Artificial Intelligence

What’s the Most Overrated Metric in Employee Experience Right Now?

EX measurement has never been more sophisticated – yet many organisations are still tracking the wrong things. We asked four people leaders to name the metric they’d retire, and what they’d replace it with.  AI Adoption for Its Own Sake Arne Sjöström,...

8×8 Usage Revenue Hits Record High While AI Volumes Surge and Per-Seat Era Fades

8×8 has closed its fiscal year with four consecutive quarters of revenue growth, and Q4 FY2026 reveals AI is handling interactions that used to require human agents, while the pricing models built around those agents are changing with it. The headline...

Quantum AI in CX: The Next Leap in Customer Experience Is Closer Than You Think

Every time you think you’ve just about gotten to grips with the next big thing in customer experience, something new comes along. In the last couple of years, we jumped from generative AI to agentic AI; now it seems like...

The AI Backlash Arrives: What Meta, Google DeepMind, and Amazon Employees Tell Us About Trust at Work

Meta’s aggressive push to convert its people investment into AI infrastructure is prompting visible revolt. Last week, flyers appeared in meeting rooms, restrooms, and on vending machines encouraging staff to sign a petition. “Don’t want to work at the Employee...

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,...

Microsoft’s AI Chief Says AI Will Replace White-Collar Workers in 18 Months

Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive of Microsoft AI, told the Financial Times in February that most white-collar work would be fully automated within 12 to 18 months, which generated the usual cycle of alarm and counter-argument. Now, the headlines are circulating once again,...

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...

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...