CX Today

Are your customers getting joined-up conversations, or are they starting from scratch every time they contact your business? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Karen Krivaa, Chief Marketing Officer at MMDSmart, about why so many businesses are still struggling to turn omnichannel ambition into real execution. Krivaa explains why fragmented systems, disconnected customer data, and poorly integrated messaging tools are holding organizations back. Findings from MMDSmart’s s...

In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Sean Jackson, Lead AI Architect at Sprinklr, about how AI-generated answers are changing customer discovery, brand comparison, and buyer decision-making. Sean explains why the customer journey is increasingly moving inside AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, where buyers can research, compare, and shortlist brands before a sales or marketing team sees any signal. For CX and marketing leaders, that creates a new visibility cha...

In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Richard Manthorpe, Director of Product Management at Content Guru, about the changing role of customer data, customer relationship management (CRM) and orchestration in AI-enabled CX. As vendors increasingly talk about agentic experiences, AI-native platforms, systems of action, and systems of decision, Manthorpe explains why CX leaders need to look beyond the terminology and focus on outcomes. He discusses why CRM remains valuable as a s...

In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Kristin King, Chief Customer Officer at UJET, and Tena Curic, Senior Customer Success Manager at UJET, about what they learned by spending time directly inside customer contact centers. Rather than relying only on dashboards, reports, or quarterly business reviews, the UJET team sat with agents and supervisors to understand how AI is actually affecting day-to-day service. They discuss why agents want AI to remove repetitive work, how poor ...

Enterprise CX leaders face a difficult question: which AI strategies will deliver measurable customer and operational value, and which are simply buying time? In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher speaks with Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, about how the customer experience AI market is beginning to separate into offensive and defensive camps. The conversation starts with Avaya, whose cautious approach to AI raises a bigger market question: can legacy vendors keep pace as ...

Support leaders are under pressure to improve customer experience, coach agents, manage technology, and keep operations moving. Yet quality assurance often becomes another task on an already overloaded list. In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher speaks with Ty Given, Founder and CEO at CX Collective, about why Quality as a Service could offer a more practical route for teams that need better QA insight without more admin. Given explains that running a support team can feel like running a sm...

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher sits down with Ty Givens, Founder and CEO of CX Collective, and Simel Kara, CX Account Director for Digital Experience and Transformation at Effect Digital, to dig into why end-to-end journey visibility remains out of reach for most organizations — and why reaching for AI as the solution is likely making things worse. Simel frames the core issue around what he calls a missing "conductor" — organizations tend to have reasonable visibility within i...

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, speaks with Muj Choudhury, CEO of RocketPhone.ai and former Salesforce Director, about the uncomfortable questions surrounding enterprise AI. As organizations race to deploy AI agents, Choudhury argues that bigger investments and flashier product names do not automatically produce better customer experiences. This is a candid conversation about data, workflow design, agent coaching, risk, and how to find AI use cases tha...

Rob Wilkinson speaks with Rodney Hassard, Head of Product, Applications Group at Vonage, about how intelligent workspaces are reshaping the agent experience. Rodney explains why customer relationship management (CRM) fragmentation is becoming a major barrier for service teams, especially as organizations adopt more AI tools across the contact center. He explores how agents often become “human middleware,” switching between multiple CRMs, copying and pasting data, and trying to piece together ...

The HubSpot data enrichment controversy generated plenty of heat. Alexi Hatch, CMO of Acoustic, is more interested in the light. Speaking with CX Today's Rhys Fisher, Hatch reframes the episode not as a one-company scandal but as a symptom of a wider industry habit she calls "signal debt" — the over-reliance on borrowed, static enrichment data that tells you what a contact's job title was last quarter but nothing about what they actually want today. "Piling on more enrichment and exter...

From agentic AI to brand intelligence and Firefly's trust-first model, Constellation Research's Liz Miller drops unfiltered insights from the Vegas floor. In this on-the-ground dispatch from Adobe Summit 2026, CX Today Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Liz Miller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Liz is one of the sharpest voices in the CX and marketing technology space – and she's not here to sugarcoat anything. From the buzz around Shantanu Narayan's suc...

Why connected journeys remain broken in 2026, and what it actually takes to fix them. CX Today's Rhys Fisher is joined by Adrian Swinscoe (Punk CX), Jeannie Walters (Experience Investigators), and Robert Bradshaw (WiserOwl) to tackle one of CX's most persistent frustrations: the gap between the promise of orchestrated customer journeys and the fragmented reality most customers still live with. The technology is often ready; the organizations aren't. This roundtable cuts through ...

