CX Today

The agentic AI era has arrived, and customer experience is leading the charge. But what does that actually mean for enterprises trying to plan, prioritise, and deploy responsibly?

In this interview, CX Today's Nicole Willing speaks with Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO of Content Guru, about the real shift happening right now in AI-powered CX, and what leaders need to do about it.

The conversation covers: 

What the transition from GenAI to agentic AI actually looks like in practice, which CX tasks AI agents handle reliably today, and which ones still need human involvement, and how to build on existing automation investments rather than starting from scratch. You’ll also learn why the MIT finding that 95% of GenAI projects failed should inform your agentic strategy, a practical framework for scoping your first pilots, and why CX is the natural home for agentic AI adoption.

Taylor also addresses a question many leaders are sitting with right now: is it better to wait and let others test the water first? His answer is clear, but nuanced, and worth hearing in full.

In this episode, Rob Wilkinson is joined by Steve Blood, VP of Market Intelligence at Five9, and Martyn Redstone, a consultant specialising in AI regulation.

Together, they unpack where CX teams are most likely to misread the Act, why “we bought it from a big vendor” is not a compliance strategy, and how governance needs to shift from dashboards to outcomes customers actually feel. The conversation also digs into the clash between legacy on-prem approaches and the EU AI Act’s expectations around logging, data visibility, and conformity assessments.

If you are running AI pilots in the contact centre, balancing cloud migration decisions, or trying to protect customer trust while innovating fast, this is your practical briefing.

If your AI agent fails, customers escalate to a human and you “pay double.” In this CX Today interview, Gautam Vasudev, SVP Agentforce Contact Center at Salesforce, breaks down what CX leaders should measure as they roll out agentic service, and why cost alone is a trap.

We cover where AI works best today (high-volume, low-risk queries), where customers still demand a human (complex, high-stakes scenarios like healthcare and finance), and how the frontline agent role changes when routine work moves to automation. Vasudev also outlines how Salesforce thinks about giving customers a clear path to escalate, and why the real differentiation is not basic workflows, but what you build on top of them.

Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Rémi Guinier, Head of AI Product at Diabolocom, to tackle one of the most pressing challenges in customer experience right now: the gap between AI investment and measurable business value.

If your contact center has been pouring budget into AI tools but struggling to prove the impact, this conversation is essential viewing. Rémi pulls back the curtain on why generic models fall short, what “Shapeable AI” actually means in practice, and how Diabolocom's quality monitoring tools are helping supervisors work smarter, not just harder.

AI is everywhere in the contact center space, but can you actually measure what it's doing for your business? Rémi Guinier breaks down the hard truths and practical fixes CX leaders need to hear.

Generic AI models are failing contact centers. Trained on clean, idealistic audio datasets, most off-the-shelf models buckle under real-world conditions – background noise, interruptions, and latency that makes real-time use impractical.

Shapeable AI puts control back in your hands. Rather than forcing teams to fit a generic tool, Diabolocom's approach lets supervisors configure evaluation criteria, summary formats, and quality grids to match their specific business standards.

Auto-calibration closes the accuracy gap fast. By grading a "golden dataset" of calls, Diabolocom's quality monitoring tool self-adjusts its prompts – moving similarity scores from ~70% up to the low-to-mid 90s against supervisor evaluations.

The three signs of a truly successful AI project. Rémi's framework is refreshingly clear: improvement on core business metrics (CSAT, FCR, AHT), strong adoption rates across the team, and measurable time saved. Hit all three and you've got a winner.

For more Customer Experience tech news visit CX Today.

In this discussion, host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Liz Miller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, for a reaction to one of the biggest leadership stories in enterprise tech.

Shantanu Narayen’s decision to step down as Adobe CEO after 18 years sent shockwaves through the market, and for anyone running customer experience operations on Adobe’s stack, the implications go well beyond a stock price dip.

Liz explains why this is a “fast moving train” story, not a recovery story, and what that means for the next leader.

Brand Concierge and the contact center opportunity: Liz spotlights Adobe’s self-service bot solution as a genuinely surprising move into discovery-led CX, and why it matters for contact center leaders specifically.

What the next CEO must do in 90 days: It’s not about rebuilding. It’s about articulating a vision fast, leaning into ecosystem partnerships with AWS and Nvidia, and proving you can be “the conductor of one of the fastest moving trains in technology.”

If you think you understand what customers expect in 2026… this conversation might surprise you.

In this episode, Rob Wilkinson sits down with customer service and experience expert Shep Hyken to unpack insights from his State of Customer Service and CX 2026 report - and some of the findings challenge long-held assumptions about what actually drives loyalty.

They explore what customers say matters most right now, including why product quality can outweigh service, why convenience often beats friendliness, and why rudeness or apathy is a fast track to churn. They also tackle channel preferences: despite the continued push toward self-service, many customers still want to speak to a human on the phone when the issue is serious.

