From omnichannel excellence to AI-driven automation, XCally’s Sales Director Marco Pasculli breaks down the next big shifts in customer experience.  

In this episode, Rhys Fisher, Deputy Editor at CX Today, is joined by Marco Pasculli, Sales Director at XCally. 

The pair dived into the hottest trends in the contact center, including reshaping CX, AI automation, and the CRM-CCaaS convergence. 

Marco shares exclusive insights into how businesses can future-proof their customer interactions.  

The contact center landscape is evolving fast, and businesses must keep up or risk falling behind. In this exclusive interview, Marco unpacks the key trends driving change and how companies can leverage new technologies to create seamless customer experiences. 

CX Today's Charlie Mitchell presents the latest trending news from the customer experience world.

He's joined by four prominent CX analysts to dissect each story. 

In this edition, our CX experts include:

Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research
Rebecca Wetteman, CEO & Principal Analyst at Valoir
Shelly Kramer, President & CEO at Kramer & Company
Finbarr Begley, Senior Research Analyst at Cavell 

CX Today’s Charlie Mitchell hosts a deep-dive discussion into how AI is reshaping contact center procurement, and how businesses can boost their customer service investments.

Joining him for this conversation are two leading experts:

Wayne Butterfield, Partner for AI, Automation & Contact Center Transformation at ISG
Christoph Börner, VP of Engineering at Cyara

Together, they unpack how AI is transforming not only customer service, but also how contact centers buy, test, and trust technologies.

💡 Why Is IT Taking Over Contact Center Procurement? 💡

Butterfield and Börner explore why less than one in five AI buying decisions are now made by the contact center, and how the complexity of modern AI tools has shifted decision-making power toward IT.

🤖 The Expanding AI Use Case Landscape 🤖

From agent assist to AI-driven training and hybrid customer journeys, both experts share real-world examples of how AI is changing the agent role, and creating both opportunities and challenges.

😬 Why Do Customers Still Distrust AI? 😬

Despite the innovation, customer sentiment toward AI-driven service remains negative. The panel discusses why, pointing to poorly tested conversational journeys, missing micro-intents, and trust gaps between humans and machines.

🔒 Building Trust & AI Assurance 🔒

Börner highlights why trust is the "new currency" in AI engagement, and how rigorous testing and quality assurance can help avoid bias, inaccuracy, and reputational damage.

For more on testing AI and CX Assurance, visit: https://cyara.com/

Thanks for listening. If you'd like more like this, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to our channel. You can also join in the conversation on our LinkedIn page.

For more Customer Experience tech news, visit: https://www.cxtoday.com

Transcript

Stuart Dorman breaks down how agentic AI can supercharge CX without losing the human touch. 

In this CX Today interview, Deputy Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Stuart Dorman, Chief Innovation Officer at Sabio, to explore the game-changing potential of agentic AI in customer service. 

As organizations face mounting pressure to modernize and streamline operations, this conversation dives deep into how businesses can harness AI while still delivering empathy, consistency, and quality at scale. 

Whether you're AI-curious or already deploying solutions, this discussion is packed with real-world insights you won’t want to miss. 

Agentic AI is more than a buzzword – it's a mindset shift in how we serve customers. Stuart Dorman unpacks Sabio’s approach to blending AI and human-led service, offering a clear-eyed view on what works, what to watch out for, and how to get started. 

As someone who has spent hours waiting in contact center queues, I’m excited to see how Cisco is rewriting the CX playbook with agentic AI. At Enterprise Connect 2025, Senior Editor Charlie sits down with Vinod from Cisco to dive into how Webex is embedding AI into the very fabric of customer experience.

Vinod explains that agentic AI isn’t a bolt-on feature but part of a holistic strategy, starting with infrastructure and observability, then moving up through mission-critical applications. The highlight? The launch of Webex AI Agent, capable of bidirectional, human-like conversations that connect to back-end systems, trigger workflows, and resolve actions such as appointment reschedules or refunds—all without human intervention.

Cisco also showcases the AI Assistant, designed to reduce average handling time, improve first contact resolution, and give agents suggested responses so they can focus on what matters most: the customer. And with CPaaS and CCaaS integration, proactive AI agents can turn one-way messages into intelligent conversations.

As someone who’s felt the pain of clunky handoffs and fuzzy diagnostics, I care about tools that make customer journeys clearer and kinder. Maestro is Operata’s most ambitious step yet, expanding CX Observability from a primarily Amazon Connect footprint to 50+ CCaaS, Voice AI, AI customer service, CPaaS, and CRM platforms. It introduces a unified Customer Journey Trace, a smarter CX Copilot powered by AWS Bedrock and OpenAI GPT-5.0, and an open developer approach with an Insights Library and the first MCP server for CX Observability.

John Mitchem, Co-Founder & CEO at Operata: “We launched Operata to solve observability in voice and contact centres. You can’t fix what you can’t see, especially now that AI agents and human agents share the same customer journey.”

Why This Matters: Observability Is the New Control Plane for AI-Era CX

Modern contact centres are multi-platform and AI-augmented. Voice bots hand over to humans. Carriers, IVRs, CCaaS, CRMs, and LLMs all sit in the flow. Without end-to-end visibility, leaders are left guessing where quality drops or handoff failures occur. Customers feel it first; NPS follows.

Mitchem again: “Start with your observability platform. Put the tools in place to judge whether new services reduce friction or create it. This has been true in IT for years and should be no different for your customers.”