Eight of the biggest assumptions about AI and customer experience — tested, challenged, and corrected by two of the industry's most experienced voices Everywhere you turn, the conversation about AI and customer experience sounds the same. AI will replace the contact center. Customers don't want to talk to humans anymore. Automation will fix everything. But how much of that is actually true — and how much of it is costing brands real customers, real revenue, and real trust? In this CX ...

California's new AI executive order is forcing a conversation every enterprise needs to have – but what does it actually mean for customer experience? In this episode of CX Today, Francesca Roche sits down with Alex Levin, CEO of Regal, to explore how organizations can build meaningful AI safety measures without waiting for regulators to mandate them. From system-level guardrails to agent-specific compliance by industry, Alex shares how Regal has been tackling this challenge for nearl...

Pedro Andrade discusses why most AI deployments fail, why your KPIs are lying to you, and how the Talkdesk CXA Operations Center changes the game Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Pedro Andrade, VP of AI at Talkdesk, to dig into one of the most pressing challenges facing contact center leaders today: deploying AI at scale without flying blind. With AI agents now handling real customer interactions, the stakes have never been higher – and as Pedro makes cl...

Retail teams are moving beyond scripted chatbots and into agentic AI systems that can understand context, take action using tools, and coordinate across functions. In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing is joined by Gilbert Gooijers, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at CM.com, to explain what retail leaders often misunderstand about agentic AI, why multi-agent setups beat a single do-it-all bot, and how the right channel choice, from WhatsApp to RCS and voice, shapes custome...

Three CX leaders get brutally honest about why infrastructure resilience has become the boardroom problem nobody is prepared for. In this CX Today Roundtable discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher is joined by Ty Givens (Founder and CEO of the CX Collective), Rhona Bradshaw (CX Consultant), and Mike Wehrs (COO, TieTechnology) to tackle one of the most underestimated risks in enterprise CX: infrastructure resilience. Most organizations assume their stack is resilient. Most are ...

Retail customer satisfaction climbed to 94.6 percent in Q1 2026, but the headline figure only tells part of the story. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Tim Waterton, Chief Revenue Officer at HappyOrNot, about what is really driving improvements in retail CX and where performance still breaks down. Waterton explains why retailers are getting better at managing tough operational environments, how real-time microfeedback is changing decision-making on the shop floor, and ...

Salesforce’s Agentforce Contact Center launch has split analyst opinion, and this CX Today debate gets straight to why. Host Rob Wilkinson is joined by Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research and Dave Michels of TalkingPointz to unpack what Agentforce actually is, what problem it is trying to solve, and what it could break. Kerravala frames Agentforce as a serious attempt to reduce “fragmentation hell” by converging CRM, customer interactions, and AI into a single platform layer, so agents stop being ...

As customer support teams move from first-gen genAI co-pilots to autonomous agents, the real risk is assuming AI will “automate everything” without changing how support actually works. In this CX Today interview, Vishal Sharma, CTO at SearchUnify, explains why most enterprises still aren’t ready for fully autonomous support and what needs to happen first. Sharma breaks down the operational shift from “find” to “assist” to “act,” and why workflows and the underlying support stack must be rebui...

Blair Pleasant breaks down what this landmark contract really means for the CCaaS market, the hyperscaler threat, and why an eight-year contract is both bold and logical Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Blair Pleasant, President and Principal Analyst at COMMfusion, to dissect one of the biggest CCaaS deals ever announced. With HMRC committing to a $670M, eight-year contract via Capgemini and NiCE, Blair cuts through the headline noise to explain what thi...

How do retailers deliver a consistent customer experience when shoppers move fluidly between online research and in-store decision-making? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Daniel Todaro, CEO of Gekko Group, about the widening gap between digital information and shop-floor execution. Todaro argues the biggest disconnect is knowledge, including what customers can learn online versus what they can get from a trained advisor in store. He also explains why constant discount...

AI is making cyber attacks easier to scale, more personalized, and harder to spot, and that’s showing up directly in the contact center. In this CX Today panel, Nicole Willing is joined by Miguel Fornes, Information Security Manager at Surfshark, Randy Layman, CTO at AVOXI, and Ron Zayas, CEO at Ironwall by Incogni. Together, they unpack how attackers are using agentic AI to accelerate social engineering, exploit the vast amount of personal data online, and increase account takeover attempts ...

As AI generated answers increasingly replace traditional search results, brands are facing a new visibility challenge. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Peter Sloterdyk, Chief Marketing Officer at Gist, about the launch of Gist Geo and what AI driven discovery means for modern marketing teams. The conversation explores why traditional SEO metrics are no longer enough, how brands can measure visibility inside AI answers, and why sentiment, structured content, and actionab...