The conversation also explores a channel reality many teams can’t ignore. Even with the push toward automation and self-service, a significant share of customers still want to pick up the phone when the problem is serious.

With AI dominating the CX agenda, Hyken keeps the focus where it belongs: how customers perceive change, not just how organisations want to operate.

If you lead CX, contact centre operations, or digital service strategy, this interview is a grounded reset on what will actually move the needle in 2026.

Simon Leyland on $50k MDF, agentic AI in the contact center, and why “bold and fast” is the only strategy that makes sense in 2026. 

In this discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Simon Leyland, CEO and Co-Founder of CloudInteract – one of the UK's leading Advanced AWS Partners, built entirely around Amazon Connect. 

With AWS putting up to $75k in Marketing Development Funds on the table for Connect implementations and new Agentic AI specialization categories, there's never been a more urgent moment to ask: is the traditional contact center industry running out of time? 

Simon doesn't hold back. 

In this candid conversation, Simon argues that the contact center industry is at the same inflection point newspapers hit in 2010 – and that the companies failing to move now will find themselves playing catch-up against competitors running AI agents around the clock. 

Key Takeaways Include:

🔴 Why AWS is still being overlooked: even by large enterprises already spending millions with AWS on core infrastructure, Amazon Connect isn't on the radar. Simon explains the organizational disconnect driving that blind spot. 

🔴 The 60-70% figure, explained: CloudInteract analyzed thousands of real calls and consistently found 60-70% are simple interactions. Simon breaks down what it takes to get from the industry's current ~10% automation rate to that ceiling. 

🔴 Agentic AI vs. bots: technologically similar, but the stakes are entirely different when there's a customer on the end of the line in real time. Simon unpacks the guardrails, data requirements, and human change management piece that makes or breaks a deployment. 

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

A recent Gartner report suggests that by 2030, generative AI could cost more per customer interaction than a live human agent. What does that mean for small and midsize businesses?

In this episode of CX Today, Francesca Roche speaks with Nathan Strum, CEO of Abbey Connect, about how SMBs should rethink automation budgets, customer journeys, and long term growth strategies. Instead of focusing only on cost reduction, Nathan outlines a rebalancing approach that starts with human systems and works backward to apply AI where it adds value.

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

Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Kevin McGachy, Head of Solutions at Sabio, to cut through the AI noise that's plaguing contact centers.

If you're tired of flashy AI demos that promise the world but deliver generic chatbots, this conversation is your reality check.

Kevin breaks down the costly mistakes organizations make when racing to deploy AI, why voice is still king despite the digital self-service push, and how outcome-based strategies can protect you from vendor lock-in and wasted investment.

This isn't another AI hype session; it's a practical roadmap for CX leaders who need results, not regrets.

In this frank discussion, McGachy exposes the pressure-driven mistakes that are costing organizations time, money, and competitive advantage:

• The ROI Trap: Why building business cases solely around cost reduction creates friction and misses the real value of AI – like addressing high attrition through “zero human impact” automation that doesn't eliminate jobs

• Technology-Agnostic Design: How to avoid vendor lock-in by designing systems that can swap between LLMs (Gemini, GPT, etc.) based on performance and cost, rather than betting everything on today's ‘winning’ model

• Voice's Staying Power: Why customers still prefer voice for urgent or emotional issues – and how modern conversational AI creates fluid, human-like experiences that adapt in real-time versus rigid IVR decision trees

• Outcome-Based Pricing: Sabio's approach to only charging clients when AI successfully resolves customer interactions, eliminating the risk of paying for underwhelming results

AI may be everywhere in customer experience, but according to Bloomreach CEO and Co-Founder Raj De Datta, much of it still falls short of delivering real business impact.

Speaking to CX Today, De Datta reflected on Bloomreach’s recent milestone of surpassing $260 million in annual recurring revenue, a result he attributes largely to the company’s AI-native approach and the evolution of its Loomi AI platform.

Rather than treating AI as an add-on, Bloomreach has embedded it directly into the mechanics of personalization, campaign execution, and product discovery.

De Datta warned that many organizations rush to introduce AI without rethinking the workflows underneath:

Simple use cases, such as AI-generated copy suggestions, can add incremental value, but rarely move the needle on revenue or efficiency.

The conversation also explored the rise of agentic commerce and what it means in practice, with De Datta outlining three emerging models, from AI-led research conducted through conversational agents; to on-site conversational experiences; and finally, fully agent-driven purchasing.

While much of the industry is focused on the end state, he suggested most near-term value will come from the first two.

Looking ahead, De Datta advised CX leaders to focus on discoverability in conversational channels, invest in AI-native customer communication platforms, and apply AI to operational tasks that free up teams to focus on higher-value work.

As AI becomes a primary interface rather than a background tool, the pressure on CX teams to get this right is only increasing.