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Twilio’s Sam Richardson explains why customer context, identity, and reassurance must travel between AI, human agents, and channels.  AI customer service may be getting faster and more conversational, but too many customers are still being forced to repeat themselves when they move between bots, agents, and channels.  In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher speaks with Sam Richardson, Director of Executive Engagement at Twilio, about the real challenge behind AI handoffs: ensuring that customer context, conversation history, identity, and trust travel with the interaction.  Twilio research found that 74% of consumers have to repeat information to AI assistants at least some of the time.  Richardson explains why this is not simply an AI-model problem. It can stem from fragmented customer data, disconnected systems, incomplete CRM and knowledge-base integration, and the growing complexity of identity verification and fraud prevention.  The conversation explores:  Why customers still repeat information after an AI interaction  The data and system challenges behind failed AI-to-human handoffs  Why identity verification can make continuity harder  What a “warm handoff” should look like in the AI era  Why acknowledgment and reassurance matter during service transfers  When slower AI deployment can protect customer trust  Why businesses and customers often judge the same AI experience differently  The key question for contact center leaders is simple: when an AI interaction ends, does the next person or channel know what has already happened, or does the customer have to start again?

Constellation Research’s Liz Miller explains why Salesforce’s $5.66B Braze deal is about the execution layer behind data, AI, content, and customer engagement.  Salesforce has agreed to acquire Braze for $5.66B. The deal adds Braze’s real-time, cross-channel customer engagement and decisioning capabilities to Salesforce’s growing stack of CRM, data, AI, and content tools.  But, according to Liz Miller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, this is about more than another acquisition.  Salesforce has spent years building out Customer 360, Data 360, Agentforce, and, more recently, Contentful. The missing piece was how brands actually execute engagement at scale: delivering a major product announcement to millions while also managing personalized, timely communication with individual customers.  In this CX Today interview, Miller discusses whether Braze gives Salesforce the engine it needed to turn customer data and AI into real-time customer engagement.  The conversation covers:  Why Salesforce’s Braze acquisition was not a surprise  The engagement execution gap in Salesforce’s wider strategy  Why data and AI are only useful when brands can act on them  The challenge of balancing mass brand communication with one-to-one engagement  What the acquisition could mean for Salesforce Marketing Cloud  Why Braze customers may be concerned about cost, simplicity, and innovation  Where Data 360, Contentful, Braze, and Agentforce could fit together  The integration risks that could define the deal’s success

Contact centers are under pressure to automate, cut costs, and reduce customer contact. But are efficiency targets improving service, or simply making it harder for customers to get help?  In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher speaks with Natalie Beckerman, Chief Business Officer at iQor and author of When Did You Stop Caring?, about the “caring recession” she believes has taken hold in customer service.  Beckerman explains why containment, deflection, and average handle time can hide unresolved customer problems, repeat contacts, and declining trust.  She also shares where automation can genuinely improve the customer experience, when it becomes a barrier to human support, and why agents should be involved in journey and technology design.  The conversation covers:  Why reducing contact is not always the same as improving CX  The customer-service risks hidden behind containment and deflection rates  Why repeat contact can expose a failed self-service journey  Where AI and automation genuinely make service easier  How automation can trap customers in loops and block human help  Why frontline agents should shape service and technology decisions  The metrics leaders should use alongside efficiency measures  Natalie Beckerman’s book, When Did You Stop Caring? Reignite Humanity in a World Obsessed with Efficiency, explores how businesses can restore care to customer and employee experiences.

Brands have more customer data, dashboards, and campaign tools than ever. Yet turning a useful customer signal into the right action can still take too long.  In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher speaks with Kabir Shahani, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Amperity, about Pér, Amperity’s new customer data agent.  Shahani explains why customer engagement often slows down after a business spots the signal, as information passes between analytics, marketing, service, and activation teams.  He also shares an early MacKenzie-Childs use case, where Pér analyzed survey feedback to identify customers connected to wedding and registry purchases and proposed a possible engagement journey.  The conversation explores:  Why fragmented customer data still creates slow decision-making  How Pér moves from investigation to recommendation and approval  The difference between generic AI tools and specialized customer-data intelligence  Why brands need evidence, permissions, and human approval before acting  How to avoid intrusive outreach, including promotions during unresolved service issues  When personalization is useful and when restraint is the better customer experience

