pretty big day indeed, as the company landed a string of honors in rankings undertaken by Fast Company magazine. Not only did it manage to place well on a broad list, but it also managed to place at the top of a much narrower heap, giving the company plenty of reason to smile.

Indeed, NICE Systems (News - Alert) found itself not only at number 48 on Fast Company's “World's 50 Most Innovative Companies” list, but also at the top of Fast Company's “Top 10” innovators in finance. NICE Systems beat out Alta Bicycle Share and Philips (News - Alert), at slot 49 and 50 respectively, for its ability to make “apps smarter and more sympathetic.” Indeed, Fast Company made a point to note how NICE Systems' processes are currently being put to work by a full 25,000 different companies across 150 different countries.

NICE Systems discovered that about 60 percent of transactions that take place on a smartphone go incomplete, and of that 60 percent, only 64 percent subsequently call the company for help. This presented a large opportunity for the company to step in and offer some extra help. With services from NICE in place, customer service-related organizations like banks and stores can actually contact the user detecting a failed transaction and offer up additional options to help users finish where they left off, essentially allowing an organization to step in when conventional self-service mechanisms have fallen short. This allows potentially lost sales to be recovered.

Commenting on the recognition, NICE Systems' president and CEO, Zeevi Bregman said, “The proliferation of Big Data has a profound influence on our professional and personal lives. We are dedicated to providing our clients with innovative technologies and solutions to help them leverage insights from this data to transform their business. Our analytics-based advanced applications enable organizations to proactively predict and fulfill customers’ needs across channels, identify in real time events and opportunities that require attention, and help customer service teams be more efficient and effective. Our technologies are also applied by companies and organizations to fight financial crime, ensure compliance and increase security awareness.”

This is a great way for businesses to get a leg up on the competition. Customers sufficiently disgruntled to break off a potential sale are all the more likely to consider a competitor's offerings, if for no other reason than ease of use. But stepping in at the last minute can have a positive impact not only on the customer experience, but on the resulting word of mouth that the customer generates as well. Such customers will tell friends and family about how he or she “almost went somewhere else”, but at the last minute, stuck with the first firm thanks to some “extra help.”