AI agents are everywhere in the CX conversation, but this CX Today case study gets specific. Nicole Willing speaks with Will Jones, GTM Operations Associate at CRM vendor Attio, and Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer at Intercom, about how Attio deployed Intercom’s AI agent, Fin, as a sales development representative (SDR) to handle inbound sales engagement. Jones breaks down what drove the move, including the push to stay ahead of changing buyer expectations and the reality that static forms...

A production database deletion and 30-hour outage at Pocket OS has become a cautionary tale for any organization bringing agentic AI into critical systems. In this interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Alex Gallego, CEO of Redpanda Data, about what went wrong and why blaming the model misses the point. They unpack the enterprise basics that still get skipped: separating development from production, tightening authentication and authorization and scoping agent permissions away from dangerous ...

CRMs and customer data platforms (CDPs) can store a mountain of customer data, but that does not automatically translate into better experiences. In this CX Today panel, Ben Robinson, Head of Technology at Fair Finance, Amory Somers Vine, Head of Customer Experience at Expereo, and John Cheney, CEO of Workbooks, discuss what it takes to move from systems of record to systems of action. The conversation digs into why many CRM programs still fall short, including heavy customisation, silo...

AI agents are handling more customer conversations than ever, but what happens when automation reaches its limit? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Craig Cotton, Global VP of Product Management at Concentrix, about one of the most important moments in the modern customer journey, the handoff from AI to a human advisor. Cotton explains why brands risk damaging customer trust when customers have to repeat information after a failed bot interaction, and why even a small fail...

From Excel spreadsheets and NPS below zero to a 4.7 Trustpilot rating, Openreach and NiCE pull back the curtain on one of the UK's most ambitious AI deployments. Introduction Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Chris Herbert, Director of Customer Service at Openreach; Eifion Lloyd, Senior Manager of Customer Enablement and Strategy at Openreach; and Giles Bryan, General Manager of Proactive AI at NiCE. With 25 million homes in scope and 700 communica...

Customer journeys are no longer linear, and AI alone won’t fix the friction customers feel when they need fast, empathetic support. In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Mike Clifton and Max Schwendner, Co-CEOs of Alorica, about how real-time data, emotionally aware AI, and human support are reshaping customer experience. They explore why businesses need to move beyond generic personalization, how AI can help agents understand customer sentiment in real time, and why the be...

What does it take to redesign a video platform used by teams across marketing, editorial, and media operations at scale? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche sits down with Alessandro Fumi, Product Manager at Brightcove, and Matteo Paoli, Product Designer at Brightcove, to unpack the thinking behind Prism, Brightcove’s newly redesigned platform interface. The discussion explores how feedback from more than 100 customers shaped Prism’s focus on usability, consistency, and clearer info...

What happens when your “great” customer experience is optimised for humans, but your next customer is an AI agent? In this CX Today interview, Carrie Brough, Director of Strategy and Ops for TTEC Digital EMEA, argues that a single CX model is fast becoming a liability. Brough explains why AI-driven interactions need quick, decision-ready responses, while humans still need empathy, context, and brand nuance. Carrie breaks down the operational warning signs that your AI and human traffic...

Only 29 percent of consumers globally trust organizations to use AI responsibly. So, what does that mean for CX leaders trying to scale AI without damaging customer relationships? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Dr. Ben Granger, Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics, about why trust has become one of the biggest barriers to enterprise AI adoption. Granger explains why successful AI transformation depends on more than deploying new tools. It requires leaders to bui...

Single chatbots are giving way to coordinated teams of AI agents that can execute workflows across systems, policies, and teams. In this interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Raj Koneru, Founder and CEO at Kore.ai, about why multi-agent architecture is becoming inevitable in customer experience (CX). Raj breaks down what has changed in the last 12 months as models have improved in generation and reasoning. He explains why “prompting alone is not an enterprise architecture” and why CX leaders ...

Cisco's VP of Webex CX discusses orchestrating AI-native contact centers, why “deflection” is the wrong metric, and what enterprise-grade really means in the age of agentic AI - In this CX Today interview, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Vinod Muthukrishnan, VP and GM of Webex CX at Cisco, ahead of Cisco Live. With a wave of major product announcements on the horizon, Vinod makes a compelling case that the contact center industry has reached a genuine inflection point...

