By Ryan Hollenbeck,
Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, Verint
Company name
Verint
CEO
Dan Bodner, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board
Founded
1994. We just celebrated our 25th year.
Describe your company
As “The Customer Engagement Company,” Verint helps organizations enhance the customer experience while improving operational efficiency. We help organizations simplify and modernize the way they engage customers through their contact center, branch, back office and marketing departments. Verint’s solutions leverage artificial intelligence, automation and the cloud to provide customer interaction and workflow capabilities, as well as advanced analytics, which our customers use to convert structured and unstructured business data into actionable insights.
What is your background in the industry?
I’ve been in the customer care and engagement market for about 23 years. Over that time, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know some of the brightest employees and customers from all around the world. Verint has shown strength over the years both in organic innovation, such as advanced analytics, as we all as acquisition innovation, such as enterprise workforce optimization (this technology came to us via the Witness Systems combination when I joined Verint in 2007). Verint is always innovating as it’s part of our core values and culture.
What do you consider to be your company’s greatest achievement?
Perhaps our greatest technology achievement has been our contribution to analytics innovations, text and desktop analytics. Beyond just tech, our greatest achievement is likely our Verint Next Gen program, where we engage with the local communities in which we have offices all over the world and help with everything from building playground to foster care support. We continue to deliver on our mission to help organizations of all sizes achieve the best possible experiences through their customer engagement.
What do you see as the greatest challenge facing the Contact Center industry?
Adapting! Not only to the current pandemic but also figuring out how to strike the right balance between humans and bots. We are well-positioned for a future where humans remain critical to customer care—a future that automates functions, not jobs. One that provides agents with the knowledge they need to handle more complex engagements with customers—where handoffs are smoother between self-service and agent-assisted interactions, where workplace technology keeps pace with the technology employees use in their personal lives.
What would Contact Center folks be surprised to learn about you or your company?
Some might be surprised to know that I played football for Oregon State University (back when we wore leather helmets, ha ha!). Our experience in athletics can teach us so much about team dynamics, which is also critical in the contact center where we also experience the need for a diverse group of people to come together and achieve success.