KANA® Software, A Verint® Company (NASDAQ: VRNT), today announced the winners of its CONNECT 2014 Customer Awards Program. This year’s recipients were recognized across seven award categories for outstanding performance in driving customer and citizen engagement across their commercial and public sector organizations using KANA solutions.

Best Agent Experience: BSkyB

British Sky Broadcasting plc (Sky) optimizes customer engagement for advisors in multiple countries through the introduction of a single intuitive knowledge tool using KANA solutions. Contact center advisors now work smarter and more confidently using a knowledge tool that replaces four previously disparate tools, and as a result, are consistently achieving higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) measuring customer service delivery. Judges also cited Sky for excellent user-centered design and agent adoption.

Asurion—a leading provider of technology protection services to the world’s largest wireless carriers, trusted retailers and popular device manufacturers—received a “highly commended” honor for Best Agent Experience. Asurion uses KANA functionality, including case management, knowledge management and chat, to simplify agent workflow and training on a single system, which also integrates with the back office.

Best Citizen Experience: City of Buffalo

The City of Buffalo, New York's second most populous city, earned the Best Citizen Experience Award for the use of KANA solutions to support its Operation Clean Sweep initiative. The program combines the efforts of city, state and federal services, as well as health and human services, to improve property conditions and reduce crime. It also provides social services to neighborhoods. In 2013, Buffalo made a record number of Clean Sweeps and managed more than 300,000 citizen issues.

Best Web Experience: Oxford City Council

Oxford City Council earned the Best Web Experience Award. It uses KANA solutions to run its citizen portal, which includes more than 100 web-enabled options for online self-service and integration with back-office systems, greatly reducing or eliminating the need for internal issue handling. The portal significantly reduces operating costs, while generating incremental revenue via council tax web transactions. Approximately one-third of visitors to the Council website are now doing so via mobile devices.

The City of Houston received a “highly commended” honor for Best Web Experience. It uses KANA solutions to increase transparency, while managing two million citizen contacts annually across 270 service options. The City of Houston posts open service requests, and the percentage completed, on an interactive web map where citizens can access visual dashboards by geography. It achieved payback on its web investment in less than two months.

Best Mobile Experience: City of Winnipeg

The City of Winnipeg, which earned the Best Mobile Experience Award, leverages KANA customer mobile technology that enables more than 663,000 citizens to access information, request services and track resolutions from their devices anytime. The Winnipeg 311 app extends citizen engagement supported by its KANA customer service system, which the city has used to manage more than eight million calls and 230,000 emails since 2009.

Channel Shift Champion: Queensland Police

Queensland Police of Australia won the Channel Shift Champion Award for its use of KANA solutions to support Policelink, an online reporting system that helped transform the organization into a multichannel contact center for police and citizens. By transitioning telephone services to digital services, Policelink freed approximately 55,000 contact center agent hours per year and 130 full-time employees being re-apportioned to higher priority assignments. Queensland Police also uses KANA to support online citizen firearm registration and its 311 central call center, which takes 1.1 million calls per year. Overall savings from KANA-support activity is AU $18 million per year. Judges also cited Queensland’s exemplary approach to change management.

International service provider Serco received a “highly commended” honor for its innovative use of KANA solutions on behalf of England’s Hertfordshire County Council. Working together with the Council, Serco has generated a program savings over the lifetime of the contract that will deliver an estimated £10 million in savings through channel optimization plans. One transformation example is a citizen reporting tool that integrates with mapping and back-office systems to simplify highway issues, reduce agent handling time, and help ensure defects are sent quickly to the right team for action.

Transformation of the Year: Vistaprint

Vistaprint, which won the Transformation of the Year Award, is using KANA solutions to expand customer service from specific customer segments to a full global service offering for all customers, supported by agents across five contact centers. Vistaprint’s agents now have a single view of customer interactions using a KANA unified desktop, which helps the company service its 16 million micro businesses and consumers annually via phone, email and chat channels in five languages.

Technology Innovator of the Year: Wyre Council

Wyre, a District Council in the Lancashire County Council tier of authorities, earned the Technology Innovator of the Year Award for its use KANA solutions to help channel shift customers from expensive in-person and phone interactions onto its website. Citizens use Wyre’s website to plot the location of their issues using a Google Map that integrates with KANA case management, providing officers in the field with valuable details for resolving issues quickly. It also reduced operating expenses in the process. Wyre increased the volume of customers accessing its services online by 15 percent in one year.

Elkjop Nordic, the largest electronic retailer in the Nordics, received a “highly commended” honor for Technology Innovation. Elkjop uses KANA solutions to run a centralized, multichannel information repository and case management system delivered as a single desktop application for agents across Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Process efficiencies and customer service handling time reductions are saving millions in operation costs annually.

CONNECT 2014 Customer Awards Program judges consisted of KANA senior executives and industry analysts focused on customer engagement, including Omer Minkara, research director, Aberdeen Group; Jeremy Cox, principal analyst, Ovum; and Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder, ThinkJar Research.

About KANA

KANA®, A Verint® Company, is a leading provider of cloud and on-premises customer service solutions. KANA helps global organizations—including many of the Fortune 500, mid-market businesses and public sector agencies—optimize their engagements with consistent and contextual customer journeys across agent, web, social and mobile experiences. Using KANA solutions, organizations can reduce operational costs, increase resolution rates and improve brand loyalty. Learn more at www.kana.com.

About Verint Systems Inc.

Verint® (NASDAQ: VRNT) is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence® solutions. Actionable Intelligence is a necessity in a dynamic world of massive information growth because it empowers organizations with crucial insights and enables decision makers to anticipate, respond and take action. Verint Actionable Intelligence solutions help organizations address three important challenges: customer engagement optimization; security intelligence; and fraud, risk and compliance. Today, more than 10,000 organizations in over 180 countries, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 100, use Verint solutions to improve enterprise performance and make the world a safer place. Learn more at www.verint.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding expectations, predictions, views, opportunities, plans, strategies, beliefs, and statements of similar effect relating to Verint Systems Inc. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and they are based on management's expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2014 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended July 31, 2014 and other filings we make with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and, except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them or to provide reasons why actual results may differ.

VERINT, ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE, MAKE BIG DATA ACTIONABLE, CUSTOMER-INSPIRED EXCELLENCE, INTELLIGENCE IN ACTION, IMPACT 360, WITNESS, VERINT VERIFIED, KANA, LAGAN, VOVICI, GMT, VICTRIO, AUDIOLOG, ENTERPRISE INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS, SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS, VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER ANALYTICS, NEXTIVA, EDGEVR, RELIANT, VANTAGE, STAR-GATE, ENGAGE, CYBERVISION, FOCALINFO, SUNTECH, and VIGIA are trademarks or registered trademarks of Verint Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.