AI video adoption is accelerating, but many CX teams are struggling to see measurable results. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche sits down with Brendan Cournoyer, VP of Marketing at SundaySky, to unpack why enterprise AI video initiatives often fall flat when personalization is missing. They explore why speed and scale alone do not drive engagement, how relevance changes effectiveness across the customer journey, and what CX leaders should prioritize to move from experimentation to ...

Are legacy CRM platforms ready for the agentic AI era, or are enterprises trying to force new intelligence into systems built for a different time? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Jason Eubanks, Co-Founder and CEO of Aurasell, about why traditional CRM architectures may struggle to support autonomous agents, real-time decision-making, and truly connected customer operations. Eubanks explains why many legacy CRM systems were designed as systems of record, not systems of ...

The Principal Analyst at ZK Research breaks down whether Zoom's 'system of action' pivot is the real deal or just clever repositioning In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research. Zeus recently published a deep-dive on Zoom's strategic transformation, and the findings are more surprising than most in the industry expect. If you work in CX, contact center, or IT, and you still think of Zoom as a meetin...

AI is everywhere in customer experience, but CX leaders are under pressure to prove it is moving the needle. In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Brad Birnbaum, CEO and Co-Founder of Kustomer, about the shift from measuring AI by deflection rates and activity to measuring it by outcomes that matter to the business. Birnbaum explains why the right metrics depend on the company, from revenue uplift in retail to upsell and expansion in B2B SaaS, and why traditional CX measures ...

Salesforce’s launch of the Agentforce Contact Center has reignited a familiar debate in customer experience: should enterprises consolidate around one major platform, or keep the flexibility to pick best fit tools. In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson sits down with Baker Johnson, Chief Business Officer at UJET, to unpack what he calls the integration trap. They explore why many organizations feel “stuck” in CRM ecosystems, how switching costs and interdependent integrations slow down c...

Are CX leaders assuming their AI agents are compliant simply because they use a major model? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Nadia Kadhim, Executive Director at Aithos, about new research into how leading AI models perform against European legal standards, including GDPR and the EU AI Act. Aithos, the European non-profit AI research foundation behind the legal compliance testing tool LARA, found that every major model tested failed compliance checks across realistic w...

Customers expect refunds to be fast, frictionless, and fair. For UK retailers, that expectation is now colliding with a sharp rise in returns fraud, from wardrobing to counterfeit returns. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Paul Gardner, VP of Product at Appriss Retail, about how retailers can accelerate time to refund without opening the door to preventable losses. Gardner explains why fixed return policies are increasingly vulnerable, how behaviour-based decisioning ou...

How can CX leaders buy AI responsibly without exposing their business, customers, or data to unnecessary risk? In this CX Today roundtable, Nicole Willing speaks with Kristina Holt, Managing Associate at Foot Anstey, Mary Ann Miller, Fraud & Cybercrime Executive Advisor and VP of Client Experience at Prove, and Michael Machado, CISO at RingCentral, about what responsible AI vendor due diligence should look like in customer experience. The discussion explores why AI procurement can no lo...

Customer expectations are rising, but many service teams still rely on voice as an isolated channel and manual processes to move work forward. In this interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Jonathan Kershaw, Director of Product Management at Vonage, about how live voice can bring real-time voice transcription and context directly into ServiceNow to trigger workflows during the call, not after it. Kershaw explains where the pain shows up most clearly: agents toggling between up to nine systems,...

How customer feedback has quietly become the most powerful trust signal in the age of AI search CX Today's Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Alicia Skubick, Chief Customer Officer at Trustpilot, to unpack the platform's latest research. With AI now shaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands before they ever land on a website, the rules of visibility have changed. This is the conversation that makes the business case for trust in real, measurable terms. T...

Forethought’s Antoine Nasr discusses how outcome-based AI is reshaping the way enterprises measure the true value of customer service automation In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Antoine Nasr, Head of AI at Forethought, recently acquired by Zendesk. The pair discuss Forethought’s agentic AI push to tackle one of the most uncomfortable conversations in the CX space right now: is the ROI you're reporting on your AI investment actually telling you an...

What happens when your customer journey map looks great on a slide, but falls apart the moment a customer repeats themselves, switches channels, or escalates? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson sits down with Ali Karim, VP of Solutions at Datamark, to unpack how CX leaders can move from static journey mapping to dynamic customer journeys built around real-world behavior. Ali frames dynamic journeys as real-time correction loops that react to what customers do, not what you wish they w...

Is your restaurant's POS holding back your team — and your guests? Francesca Roche speaks with Andy Grindstaff, Director of Enterprise Restaurant Product at Global Payments, about the company's AI-first Genius Handheld POS and the expanding Genius Commerce platform. Andy explains how AI-powered voice ordering is designed to quietly capture orders in the background while freeing servers to focus on hospitality, why self-service kiosks are growing as an order pathway, and how research revealing...

