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Are contact center buyers still using yesterday’s criteria to make tomorrow’s technology decisions? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Keith Dawson, Research Director at ISG, about what contact center leaders should prioritize in 2026 as artificial intelligence, automation, analytics, and customer expectations reshape the market. Keith explains why the contact center is evolving from a routing and efficiency engine into a broader customer engagement environment. He explores why buyers now need to think beyond traditional vendor rankings and assess how platforms fit their operating model, enterprise technology stack, governance requirements, and long-term CX strategy. The conversation also covers the rising importance of AI governance, context preservation, automated quality management, self-service, agent guidance, and closer collaboration with IT. For contact center, CX, and service leaders planning new investments, this discussion highlights why the right buying decision now depends on more than features. It depends on understanding operational complexity, risk, integration, and what the business wants every customer interaction to achieve. Watch the full interview to learn how ISG believes buyers should approach the 2026 contact center market.

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, speaks with Hannah Deveney, Senior Director of Product Management at Zendesk, about the changing role of voice in AI-powered customer service.  As AI agents handle more routine requests, live calls are increasingly reserved for urgent, sensitive, and complicated issues. Deveney explains why Zendesk is bringing real-time, two-way translation into its contact center, and why the technology needs strong guardrails before it reaches high-risk customer journeys.  Voice was supposed to be fading from customer service. Instead, it is becoming the channel customers choose when the stakes are highest.  Deveney discusses Zendesk’s Real-Time Voice Translation, a new capability designed to help customers and agents communicate naturally across languages during live calls.  In this interview, Deveney covers:  🔴 Why voice still accounts for around 40% of contact center contacts among Zendesk customers, and why calls are becoming more complex as AI agents resolve routine issues.  🔴 How language-specific queues can force a trade-off between speaking to an agent in your own language and reaching the person with the right expertise.  🔴 Why preserving customer context through every transfer, channel, and language is critical for fraud, billing, healthcare, and other high-stakes conversations.  🔴 How contact centers should roll out voice translation carefully, starting with lower-risk use cases, retaining audit trails, and keeping human oversight in place.  As Deveney puts it, “When a call is escalated to a human, it’s usually a more complex issue or it’s more sensitive.” For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

Marcus Law speaks with Guy Yaffe, VP of Interaction Recordings at AudioCodes, about the changing enterprise recording market and why native recording alone may not meet the needs of regulated organizations. They explore the difference between convenient recording and compliance-grade recording, including policy-based capture, long-term retention, access controls, resilience, and the ability to retrieve historic communications when needed. The conversation then moves beyond retention. Yaffe explains how reliable recordings can become a foundation for voice analytics and conversation intelligence, helping teams identify potential compliance breaches, assess sentiment, improve quality management, support employee guidance, and uncover recurring issues across customer-facing and employee communications. The interview also outlines practical priorities for IT, compliance, and business leaders reviewing their Microsoft Teams recording strategy: platform certification, data residency, storage options, privacy, governance, and how customer data is handled in AI and large language model workflows.

In this CX Today interview, Technology Journalist Nicole Willing speaks with Amit Namjoshi, Executive Director of Technology Consulting at TTEC Digital, about why the EU AI Act should matter to customer experience and contact center leaders, not just legal and compliance teams. Namjoshi explains why CX leaders are becoming the “stewards of AI” in customer-facing operations, how hidden AI can appear in tools such as agent assist, call summaries, sentiment analysis, quality management and workforce management, and why organizations need to start with a clear AI inventory. The conversation also explores what buyers should look for when assessing responsible AI use, including governance, transparency, accountability, human oversight, and ongoing monitoring. Amit shares why AI governance should become part of the operational rhythm of the business, from procurement and change control to quality assurance and the AI governance board. Watch the full interview to learn how CX leaders can reduce risk, build trust, and make AI a safe and useful enabler across the contact center.