The Maestro Release: Three Pillars

1) Global Platform for CX Observability
Maestro supports 50+ platforms across CCaaS, AI Customer Service, Voice AI, CPaaS, and CRM, including Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud, NICE CXone, Zoom, Talkdesk, 8x8, Twilio, Salesforce, and Zendesk.
A new “Verified” designation flags ready-to-use data collection and integrations, with a one-to-three-day path to verify new platforms.
Why it matters: Most enterprises are hybrid and multi-vendor. Maestro gives IT and Operations one consistent view across providers.

2) One Picture Across CX Services
Customer Journey Trace delivers a single, visual flame-graph timeline spanning telephony, IVR, CCaaS, AI, and human agents, with span-level metrics and context in one place.
The new CX Copilot lets users ask natural-language questions, see visual results, and trigger next-best actions using Operata data.
“Leaders need the whole story, not just the symptoms. Journey Trace exposes transfer delays and AI-to-human mis-handoffs — the places where trust quietly erodes.” — John Mitchem

3) Open Standards for Developers, AI, and Data Teams
Maestro aligns open data collection to industry standards for interoperability and scale.
Insights Library: 50+ real-time CX insights, from low MOS to CX Risk ratings.
Operata MCP Server: the first Model Context Protocol server for CX Observability, enabling LLMs and agentic AI to query insights securely and with context.
Why it matters: As Voice AI and agentic workflows scale, context is everything. Structured, queryable CX context helps AI return relevant answers and actions.

Built for IT & Ops — Now for Data, AI, and CX Leaders
Observability has lived in IT. Maestro broadens the impact. Operations can spot issues before they hit NPS. CX leaders can see real experience impact across journeys. Developers and data teams can integrate Operata’s signals into their own systems.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all AI. Model diversity matters, but context matters more. Operata provides journey context so your AI can answer what went wrong and how to fix it.” — John Mitchem

The Bottom Line
In a world where AI and humans share the same journey, visibility is power. The future belongs to teams that see clearly, act quickly, and learn continuously. Are you one of them?

Recognizing this, CX Today's Charlie Mitchell hosted Jay Patel, SVP & GM of Webex Customer Experience Solutions at Cisco, to dig deeper.

During the conversation, Patel shared practical examples of how the technology is changing the roles of key contact center stakeholders, including:

🎧 Contact Center Agents 🎧

From gathering customer context upfront to completing post-contact follow ups, Patel discussed how AI is changing the end-to-end service journey.

👩‍💼 Contact Center Supervisors 👩‍💼

Real-time agent management, coaching, reporting... there are lots of AI use cases touching the supervisor role. Patel shares his favorite examples.

💼 Contact Center Managers 💼

From data analysis to intraday management, contact center managers may also access an array of new tools. Patel touches on some of these possibilities, too.

👑 Customers 👑

The customer is the most critical stakeholder. Beyond virtual agents, Patel discusses how service experiences may change for them, too.

The Cisco Webex Contact Center supports all the applications Patel spotlighted. To find out more, visit: https://www.webex.com/

Hosted by Charlie Mitchell, Head of Publication at CX Today News - Customer Experience Technology News  - #EnterpriseConnect #contactcenters #contactcenterai

Thanks for watching. If you'd like more like this, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to our channel. You can also join in the conversation on our Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook pages.

For more Customer Experience tech news, visit: https://www.cxtoday.com

CX Today's Head of Content Susie Harrison hosts Cognigy's VP Marketing, Alan Ranger. 

With Cognigy’s recent launch of their Agent Ops platform, we dive into how AI and human agents are collaborating to boost efficiency, enhance customer interactions, and tackle high-value tasks - while leaving repetitive work behind.

We also discuss tackling workforce concerns about AI, the skills needed for this new era, and how Agent Ops is redefining workforce management with real-time monitoring, compliance, and scalability - handling 10,000 messages in a minute during a crisis!

In this CX Today exclusive, Giuseppe Careri, Chief Technology Officer at XCALLY sits down with Deputy Editor Rhys Fisher, to explore the real-world impact of AI in customer service and experience. Careri, shares how the company blends automation with a human touch to maximize the potential of AI in the customer experience sector. 

With 14+ years of hands-on development experience at XCALLY, Giuseppe offers a deep dive into the practical applications of AI – from voice bots and sentiment analysis to agent assist tools. If you’re curious about how AI can streamline CX operations without losing that critical human element, this conversation is a must-watch. 

AI is everywhere in CX – but is it actually making things better? 

In this conversation, Careri shares how his team is striking the balance between smart automation and meaningful human interaction. 

CX Today’s Charlie Mitchell hosts Matt Clare, VP of Product Marketing at UJET.

The duo explores changing contact center metrics, AI, and orchestration, discussing:

🤔 Is It Time to Rethink Deflection & Containment? 🤔
Clare explains why these metrics, while useful, aren’t a strategy, and how contact centers may wish to shift their thinking. 

🤝 When Should Humans Take the Lead? 🤝
From contacts that are critical for retention to those with upsell potential, Clare highlights where humans should take the lead in the contact center of the future. 

🙃 How Will the Support Role Change? 🙃
As humans answer more complex and deliberate contacts, Clare underscores how contact centers can prepare agents for the future. 

🛠️ The Future of Agent Tooling 🛠️
Clare shares how agent assist and other AI-driven tools are evolving from knowledge suggestions into coaching systems, helping new hires perform like seasoned experts.

Deep dive on journey orchestration, conversational AI, and agent assist tooling by visiting: ujet.cx