Simon Leyland and Zeus Kerravala unpack what Salesforce's acquisition of Fin really means for AI customer service, CCaaS, and the vendors now in the crosshairs. Host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Simon Leyland, CEO and Co-Founder of CloudInteract, and Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, just days after Salesforce announced its $3.6 billion agreement to acquire Fin, formerly known as Intercom. With AI reshaping customer servic...

When Anthropic restricted access to its Claude AI models in response to US export control requirements, it wasn't just a policy story. It was a wake-up call for every enterprise that has built its security posture around a single AI provider. In this interview, Fran Roche sits down with Shimon Tolts, co-founder and CEO of Copperhelm, to unpack what the restrictions really mean for enterprise AI resilience. They discuss how attack timelines have collapsed to under 24 hours, why 70 to 90 perce...

Hakob Astabatsyan, CEO of Synthflow, unpacks the 8x8 partnership, the re-emergence of voice, and why agentic AI has quietly shifted from cost-cutter to revenue driver. In this discussion, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Hakob Astabatsyan, CEO of Synthflow AI, to discuss the company's newly announced strategic partnership with 8x8. With the global voice AI market on a trajectory to hit $54 billion by 2033 – and enterprise adoption accelerating faster tha...

At CCW Vegas 2026, Rob Scott sits down with Jonathan 'JR' Ranger, Chief Customer Officer at CallMiner, to explore the company's latest AI innovation, 'Real-Time AI Guidance,' and what it actually means for agents, customers, and contact center leaders navigating an increasingly AI-driven world. JR breaks down how the technology works in practice, why hold times and transfers are no longer an acceptable fallback, and why he believes agents who embrace AI will thrive rather than disappea...

Voice AI demos can look impressive, but what happens when the technology is live in a busy contact center six months later? In this CX Today interview, Marcus Law speaks with Ilan Avner, Director of Product Management at AudioCodes, about the practical reality of moving Voice AI from proof of concept into production. The conversation explores why so many Voice AI projects stall after promising pilots, what enterprises often underestimate about voice infrastructure, and why connectivity, lat...

SuccessKPI CEO Dave Rennyson on data governance, ground truth, and why excitement about AI is outrunning the ability to manage it In this CX Today discussion, host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Dave Rennyson, CEO of SuccessKPI, to tackle one of the most pressing yet underexplored challenges in modern contact center operations: what it actually takes to build an AI-ready data foundation. As AI agents become a fixture of the contact center, Dave makes ...

Rob Scott, Publisher at CX Today, sits down with Jeremie Abou, Sales Lead at Diabolocom, on the floor of CCW Las Vegas to ask the question the industry keeps dodging: is AI actually improving customer experience, or just cutting costs? Jeremie doesn't pull punches. From automation hype to the uncomfortable gap between slick demos and live contact centre reality, this conversation gets into what vendors won't tell you — and what CX leaders need to hear. They cover the 89% of CX leaders who e...

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For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

If you want to know what is actually happening in customer contact — not the keynote version, not the vendor pitch version, but the version grounded in independent research across hundreds of organizations - you talk to Nicole Kyle. Nicole is Chief Product Officer at CMP Research, the Customer Contact Research Company, and the firm whose data quietly shapes much of what gets discussed, debated, and decided at CCW Vegas every year. I interviewed her on the floor of Caesars Forum this we...

For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

What happens when your contact centre moves beyond scripted bots and into AI agents that can reason, understand context, and complete multi-step tasks end to end? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Jonathan Barouch, GM of Contact Center at Zendesk, about what “AI-native” and “agentic” actually mean in practice, where enterprise teams get stuck (data silos, authentication, brittle infrastructure), and how to roll out automation without betting the whole operation on d...

At CCW 2026, CX Today's Rob Scott sat down with Chris Morrissey, General Manager of Zoom Customer Experience, to explore what separates genuine AI-native contact center platforms from legacy CCaaS vendors with AI bolted on — and why that distinction is now showing up directly in resolution rates and agent productivity. "AI-native" and "AI-first" are buzz phrases — the real question is whether you're building better customer experiences or just creating a new generation of AI silos. Chris sha...

What happens when powerful AI models become easier to access, harder to control, and more deeply embedded in customer experience workflows? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Geoffrey Mattson, CEO of SecureAuth, about the identity and security gaps exposed by Anthropic’s reported model shutdown and the wider rise of agentic AI. Geoffrey explains why today’s AI systems often lack a reliable identity layer at the point of model access, how Know Your Customer (KYC) principl...