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, speaks with Suzie Dieth, VP and Chief Experience Officer at NRG, about why churn should concern every customer experience leader. In deregulated energy markets, customers have plenty of options and can switch providers with relative ease. Dieth explains why the decision to leave often starts much earlier, and what businesses can do to spot the warning signs before it is too late. A customer switching provider is rarely a single-moment decision. In competitive energy markets, a higher-than-expected bill, a home move, poor communication, or an uninspiring renewal offer can all become reasons to look elsewhere. For Dieth, churn is not simply a number to reduce; it is a signal that customers may no longer feel the value or connection needed to stay. In this CX Today interview, Dieth discusses: 🔴 The moments most likely to trigger churn, including bill shock, relocation, and contract renewal, and why these points demand proactive customer support. 🔴 How NRG seeks to build trust through tailored support, payment assistance, competitive renewal plans, and weekly usage updates that help customers avoid surprises. 🔴 Why NPS and CSAT are only useful when connected to retention, customer behavior, revenue, and the operational changes teams need to make. 🔴 Why employee experience and AI both matter, but neither can replace the human judgment needed to understand customer needs and act on them. For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, speaks with Kim Johal, Retail Specialist at Infobip, about WhatsApp’s growing role in UK retail customer engagement.  Infobip’s research points to a shift away from one-way notifications and toward richer conversations across service, shopping, loyalty, and returns. Johal explains why the next challenge for retailers is not sending more messages, but making every interaction feel relevant enough to deserve a place in a customer’s inbox.  WhatsApp is already in shoppers’ pockets. Retailers are now racing to make it part of the customer journey.  But there is a fine line between a useful conversation and another message a customer wants to mute.  Johal discusses why WhatsApp is gaining traction across UK retail, and how AI, customer data, and rich messaging channels could reshape everything from product discovery to returns.  They cover:  • Why consumers are moving away from phone calls and toward conversational channels that support text, images, updates, and real-time service.  • Why personalization needs to go beyond “Hi, first name,” using consented behavioral data to make a message timely and useful.  • How agentic AI can support product availability, sizing questions, store locations, returns, and purchase decisions without forcing customers through a rigid chatbot flow.  • Why future retail engagement may be driven by customer preference across WhatsApp, Apple Business Messenger, and RCS, rather than a brand deciding where the conversation happens.  Johal also explains why returns are becoming an important AI use case. Better sizing, product guidance, and purchase support can help customers make more confident choices before they buy.  For retail and CX leaders, start by identifying where customers already ask for help, then connect those moments across service, commerce, and loyalty.

Are customer experiences becoming too clunky for the way people now want to communicate? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Peter Bell, VP of Marketing, EMEA at Twilio, about how voice is changing the way consumers interact with technology, and what that means for brands designing the next generation of digital customer journeys. Peter explores Twilio research showing that almost a quarter of Brits now talk more than they type when using technology, rising to 33 percent among Gen Z. He explains why voice is becoming a more natural interface for customers, where it can reduce friction, and why brands should avoid treating it as a one-size-fits-all solution. The conversation also covers the importance of context, sentiment, and conversational intelligence in customer engagement. Peter shares why businesses need to design processes around the customer first, then apply the right technology, rather than recreating old IVR frustrations with newer tools. The discussion also looks at voice as part of brand identity, from tone and personality to the long-term emotional associations customers build with a company’s service experience. Watch the full interview to learn how voice, AI, and communications infrastructure are reshaping customer engagement.

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, speaks with Russell White, Transformation Lead at Bluecrest, and Reece Harper, Account Executive at NiCE. Bluecrest has moved from reviewing a sample of calls to analyzing every customer interaction through NiCE CXone. The conversation explores what happens when contact centers stop relying on assumptions and start using customer intent, real conversation data, and human-reviewed AI summaries to guide decisions. Contact centers have recorded calls for years. The problem is that most businesses only listen to a fraction of them. White and Harper discuss how 100% interaction analysis is changing the way Bluecrest understands customer intent, tests internal assumptions, and identifies where service journeys need work. They cover: 🔴 Why call dispositions can show an outcome without explaining why a customer got in touch, and how full interaction analysis revealed the gap between internal assumptions and customer reality. 🔴 How Bluecrest’s self-service rescheduling launch did not reduce call demand as expected, but showed customers wanted more flexibility to change appointments. 🔴 How analytics uncovered that a new Health Monitor product was being mentioned in fewer than 10% of relevant calls, leading to targeted training and a rise to around 60–70%. 🔴 Why human review of AI-generated call summaries remains essential in healthcare, where records must be accurate, consistent, and compliant. As White puts it: “The first thing you find is that the anecdote and reality are two different things.” For contact center leaders, start by asking which decisions are still based on sampled calls, dispositions, or internal opinion. Then use real interaction data to test those assumptions before automating the journey around them. For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

In this CX Today interview, Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, speaks with Christina Augustine, COO of Bloomreach, about the growing impact of AI on product discovery, personalization, and retailer loyalty. With shoppers increasingly asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude where to buy, the conversation unpacks whether brands deliver the same depth, confidence, and relevance once customers arrive on their own sites? AI is quickly becoming the first stop in the shopping journey. But if customers discover a product through an AI assistant, what happens when they land on a retailer’s website and the experience feels like it has been left behind? Augustine reflects on the findings from Bloomreach’s latest consumer research and discusses what retailers need to do next. In this interview, they cover: 🔴 Why AI is helping shoppers at the two hardest points in the journey: knowing where to start and feeling confident enough to buy. 🔴 Why retailers should treat conversational queries as valuable first-party customer signals, not a future experiment. 🔴 How richer product data, from boot weight to gift-buying context, can prevent customers from bouncing elsewhere. 🔴 Why useful AI should give customers more agency, rather than push urgency tactics that can damage trust. One quote sums up the shift: “Before I was looking at pixel clicks, right? Like, and reading the tea leaves… Now you don’t have to guess.” Retail, ecommerce, and CX leaders must review where customers are forced to infer product information, test conversational discovery around high-consideration purchases, and make sure the experience does not break when a shopper moves from an AI answer engine to your site. For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

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.