HubSpot’s Controversial New Customer Data Sharing Deal Didn’t Survive the Week

On 1 July, HubSpot rewrote its terms of service to let customer enrichment data flow into a shared pool other customers could draw on. By 5 July, the plan was dead. Chief Product and Technology Officer Duncan Lennox confirmed the...

Akixi Aims to Elevate CX Analytics with AI Call Scoring in Unified CX Suite Launch

Akixi has launched CX Suite, adding AI call scoring to a platform that already handled call analytics, recording and CRM integration. This launch positions all four in one login for the first time. The company sells only through service providers and...

Copilot Now Has to Earn Its Keep, Microsoft Tells Staff, as Fresh Round of Layoffs Expected

Microsoft has told the 11,000 people working on Copilot that the product needs to “earn the right to exist.” The line comes from an internal memo written by Jacob Andreou, the Executive Vice President who took charge of Copilot in...

Your Customer Experience News Roundup: The EU Takes Aim at AWS and Azure as Acquisitions Stack Up

This week in customer experience news, the European Commission moved to designate AWS and Azure as cloud gatekeepers, while the market added several notable acquisitions. Underneath it all, new data from Infobip punctured a flattering assumption: that because enterprises have...

Zoom Acquires Common Room, Empowering Its Revenue Accelerator With Buyer Data

Zoom has announced its acquisition of Common Room, a Seattle software firm that works out who’s about to buy something before the salesperson ever picks up the phone. The price wasn’t disclosed, and the deal isn’t massive by tech standards....

Is Your CRM About to Replace Your WEM Platform? What CX Leaders Need to Know

For years, workforce engagement management occupied its own corner of the CX stack. It was technically adjacent to the contact centre or CRM platform, but deliberately separate. Vendors like Verint, Calabrio, and NICE built substantial businesses on that separation. They...

Five Key Takeaways from NiCE World London 2026: Agentic AI as a Human Complement Rather Than Replacement, Governance Is the New No 1 Priority, and More

NiCE World London 2026 opened with a programme tailored around an increasingly familiar premise: agentic AI is well beyond being a future-tense conversation for contact centres. As the raft of keynotes, panel discussions and spontaneous conversations illustrated, that argument has...

Microsoft’s Copilot Learns to Finish the Job in Dynamics 365, Not Just Start It, With Service Agent and New MCP Tools Availability

Microsoft’s Service Agent went fully live inside Microsoft 365 Copilot this week, three months after its public preview debut. Essentially, this means that customer service reps can now ask Copilot to act on a case, not just explain one. Until now,...

What Is a Customer Loyalty Strategy in 2026? The Case Against Points-Chasing

The average shopper belongs to more than a dozen loyalty programmes. Ask them to name three they actually care about, and most will struggle. That gulf, between enrolment and affection, is the central problem facing every brand still treating customer...

Accenture and ServiceNow Want to Make Cybersecurity Legacy Platform Migration Less of a Nightmare Through AI

Accenture and ServiceNow have launched a joint cybersecurity offering combining managed security services with an AI tool for migrating off legacy risk platforms. It tackles a problem most organisations know intimately. The security platform everyone’s stuck with because nobody wants...

Financial Cooperative Desjardins Gave Its Advisors a CRM Shared Memory With Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Customers Noticed

North America’s largest financial cooperative spent years hearing the same complaint: members were repeating themselves. At every touchpoint, whether branch visit, call centre, or online enquiry, the context from the last conversation had evaporated. Staff weren’t indifferent; it was just...

The EU Wants to Make It Easier to Leave AWS and Azure, Targets Amazon and Microsoft’s Cloud Units Under New ‘Gatekeeper’ Regulations

The European Commission moved last week to designate Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as “gatekeepers” under its new Digital Markets Act. This is the first time the EU’s competition framework has reached cloud infrastructure rather than consumer-facing platforms like...