In this interview from CCW Vegas 2026, Mike Begala, General Manager for the Americas at Casio, shares how the company is transforming its customer service operation from a traditional, transactional support model into a relationship-driven customer experience strategy. Mike discusses the challenges of modernising long-standing systems, why empowering frontline agents is the foundation of great customer service, and how Casio is using RingCentral's cloud communications and AI capabilities to ...

Rob Scott sits down with Pasquale DeMaio (VP, Amazon Connect), Deepak Nair (SVP, AI Transformation, Citizens Bank), and Justin Robbins (Founder and Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa) fresh off the main stage at CCW 2026 in Las Vegas. Pasquale made a deliberate statement on stage: deflection is dead. In this debrief, the three unpack what killed it, what replaces it, and why half of all agentic AI pilots never reach production. They cover the governance conversations that have to happen befor...

What happens when a critical AI model suddenly becomes unavailable, and your customer-facing workflows depend on it? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Ashish Nagar, Founder and CEO of Level AI, about the enterprise risks behind AI vendor dependency, model availability, and data control. Following reports of Anthropic withdrawing frontier models after U.S. export control requirements, Nagar explains why CX leaders need to look beyond surface-level AI performance and ask ha...

For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

TikTok Go is collapsing the travel booking journey into a single app, and it's raising urgent questions for travel brands about customer ownership, loyalty, and digital experience. In this episode, Francesca Roche sits down with Danielle Harvey, VP of Industries for Partnerships and Emerging Products at Quantum Metric, to unpack what TikTok Go really means for travel CX. Drawing on her background at Wyndham Hotels and Avis Budget Group, Danielle shares why fragmentation in the booking journey...

Three months ago at Enterprise Connect, Salesforce launched Agentforce Contact Center and made a bold claim: native voice, digital channels, AI agents, and CRM data in a single platform. Analysts were impressed. They were also watching for one thing. The WEM piece was missing. Last week at CCW Las Vegas, Salesforce answered that. The company has launched Agentforce Contact Center Workforce Engagement Management — a native, AI-powered WEM solution built directly into the Agentforce platform....

eannie Walters and Dr. Alyona Medelyan reveal what nearly 2,000 unfiltered airline reviews say about the chasm between brand promise and operational reality, and what CX leaders must do about it. In this CX Today discussion, host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor, sits down with two leading voices in customer experience: Jeannie Walters, CX expert and author, and Dr. Alyona Medelyan, CEO of Thematic. Together, they've co-authored Experience Is The Promise, a data-driven report analyzing ne...

AI-powered discovery is changing how consumers find businesses, and 37% are already starting their searches with AI tools rather than traditional search engines. But as ChatGPT ads emerge as a new marketing channel, most businesses still can't measure whether they're working. CallRail's Chief Product Officer Ryan Johnson joins CX Today to discuss the company's new attribution solution for ChatGPT ads, what early lead quality data is revealing, and why SMBs and agencies can't afford to treat ...

Are enterprise CX teams ready for the next phase of AI in customer service? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with John Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of delight.ai, about Salesforce’s acquisition of Fin (formerly Intercom) and what it signals for the future of customer experience. Kim explains why the deal reflects a wider shift in the market, as established customer service platforms look to acquire AI-native capabilities rather than build everything internally. Kim also explores...

Why static survey forms are failing CX leaders—and how context-aware listening is replacing them. Are traditional survey links dead? With response rates at historic lows, the answer might be yes. In this episode, Rob Scott sits down with Sprinklr’s Sonal Singhal and Valarie Grant to explore why relying on static, post-interaction forms leaves CX leaders with delayed insights, blind spots, and a fractured view of the customer experience. When you force a customer out of their natural channe...

Diabolocom’s AI Product Manager Tom Azernour on why orchestration, not automation, is the real future of contact center AI Host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Tom Azernour, AI Product Manager at Diabolocom, to unpack why the virtual agent category is long overdue for a rethink. As contact centers move beyond legacy voice bots into the agentic era, Tom explains what "orchestration-first" AI actually means in practice and why the architecture decisions m...

Should AI own the customer relationship, or should it make human sellers better prepared? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with John Golden, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Coevera, about why artificial intelligence should support B2B sales teams without replacing the trust, judgment, and nuance that complex relationships require. Golden argues that traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems were often built as systems of record for management visib...

How do CX leaders move beyond AI hype without creating new risk for customers, agents, and the business? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Rebecca Wettemann, Principal at Valoir, about why the conversation around AI in customer experience is becoming more practical and more urgent. They explore the shift from fear of missing out to fear of messing up, why so many teams still struggle to move beyond pilots, and what separates low-risk experimentation from costly missteps. ...

