A Look Back at Engage – Part One
For the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed a trip to Las Vegas. I’ve been to Las Vegas many times over the years, and it didn’t take me long to learn that I don’t seem to have much luck there. I’m simply not a gambler. I’m no good at it, I get no pleasure from it and I hate losing. When the days of the $2.99 all-you-can-eat buffet and free lounge cover-band entertainment passed into history, Vegas and I parted ways. The only reason I’ll go to Las Vegas now is if business calls, as it did in June.
June was when I found myself among a select group of industry analysts and members of the press from both North and South America as guests of Verint® at its annual user conference. Formerly called Driving Innovation™, the Verint event is now known as Engage™ in recognition of the diverse and combined Verint and KANA customer population in attendance. The four-day event took place at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas.
With more than 1,000 attendees, the event promised a unique opportunity for Verint’s customers to interact, learn from each other and network in ways that the confines of working in a contact center seldom allow. For me, the event presented an opportunity to personally meet several Verint customers who are also members of the National Association of Call Centers (NACC). I work under contract as research director for the not-for-profit NACC and therefore have frequent contact with many customer service professionals, but it was a privilege to be able to sit down and share a meal with some of the people I only otherwise communicate with via e-mail.
Being a die-hard advocate of the power of analytics in the contact center and of big data in the enterprise, I naturally gravitated toward analytics-related session topics. Beyond hearing the first-hand experiences of users, it was also a unique opportunity to validate many of the results of the annual survey of end-users that Saddletree Research undertakes each year in conjunction with the NACC.
For example, in this year’s survey we asked those respondents who have implemented speech analytics in their contact center what their objectives were when they made the decision to dedicate resources to speech analytics. Their responses, and the percentage of respondents citing that response, are in the table below. Respondents were encouraged to select all answers that applied so the total will be greater than 100 percent.
Attending breakout sessions at Engage essentially validated our assumption that the survey results were aligned with what is actually occurring in the market. Compliance was cited as a major issue by one speaker who works for a health care provider’s contact center, and further comments throughout her presentation indicated a strong correlation between survey results and practical experience.
For further highlights of Engage 2015 and the technology solutions that are in greatest demand in 2015, look for part two of this blog—coming soon!
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