Avaya Experience Platform vs. Verint Workforce Engagement (discontinued)

The Avaya Experience Platform is well suited to allow remote working for call center agents. Staff can log in and work from anywhere using Chrome and their user credentials. The technical issues and lack of some features have caused some frustration for our staff and made it difficult to get buy-in for this product across all call center groups. This is difficult because a solution like this is intended to make their work more efficient as opposed to causing frustration.

Incentivized

On a whole Verint WFO is well suited to our business, it provides exactly what we need for forecasting & scheduling along with an very intuitive holiday booking system, throw in the adherence piece and score cards that are available all in all the system is very robust. It is easy to use once you've received the proper training provided by Verint and they are always on hand to support when issues arise, but in the last 5 years I have had roughly 4 issues and 1 of those was my own mistake and not the system so I think that is a strong point for them.

Incentivized

• The app and the ability to use the "office" phone while on the road.
• There's an easy implementation and training process to get everyone on board quickly.
• Flexibility of transferring calls to different mediums - I can switch a phone call to a conference or patch in other parties with ease.

Incentivized

• Blended forecasting – shift variety.
• Verint Workforce Optimization has the ability to schedule blended shifts, e.g. agents could theoretically be on chats in the morning, phones for an hour after lunch, then back on chats in the afternoon.
• Automated task scheduling - educated planning.
• We'll be able to automate the scheduling of meetings, training, or coaching without impacting service levels. For team leaders, this will alleviate the need to guess the most appropriate timings.
• Scorecard reporting –Visibility over performance.
• Scorecards are a ‘one-stop-shop’ to view individual performance. They allow for performance-based data capture and reporting, giving greater transparency and access to data on performance at an agent level.

Incentivized

• One are for improvement for Avaya is the ability to operate behind the VPN. For the virtual employee, this is an issue as we are unable to use it behind the VPN and it must be launched from the remote desktop.
• The color scheme could definitely use some updating. The charcoal gray background of Avaya's windows, coupled with the black font is not very contrasting. I have used Avaya for years and would love to see an update as to its color scheme to better fit the virtual employee.
• Avaya could also improve the way an employee moves within the program by titling the icons seen or expanding the Avaya window to allow for a better understanding of what each con does. For example, the Work History window would go unnoticed, had I not been playing with the software one day. These little items are unknown to many professionals in my industry as they sit in the window with no explanation.

Incentivized

• I think the system needs better documentation, hard to find all the features and where to configure things
• I think the system should come with all the plugs in upgrades they change you extra for, a little to much nickel and dimeing on getting all the needed features
• Email notifications for out of adherence were sometimes inconsistent, and this was not fixed with all the different upgrades and patches on WFM version 10.1

I have always found Avaya's technology and support to be the best in the industry. Even as they worked out financial difficulties and continue to fend off competitors they have adopted and incorporated new technologies. They have done so in a logical and supportive manner and offered all these benefits as they went along. I haven't seen any of their competitors do any of this.

Incentivized

Honestly, from what I hear from other industry experts, other WFO systems have the same support issues we have with Verint. We know the product and the system is maturing and becoming more stable. The business has no issue with the Verint product and is seeking to grow not only what we have in place today, but are very interested in other products, such as BackOffice Analytics, that Verint has to offer. I would just love to see a stronger partnership with Avaya.

I find Avaya easy to use but I am not a beginner. I think it is much more difficult for beginners unless the administrator has some basic programming skills. The system is getting more difficult to use but I enjoy learning and haven't found myself stumped yet.

Incentivized

Because its great

I give it this rating because the support services of Avaya have proven to be reliable when needed. Great feedback for our queries has always been received from the support agents. 24/7 availability of support, which is very essential as our Call Center department also functions this way, therefore, the knowledge and technical support we require is always available to us.

Because its excellent tool

No, everything was implemented by Avaya Support

Incentivized

I do not have any key insights regarding implementation of Verint

Switched from Polycom to Avaya, although polycom worked well there were too many reoccuring connectivity issues and the turn around time for solving them was also too long. Avaya has fewer connectivity problems and their support is much better too. Pricing wise they were similar so we didn't have much to lose.

Incentivized

Nice - a little more costly than Verint. Qfiniti - no comparison - Verint is so much more!! Automony Aspect We selected Verint because of the options that were well suited for our organization. There are several providers that do not compare against these top providers so remember...you get what you pay for. You have to think of it in terms of the value in addition to the "need at hand" that this system can bring to you.

• It does what we need it to do, so we don't heavily invest in this technology but rather into the manufacturing end of our business.
• We believe we have more than achieved the return on our investment for the Avaya phone system and associated equipment.

Incentivized

• The system require constant manual oversight to keep it running. The Monitoring tool provided is very unstable and cannot be relied upon.
• User Administration is cumbersome and time-consuming. There is a lot of redundant effort required to set up new users.
• The integration between WFM and the Recording platform is shaky, and will often stop syncing for now apparent reason.