Why do so many AI projects look promising in a pilot, then become harder to trust in production? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with John Anderson, AI Architect at Quiq, and Priscilla Lee, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Quiq, about the gap between AI capability and AI confidence in customer experience. The discussion explores why AI projects often stall after an encouraging pilot. According to the speakers, the problem is rarely that AI cannot complete the task....

From hidden fan bases to agentic AI campaigns, Amperity’s Derek Slager reveals how Amperity is rewiring how sports teams, and every bran, act on customer data in real time. Introduction: In this discussion, host and Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Derek Slager, Co-Founder and CTO of Amperity, to unpack the uncomfortable truth about fan engagement in professional sports: most teams are sitting on fragmented, incomplete data — and it's costing them. With the NFL draft ...

Customer Contact Week 2026 opened with one of the most anticipated main stage sessions in the event's history. A packed Academy Ballroom at Caesars Forum. Thousands of contact center leaders on their feet. And a conversation about what AI-first service actually looks like when it is no longer a roadmap — it is running, right now, inside one of Europe's most recognised travel brands. The moment the session closed, Rob Scott pulled three of the people who built that story into a room and kept ...

Are legacy CRM and customer data platform stacks holding back enterprise AI strategies? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Rafael Flores, Chief Product and Growth Officer at Treasure AI, formerly Treasure Data, about why traditional customer experience stacks may no longer move fast enough for AI-led customer engagement. Flores explains why legacy CRM and CDP systems can feel too rigid for modern teams, particularly when marketers need governed data, fast activation, and...

95% of enterprise AI pilots never reach production. Not because the technology fails — because the approach does. At CCW Las Vegas, CX Today's Rob Scott sat down with Hannah Bloking (Head of Applied AI Acceleration Solutions Architecture, Amazon Connect Customer), Andrei Papancea (Head of AI Engineering, AWS), and Nate Brown (Co-Founder, CX Accelerator) right after their session on why AI pilots fail — and what the 5% who succeed do differently. Three questions. Three perspectives. Fifteen ...

What makes a passenger choose the same airline again when price is no longer enough? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Dr Jennifer Coisson, Director of Research and Advisory Services at Sogolytics, about the customer experience factors shaping airline loyalty in the US market. Drawing on findings from Sogolytics’ US Airlines 2026 CX Rankings, Dr Coisson explains why low fares may influence the first booking, but service quality, in-flight experience, loyalty programs, ...

Is your customer experience strategy ready for the speed of AI-driven cyber threats? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Quincy Castro, Chief Information Security Officer at Chainguard, about how artificial intelligence is reshaping enterprise cybersecurity, vulnerability discovery and remediation. Castro explains why frontier AI models are making zero-day vulnerabilities cheaper and faster to find, why traditional 30, 60 and 90-day patching cycles are struggling to keep ...

When AI learns from real conversations, not pre-built rules, the contact center transformation timeline collapses In this discussion, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Claudio Rodrigues, Chief Product Officer at Omilia, to dig into one of the most pressing questions in customer experience right now: what does truly intelligent, self-learning contact center AI actually look like in practice? If you're tired of AI conversations that stay at surface level, t...

Gartner VP Analyst Kathy Ross on why AI agents belong in your tech stack, not on your org chart – and what happens when leaders get this wrong. In this CX Today interview, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Kathy Ross, VP Analyst at Gartner, to unpack a provocative Gartner stance: that customer service leaders are fundamentally mismanaging AI agents by treating them like human talent. With 39% of CEOs already viewing AI agents as employees, the stakes for getting this r...

Sara Richter breaks down what peak season stress tests really expose, and why most brands are failing the customer relationship before it even starts. Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Sara Richter, CMO of SAP Engagement Cloud, to unpack the findings of SAP's 2026 Engagement Index. With AI agents now driving purchasing decisions for nearly half of Gen Z, the pressure on brands to deliver truly connected CX has never been higher. If you're wondering what s...

Do customers really dislike AI, or are they tired of poor AI experiences? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Ali Fazal, Chief Marketing Officer at Gladly, about why many consumers are frustrated by AI in customer experience and what brands need to do differently. Drawing on findings from WordPress VIP’s Future of the Web 2026 report, Ali explores why 60 percent of consumers are turned off by brands using AI in marketing, why 86 percent verify AI-generated information ag...

