“As we move into 2023, Verint focuses on increasing cloud adoption and work through the partner network to offer Verint cloud services to the end customer in India,” says Anil Chawla, India MD – Verint.
While, the pandemic led to huge economic losses, and caused massive disruption with the loss of human lives. It also became a turning point for organisations to become digitally enabled by leveraging the cloud to support remote operations. Relying on customer engagement solutions to better experiences for their customers, and employees as well as improve productivity.
And that’s where customer engagement software companies such as Verint Systems and others found a strong footing to enable organisations to prepare for hybrid work and a digital-led future.
In this interview, Anil Chawla, India MD of Verint Systems talks to TechHerald about the company’s business outlook and strategy in 2023, the demands for customer engagement solutions, the impact of cloud and mobile as well as the company’s partners and much more.
Edited excerpts…
Q1. What’s the overall business outlook for Verint in India in 2023? And what will be the go-to-market strategy this year?
Anil Chawla: We have witnessed double-digit growth in the Indian market over the last two years and we look forward to riding the momentum. With the increasingly remote workforce and pandemic-related push to digital-first engagement, organisations are taking strategic steps to support these new future-of-work initiatives to elevate experiences for both employees and customers.
Verint has a leading market share of 43.6% in India, underlined by a strong customer base of more than 100. This is a mixture of traditional ‘on-premise’ customers, augmented with a rapidly growing cohort of clients that are investing in Verint’s cloud platform. In terms of revenue, India ranks second in the APAC region.
As we move into 2023, Verint focuses on increasing cloud adoption and working through the partner network to offer Verint cloud services to the end customer in India. We are also augmenting our focus on real-time agent assistance and interaction analytics across industries like banking, finance, e-commerce and more. And bringing operation excellence in contextual knowledge to the back office customer and providing them with improved SLAs and adherence.
Q2. How do you see demands for customer engagement solutions for Verint this year?
Anil Chawla: In a way, the pandemic transformed the way we work forever. Collaboration is the new normal. Several industries will carry on with a hybrid (remote and physical) trend across 2023. What we have surprisingly realised is Indian organisations’ readiness to deploy CX solutions to empower enterprises to enhance their customer engagement in a 24×7 digital marketplace.
As per a Verint study last year, titled ‘Engagement Capacity Gap (ECG) Benchmark Diagnostic’, Indian firms were the top investors in customer engagement solutions (Quality/Performance, Knowledge Management and VOC/ Experience management) in the post-pandemic era that has made them more resilient and better poised to close the customer engagement gap.
With digital-first engagement becoming a new norm and organisations realising its importance, there will be an upward trajectory when we look at strategic investments by industry leaders to elevate the CX in 2023 and beyond.
Q3. With the growing usage of cloud and mobile apps across industries, how much this trend impacts customer engagement today?
Anil Chawla. Yes, we are in an era of an on-demand economy. Every single development reflects organisations’ readiness to address customers’ needs and make everything available at their fingertips. With several application-based platforms coming in, Verint provides an open API integration on the Verint cloud for seamless integration.
To make the solutions readily available to the customers, a multi-cloud infrastructure always helps us to implement automated, best-in-class solutions in the organisation’s cloud roadmap. Verint has been working with organisations across industries, including banking, e-commerce, BPOs, etc. to elevate their customer experience and brand loyalty.
With the adoption of Verint cloud solutions, customers have been able to witness $42 million in savings from improved contact centre management, a 20% improvement in employee productivity, a 44% reduction in customer engagement cost, and an overall ROI of 391% in three years.
Q4. What’s the size of the organisation in India and how much the company depends on channel partners in driving business and sales?
Anil Chawla: Verint has a workforce of around 600 employees in India and is a very important market for us. Our employees in India don’t serve just local customers but also global customers.
Currently, we serve around 100 customers in India – all the top Business Process Management companies (BPMs), and top banks are our clients. Of the top 10 BPMs, nine are our major customers. Axis Bank, ICICI, and Bank of Baroda (BoB) – all are our customers. India offers scale and we plan to continue to expand. At present all our services are being offered from India. These include technical services support, cloud operations, development services, and R&D.
85% of the world’s top companies rely on Verint’s solutions to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The role of our partners becomes very crucial to this success. Verint continuously invests in its channel partners and is keen to build long-standing relationships that are beneficial and rewarding.
Verint provides customised training to the partners to grow their expertise, build their profile within the industry and add value while they sell Verint solutions to the customers. We work with all sorts of partners, from regional specialists to global businesses globally, to ensure that together we are delivering solutions and solving customers’ challenges better.