TMC (News - Alert) this year celebrates 30 years of covering customer interaction, which means it couldn’t be a better time to look at where we’ve been with customer service and where we’re going.

We’re also rebranding our contact center and customer experience effort. In this installment of our CUSTOMER coverage, we talk with Roger Woolley, vice president of solutions marketing at Verint. Woolley previously served as the vice president of marketing for Autonomy (News - Alert)/etalk.

What does Verint sell?

Woolley: In the enterprise intelligence market, Verint solutions help organizations use the voice of their customers to drive operational excellence, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and optimize enterprise performance. Verint (News - Alert) Enterprise Workforce Optimization Solutions, including the fifth generation Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite, enable organizations tocapture, analyze and act on customer, business and market intelligence.

Verint Voice of the Customer Solutions unite customer feedback on expectations, preferences and experiences across communication channels, allowing organizations to drive business strategies and corporate performance. The company’s solutions help contact centers, customer sales and serviceoperations, and financial compliance environments address a wide range of goals, including workforce performance, process adherence, product/service enhancements, business process improvements, revenue generation, cost reduction, liability management, financial/regulatory compliance and world-class customer experience.

What has been the most important development in the past 30 years related to customer interactions? In the past decade? In the recent past?

Woolley: Taking a big picture view of the customer service industry tells us that technology has advanced tremendously over the years. Previously, companies leveraged the automatic call distribution to automatically deliver calls to an agent, and improved agent performance by putting automated quality monitoring to work. And, usually, it ended there. Today, companies such as Verint are offering enterprise workforce optimization solutions comprised of quality monitoring and recording, workforce management, performance management, voice of the customer analytics, desktop and process analytics, e-learning andcoaching. These solutions can analyze customer trends, behaviors and sentiment across multiple communication channels, as well as improve agent performance and business processes. With the additional explosion of social media, companies are also forced to change the way they manage their contact centers, back-office and branch environments. It’s critical that thesebusinesses not only manage their internal performance management metrics, but also capture the voice of the customer to analyze and take action from these new channels of communications.

How is the widespread use of social networking technology influencing howbusinesses target, engage with and deliver product/service/support to thecustomer?

Woolley: Social media provides valuable unstructured feedback, but needs to bevalidated and correlated with structured data from surveys, panels andcommunities, as well as other unstructured data sources such as voice calls,e-mail and chat to adequately prioritize and pinpoint next steps. These nextstep actions may include changing outdated policies; updating processes inthe front and back office; providing relevant training to front-line personnel who interact directly with customers; and developing innovative products and services inspired by customers. With a multichannel strategy and comprehensive model for customer service, global companies can identify early warning signals before things go viral – allowing them access to the relevant context and understanding the root cause to be able to take effective actions. The right approach, structure, processes and supporting technologies in place, today’s customer-centric organizations can track, analyze and act on the insights they learn from the cross-channel voices of their customers. This bodes well for today’s customer-focused enterprise, which can benefit from having a full-view picture into customers’ likes and dislikes, their needs and requirements, and the health of their relationships and experiences.  

What new tools and practices are businesses using to better leverage their own and/or outside data to target, engage with and deliver product/service/support to the customer?

Woolley: Voice of the customer analytics is making its debut as a new, hot technology– and one that many organizations are looking to implement if they haven’t already. Using Verint as an example, its Voice of the Customer solutions enable organizations to capture customer feedback across channels, analyze and interpret it in the context of business objectives, and take action to drive change and respond more effectively to customer, business and marketdemands.

The robust analytics portfolio unites customer feedback on expectations, preferences and experiences across interaction channels – including recorded phone calls, surveys, chat, e-mail, social media, online communities and websites – enabling customer experience professionals to drive business strategies and corporate performance.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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