Is the CCaaS market moving faster than enterprise contact centers can adapt? In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru, about the market forces reshaping contact center as a service (CCaaS), from vendor consolidation and AI acceleration to rising customer expectations and the pressure to modernize legacy platforms. Taylor explains why customer experience has become one of the most important battlegrounds for competitive a...

What does it really take to move AI sales agents from a controlled demo into a live enterprise sales organization? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Kris Billmaier, EVP and General Manager, Agentforce Sales at Salesforce, about what Salesforce has learned from deploying Agentforce Sales across its own go-to-market teams. Salesforce has positioned its internal sales organization as “customer zero” for Agentforce Sales, giving the company a practical view of where AI age...

What happens when customer expectations keep rising, but the systems behind service still sit in silos? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Mark Ashton, VP Solution Consulting CRM EMEA at ServiceNow, about why traditional CRM is no longer enough for modern customer experience. They explore the growing gap between speed and empathy, why AI projects fail when built on weak foundations, and how disconnected front, middle, and back-office processes create friction for both cust...

Are brands truly listening when customers speak on social media? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche explores how AI is reshaping social media community management, and why human judgment remains central to protecting customer trust. The discussion examines the opportunity for AI to process high volumes of social interactions, identify patterns, and speed up triage, without handing over sensitive customer decisions to automation alone. The conversation addresses a critical reality f...

CX Today's Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Wayne Butterfield, Founder of STX, to unpack one of the most talked-about analyst reports of the year. Wayne sparked a firestorm on LinkedIn when Gartner's 2026 Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI dropped, and his criticisms resonated. With hundreds of comments and close to 100,000 views on his post, it was clear he wasn't alone. In this conversation, Wayne goes beyond the LinkedIn hot takes to explain exactly what he think...

Are your sales conversations creating trust, or setting customer success teams up for failure? In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Seth Marrs, Chief Strategy Officer at Sandler, about how seller performance inside live buyer conversations can shape customer trust, long-term customer experience, and revenue outcomes. Seth explains why the first sales conversation is such a critical moment in the customer relationship. When sellers overpromise, stretch expectations, or fai...

Personalized customer experience is no longer just about using the right data to deliver a better message. As AI becomes embedded across customer journeys, contact centers, marketing workflows, and digital channels, CX leaders are facing a more difficult question: when should AI be allowed to act? That question sits at the heart of this CX Today conversation with Nicole Willing, Kristen Zhou, VP of Product at Treasure AI, and Guy Bourgault, Head of Agentic Systems at Concentrix,...

When Wayne Butterfield posted his reaction to the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI, he wasn't expecting much more than a few nods from peers. What he got was close to 100,000 views and 500 comments....most of them agreeing. In a conversation with CX Today, Butterfield explains what bothered him most about the report. His core issue is a perceived contradiction in how acquisitions were treated. Salesforce and SoundHound were placed in the Leaders quadrant following acqu...

In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Hannah Deveney, Senior Director, Product Management at Zendesk, about the rise of the agent system and why service leaders need to redesign operations around humans and AI agents working together. The conversation explores how customer service is shifting from traditional team structures to coordinated systems where multiple agents can resolve work end to end. Deveney explains why the next phase of AI is not about bolting on another assist...

Rob Wilkinson speaks with Mark Ashton, VP Solution Consulting CRM, EMEA at ServiceNow, about why traditional CRM is no longer enough for modern customer experience. They explore the growing gap between speed and empathy, why AI projects fail when built on weak foundations, and how disconnected front, middle, and back-office processes create friction for both customers and agents. Mark also shares practical examples of where organizations are using AI and connected workflows to reduce order ex...

In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru, about the market forces reshaping contact center as a service (CCaaS), from vendor consolidation and AI acceleration to rising customer expectations and the pressure to modernize legacy platforms. Taylor explains why customer experience has become one of the most important battlegrounds for competitive advantage, and why enterprise buyers still running on legacy on-premises contact...

Gartner VP Analyst Kathy Ross on why AI agents belong in your tech stack, not on your org chart – and what happens when leaders get this wrong. In this CX Today interview, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Kathy Ross, VP Analyst at Gartner, to unpack a provocative Gartner stance: that customer service leaders are fundamentally mismanaging AI agents by treating them like human talent. With 39% of CEOs already viewing AI agents as employees, the stakes for getting this right...

In this discussion, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Claudio Rodrigues, Chief Product Officer at Omilia, to dig into one of the most pressing questions in customer experience right now: what does truly intelligent, self-learning contact center AI actually look like in practice? If you're tired of AI conversations that stay at surface level, this one's for you. The contact center AI story is usually told the same way: clean your data, build your rules, wait months for ...