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 survey of more than 300 marketing and operations leaders emphasize the gap between the 99 percent of leaders who see omnichannel communication as a strategic priority and the 43 percent of organizations that have expanded beyond basic email and SMS. The conversation explores why customer context is becoming one of the most valuable assets in modern customer communications, how channels like WhatsApp and RCS can move businesses from basic messaging to richer conversations, and why success should be measured through business growth, return on investment, and customer experience, not just delivery rates. Watch the full interview to learn how CX leaders can close the omnichannel gap, reduce customer friction, and build more connected, context-driven communications.

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 challenge: traditional traffic reports may not show where influence is really happening. The conversation explores the difference between traditional search engine optimization and AI visibility, the “prompt gap” between keywords and real customer questions, and why reviews, social care, community discussions, and customer conversations now play a bigger role in how AI describes a brand. Sean also shares a practical first step for leaders: run a visibility audit to understand how AI tools represent your brand, which competitors appear in the answers, and where CX issues may be shaping the narrative.

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 system of record, but why customer data platforms (CDPs) are becoming critical for connecting context, intent and customer history across the wider enterprise tech stack. The conversation explores how a CDP can help organizations understand not just what a customer has said, but what their behavior, journey, and data signals mean. Manthorpe also shares practical examples of how connected data can support proactive service, reduce friction, and improve self-service experiences. Watch the full interview to learn how CX leaders can use CDPs to build a more connected, governed, and AI-ready customer experience strategy.

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 automation can create extra friction, and why the best customer experiences still depend on context, empathy, and human judgment. The conversation also explores why CX leaders should avoid confusing speed with progress, how to build AI strategies around clear outcomes, and why true vendor partnerships require being present with customers on the contact center floor. Watch the full interview to learn how CX teams can use AI to improve efficiency without weakening service quality, agent confidence, or customer trust.

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 competitors move faster on automation, agentic AI, and new commercial models? Kerravala argues that several vendors are now playing offense. NICE, he says, has made a significant move by acquiring Cognigy and strengthening the connection between workforce management, contact center as a service (CCaaS), and conversational AI. Talkdesk is taking a different route, positioning Customer Experience Automation (CXA) as the next phase beyond traditional CCaaS. Zoom is leaning into simplicity and user familiarity, while Amazon Connect continues to challenge established pricing models with consumption-based economics. The discussion also covers RingCentral’s practical AI push for smaller businesses, Webex’s focus on security and enterprise-grade compliance, and Salesforce’s growing ambitions in the contact center market. Kerravala notes that Salesforce’s ability to combine customer relationship management (CRM), voice data, and AI agents could be powerful, but only if it proves the technology can move beyond earlier AI setbacks. Governance emerges as one of the interview’s most important themes. As AI agents begin to work across platforms and communicate with other agents, enterprise buyers will need stronger guardrails, auditability, and trust. Kerravala suggests that legal and compliance risk will become a major factor in vendor selection. For buyers, the takeaway is clear, CX AI platforms need to deliver transparent pricing, open interoperability, and autonomous resolution, such as rebooking a flight, issuing a refund, or updating a policy. Kerravala also offers direct advice to Avaya customers: demand firm AI delivery milestones, assess whether the roadmap matches business needs, and build contractual options that protect the organization if promises are not met.

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 small business. Leaders must move between people, process, and technology, often while trying to evaluate only a small sample of customer interactions. AI tools can help analyze conversations, but she argues they still struggle with nuance. That means a human must review context, identify coaching opportunities, and decide what really matters. That is where CX Collective’s Quality as a Service model comes in. Rather than asking teams to buy, learn, implement, and manage another QA platform, the company builds the quality program around the customer’s needs and delivers curated results. The goal is to give support leaders useful insight faster, while reducing the burden of administration. Given says the model is especially valuable for teams with five to 20 agents. These teams are often growing quickly, but they may lack the time, budget, or internal QA expertise to run a full quality program. CX Collective supports them with monthly calibration sessions, human-led review, agent dispute workflows, and coaching notes that help both leaders and agents take action. The interview also explores the relationship between QA and customer satisfaction scores. Given notes that agents can follow the right process and still receive poor CSAT when a customer dislikes a company policy. By adding quality scores into tickets, CX Collective aims to give leaders a more balanced view of performance. While many vendors are focused on AI reviewing 100 percent of interactions, Given believes human judgment remains essential. For her, Quality as a Service is about giving support leaders the equivalent of a QA team that does the heavy lifting, so they can focus on decisions, coaching, and improvement.

