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Verint® Systems Executive Interview

The Impact Awards recognize individuals who positively impact the experience of their organizations’ customers. These awards showcase professionals who have successfully led customer experience initiatives that make a profound impact on their organization and its customer or the CX industry.  

Sheri Greenhaus, Managing Partner, CRMXchange had the opportunity to speak with Rob Lamoureux, Senior Director, Global Customer Advocacy, Verint on his recent CX Impact Award. 

Please tell us about Verint’s Customers4Life program?

Verint has put in place extensive resources to support both the overall customer experience and customer success. The foundation of these efforts is the company’s Customers4Life program -- organizational education and alignment prioritizing the customers’ point of view and actions that foster strong customer relationships, with a focus on ensuring customer loyalty and extending the value proposition of our solutions throughout their enterprises.

The development of a global customer advocacy program has been a key component of this effort, critical to increasing customer engagement, retention and lifetime value, while tapping into the power of customer advocacy to support sales, marketing, and other company goals and initiatives.

 We have a small but mighty team of 2 FTEs and 1 part-time contractor that have put in place a wide reaching and robust customer advocacy program that has driven significant value for both customers and Verint.

A significant element of this program is our Elevate customer advocacy platform. We evaluated technology solutions to serve as the foundation of the program, formulating recommendations and budget for presentation to Verint leadership. The customer advocacy team then did all the groundwork to stand up the program and drive visibility and awareness to educate internal stakeholders and, in particular, the Verint customer community on program benefits: 

• Recognition for customers’ innovation, customer-centricity, and thought leadership.
• Engagement with peers to support the sharing of best practice and ideas.
• Flexibility to determine how and when customers share their success.
• And fun ways to participate in an assortment of advocacy opportunities.  

The Elevate advocacy hub offers customers the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of advocacy activities or “challenges,” where they earn points that they can redeem for rewards applicable to both the individual and their organization. Elevate also helps drive greater reference fulfillment efficiency via an enhanced reference process and visibility, in turn enabling both the Verint customer advocacy team and sales team to operate more strategically and effectively. 

What Results are you seeing?  

Over the past 12 months, the team has seen some tremendous accomplishments and results. This includes: 

• Nearly doubling the amount of advocates, with 300 new customer contacts joining the program, bringing the total to almost 700 in the Americas alone and continuing the program’s strong growth.
• More than 8,700 acts of advocacy and more than 8,400 engagement challenges completed by the Elevate customer community.
• Approximately 90 sales references provided by Elevate advocates. These first-hand accounts of their Verint experience helped influence upward of $60 million in closed business opportunities.
• Additionally, there have been more than 2,000 social shares by Elevate advocates, with nearly 30,000 clicks generated from those social shares.    

Describe the type of impact your efforts have had on the customers.

One example is the collaboration with a speech analytics analyst, formerly of Allianz Partners. Verint’s customer advocacy collaboration resulted in this individual being featured in an editorial podcast and an article in Speech Technology magazine, as a customer speaker at Verint’s Engage Global Customer and Partner Conference, as well as at a major industry conference, and the recipient of a high-level industry award. Further, we highlighted this person’s success with Verint technology via a written Verint success story.

Aided by this heightened visibility and awareness around ongoing success and flourishing expertise, the speech analytics analyst became a very sought-after candidate. In fact, this person was able to secure a managerial position, with a focus on CX, at Facebook – a significant promotion from the individual’s previous analyst role.

Recently, Verint nominated a number of its key customer advocates for a significant CX industry awards program. Three of these customers were named finalists (Backcountry.com, Bullhorn and Navy Federal Credit Union), with Bullhorn being named Winner of the Best in Class Contact Center (100-199 seats) category. In light of this fantastic news, the Verint customer advocacy team arranged a sponsorship package covering airfare, hotel and award gala tickets to ensure customer finalists could attend and receive the recognition they deserved, including recognition by a table of Verint senior management at the event to champion their excellence.

As well, the Verint customer advocacy team recently nominated another customer, VyStar Credit Union, for the Constellation Research Supernova Awards, recognizing teams and leaders for their innovative application of disruptive technology and transformative initiatives. VyStar has been named a finalist and Verint again has offered to cover airfare and hotel to ensure that our advocate at the organization can participate in the awards gala and be properly recognized.

Can you tell us a bit more about your role as a Customer Advocate Officer?

I’ve been with Verint for over 13 years, with close to two-thirds of that tenure in customer advocacy roles.

I’m very passionate about building strong and lasting relationships with customers, on both a business and personal level, on behalf of Verint and I work regularly with Verint employees from all across the company and time zones worldwide. 

We try to step into the customer’s shoes to view Verint through their eyes. Because of our customer advocacy efforts, the voice of the customer is speaking louder than ever – through opportunities we give customers to share their story and success via awards, case studies, video, social and print media, and even in the day-to-day interactions they have with the advocacy team.

Working on behalf of both customers and Verint, I find myself making the most out of slim budgets. For example, the customer advocacy team managed to commandeer budget to reward Verint’s “Elevator of the Quarter” (an Elevate advocate that exceeds expectations and earns the most points amongst peers in the program) with a gift certificate for a gourmet cupcake or a celebratory yet modest gift card to an online retailer. When it comes to customer advocacy, sometimes it’s the thought that counts. The team also regularly secures budget for special raffle items to reward customers for their engagement, as well as encourage and cultivate additional engagement and advocacy. Being resourceful with slim resources, the team has become extremely adept at making little things matter most.