Customer Experience

The Chatbot Era Is Over: Zendesk Launches an Autonomous Service Workforce

At its annual Relate conference, Zendesk has replaced its deflection-focused bot model with a new approach built around specialised AI agents that are accountable for outcomes. The company’s new vision, branded the Autonomous Service Workforce, puts a unified Resolution Platform at...

UK Consumers Are Screening Out Legitimate Businesses Because They Can No Longer Tell What Is Real

Contact centres have spent years optimising dial rates, agent scripts, and channel strategies. But a growing body of evidence suggests the most consequential decision in outbound contact now happens before any of that comes into play. It is whether the...

8×8 Taps OpenAI’s Latest Voice AI Model to Make Agents More Reliable

8×8 has added support for OpenAI’s GPT Realtime 2 inside 8×8 AI Studio, giving businesses running live voice agents a more dependable engine for real-time customer conversations. The update is available now to customers in 8×8 AI Studio’s early availability programme,...

Qualtrics Acquires Press Ganey Forsta for $6.75 Billion

Qualtrics has completed its $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta, the healthcare experience measurement company used by more than 41,000 healthcare facilities, including the majority of U.S. hospitals. The deal, which was first announced in October 2025, is the...

CallForce and OnviSource Think Traditional BPO Is Already Obsolete. OnviForce Is Their Answer

South African business function outsourcer CallForce and US-based AI analytics and automation provider OnviSource have announced the launch of OnviForce, a joint venture that delivers AI-native outsourcing services from South Africa to organisations in global markets. The venture represents a deliberate...

How to Create a Predictive CX Strategy Your Competitors Can’t Keep Up With

For years, customer service teams have chased speed as though it were the ultimate badge of honour, pouring effort into faster responses, faster resolutions and faster escalations. But shaving seconds off a call doesn’t solve the real problem — it...

PolyAI CEO: Deflection Rates Are the Wrong Metric for Contact Centre AI

Contact centre AI is often judged by how many customers it keeps away from a human agent. Deflection rate has become the metric that leaders use to justify automation investments, while vendors lean on it to demonstrate value, even as...

Cisco Reports Record Revenue, Fueled by Enterprise AI and Agentic Security Demand

Cisco reported record quarterly revenue of $15.8 billion in Q3 FY2026, a 12% year-over-year increase fuelled by enterprise AI infrastructure investment and a product portfolio that the company says has never been more relevant to its customers. The headline figures confirm...

Konecta Deploys NiCE Pre-Trained AI Agents for Telecoms, Banking, and Retail

Konecta, a global BPO and digital outsourcing provider, has signed a Global Platinum Partnership with NiCE that will embed the vendor’s CXone platform and Cognigy agentic AI technology directly into Konecta’s own open platform. The result is a set of...

Start Human, Support With AI: Where AI Strengthens CX — and Where It Breaks It

According to Gartner research, 81% of senior marketing leaders measure AI automation success by time saved, while only 36% evaluate it through a CX lens. Leaders have long faced a trade-off between productivity and CX, and the usual outcome is...

Preventing AI Workslop in CX: How to Stop Rework, Escalations, and Brand Damage

CX teams seem to love AI. Usage has doubled since 2023, and investment is showing absolutely no sign of slowing down. Despite that, a large number of companies aren’t seeing a positive return on their investment. In fact, AI might...

Are Enterprises Deploying AI Agents Faster Than Their Governance Can Handle?

A large majority of enterprises have rolled back or completely shut down an AI agent in customer communications after it went live, according to a new global study from Sinch. Most of the industry still treats deployment as the biggest challenge,...