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 individual channels, but no shared memory connecting them. The handoffs are where everything unravels. Ty puts it in starker operational terms. Customers bouncing between a bot, a new channel, and a live agent are retelling their story every single time — because the underlying systems simply aren't integrated. And piling AI on top of that doesn't help. "If you don't have any of those things, what's going to happen is that those issues are actually going to be amplified because AI doesn't fix that."Both speakers land on the same closing advice: stop buying tools and start fixing the foundations. Assign clear ownership for AI oversight, document what success actually looks like, and treat journey analytics as a live operational discipline rather than a reporting exercise. As Ty puts it, someone needs to get off the dance floor and oversee the whole room. Right now, in most organizations, nobody is.

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 that improve service rather than simply chasing automation. AI may be everywhere in CX, but Choudhury says the industry needs to get far more honest about where it delivers value and where it creates new problems. Drawing on his Salesforce background and his work at RocketPhone.ai, Choudhury joins CX Today’s Rhys Fisher to unpack why enterprise AI success depends on more than an LLM, a chatbot, or an ambitious product launch. Why Salesforce’s acquisition-heavy history and changing AI strategy create a difficult integration challenge, especially as smaller, less encumbered competitors move quickly. Why customer data, including voice and contact center conversations, is the essential foundation for relevant AI experiences. A real-world field-service example showing how AI can help engineers arrive with the right part, reduce wasted visits, and improve the customer outcome. Why AI should support human coaching and risk management, not replace experienced managers or introduce unsafe, non-compliant service interactions. Choudhury’s message is clear: start with people and broken processes, then apply AI where it produces a measurable result. Watch the full interview, then assess your own AI roadmap: Is it solving a specific customer problem, using trustworthy data, and keeping human accountability where it matters? For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

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 customer context in real time. That friction affects confidence, consistency, handle time, first contact resolution, and customer trust. Rodney also discusses how the Vonage Intelligent Workspace creates a browser-based layer between engagement channels and CRM environments, connecting natively to 13 CRM platforms and giving agents a single pane of glass. He shares why real-time context is essential for AI to deliver accurate, useful recommendations, and why leaders should start with a workflow audit before investing in more technology. Watch the full interview to learn how CX leaders can reduce agent friction, improve AI outcomes, and create a more connected service experience.

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 external data feels like deeper customer understanding, but it's just an illusion of intelligence," Hatch says. "The antidote to signal debt isn't borrowing more consumer signals, it's having the in-house capabilities to analyze better ones."The conversation covers where brands typically go wrong, with Hatch pointing to declining open rates and flat engagement as the clearest early signs that a CRM built on static data is running out of road. She also draws a hard line on consent — opt-in, she argues, is black and white, and brands that rely on "fuzzy" opt-ins are storing up a trust problem that no amount of enrichment will fix. The discussion then shifts to the activation gap: collecting behavioral data is one challenge, but acting on it fast enough to be relevant is another. If the insight and action layers of your tech stack can't talk to each other in real time, the window closes before the message lands. For CX and marketing leaders trying to make sense of where the industry goes from here, it's a grounded and practically useful conversation.

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 failure rate can create millions of poor experiences at scale. Cotton also explores the operational gaps behind broken handoffs, from telephony and CCaaS integrations to missing AI summaries, poor queue visibility, and a lack of ongoing quality assurance. The discussion covers what a well-executed handoff should look like, why AI agents need the same onboarding, coaching, QA and brand training as human advisors, and how real-time sentiment analysis can help companies recover a negative customer experience before it becomes a loyalty problem.