CX Today

AI is making cyber attacks easier to scale, more personalized, and harder to spot, and that’s showing up directly in the contact center. In this CX Today panel, Nicole Willing is joined by Miguel Fornes, Information Security Manager at Surfshark, Randy Layman, CTO at AVOXI, and Ron Zayas, CEO at Ironwall by Incogni. Together, they unpack how attackers are using agentic AI to accelerate social engineering, exploit the vast amount of personal data online, and increase account takeover attempts through higher volume and higher accuracy tactics.
The discussion also explores a fast-approaching shift: genuine customers using AI agents to contact support on their behalf, blurring the line between authorised and malicious automation. The panel argues that CX leaders need to rethink authentication as a risk-based continuum, not a binary pass or fail, with “graduated” security steps that increase as actions become more sensitive. The goal is to protect customers and frontline teams without turning every interaction into an obstacle course. 
Packed with vivid analogies, the panel makes complex AI-driven cyber risk feel real, practical, and urgent. Watch the full video now to catch every takeaway.

As AI generated answers increasingly replace traditional search results, brands are facing a new visibility challenge. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Peter Sloterdyk, Chief Marketing Officer at Gist, about the launch of Gist Geo and what AI driven discovery means for modern marketing teams. The conversation explores why traditional SEO metrics are no longer enough, how brands can measure visibility inside AI answers, and why sentiment, structured content, and actionable insights are becoming critical as search evolves into a zero click experience.

AI agents are everywhere in the CX conversation, but this CX Today case study gets specific. Nicole Willing speaks with Will Jones, GTM Operations Associate at CRM vendor Attio, and Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer at Intercom, about how Attio deployed Intercom’s AI agent, Fin, as a sales development representative (SDR) to handle inbound sales engagement.

Jones breaks down what drove the move, including the push to stay ahead of changing buyer expectations and the reality that static forms miss demand outside business hours. Jones shares what changed day to day after launch: always-on coverage, automated follow-ups, richer insight into what prospects actually ask for, and faster routing of qualified leads into the CRM.

Adams explains why sales is a natural extension of an AI agent that started in customer support. Customers experience one journey, not separate departments, and shared memory and a single source of truth are critical to avoid the classic “repeat yourself” handoff problem.

Both guests also tackle the hype question directly, arguing that AI is a bigger shift than the internet or mobile because it can do the work, while warning that success requires effort, experimentation and iteration.

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

A production database deletion and 30-hour outage at Pocket OS has become a cautionary tale for any organization bringing agentic AI into critical systems.

In this interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Alex Gallego, CEO of Redpanda Data, about what went wrong and why blaming the model misses the point. They unpack the enterprise basics that still get skipped: separating development from production, tightening authentication and authorization and scoping agent permissions away from dangerous root access.

Gallego also explains why governing agents is harder than governing humans. Agents can be more capable, less predictable and execute at machine speed. That combination makes traditional controls feel too slow. Gallego outlines practical guardrails, the need to reduce the “search space” of tools an agent can access, and why many organizations will need proxy layers to enforce fine-grained permissions when legacy systems cannot.

The conversation closes with the bigger stakes, from customer trust and regulatory exposure to the risk of catastrophic failure in human-critical systems. For CX and contact center leaders evaluating autonomous agents, the takeaway is clear: speed and automation are only valuable if governance is designed in from day one.

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

CRMs and customer data platforms (CDPs) can store a mountain of customer data, but that does not automatically translate into better experiences. 
In this CX Today panel, Ben Robinson, Head of Technology at Fair Finance, Amory Somers Vine, Head of Customer Experience at Expereo, and John Cheney, CEO of Workbooks, discuss what it takes to move from systems of record to systems of action.
The conversation digs into why many CRM programs still fall short, including heavy customisation, siloed ownership, and metric choices that prioritise internal efficiency over customer outcomes. The panel also explores how automation and generative AI can help teams act on insights faster, from proactive service monitoring and case creation to summary-driven support experiences that reduce agent effort and speed up resolution.
If you are rebuilding your CRM strategy, aligning CX and IT, or figuring out where humans must stay in the loop, this is a practical, grounded discussion with clear takeaways for enterprise CX and contact center leaders.

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.

From Excel spreadsheets and NPS below zero to a 4.7 Trustpilot rating, Openreach and NiCE pull back the curtain on one of the UK's most ambitious AI deployments. 

Introduction 

Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Chris Herbert, Director of Customer Service at Openreach; Eifion Lloyd, Senior Manager of Customer Enablement and Strategy at Openreach; and Giles Bryan, General Manager of Proactive AI at NiCE. 

With 25 million homes in scope and 700 communications providers depending on Openreach's infrastructure, this was a national transformation. If you want to understand what proactive AI actually looks like when the stakes are real, this is the conversation to watch. 

Main Description 

Openreach manages the UK's largest broadband network, but before NiCE came in, customer communications were fragmented, inconsistent, and largely out of Openreach's hands – owned instead by hundreds of individual comms providers. NPS sat below zero. Engineers were turning up to empty homes. Something had to change. 

In this case study interview, the teams behind the deployment break down exactly how they got from there to here: 

Starting scrappy and scaling fast: the early proof of concept ran on daily Excel uploads, crashed occasionally, and was far from elegant. But it proved the value, and that was the point. 

The proactive shift: why waiting for customers to call is already a failure, and how Openreach rebuilt its engagement model around reaching out first via SMS, email, and voice. 

Inclusivity by design: how NiCE's platform handles landline-only customers without a separate spec, separate team, or separate configuration. 

A number that didn't make the press release: a generative AI chatbot trialed before Christmas cut install cancellations by 22%.

Customer journeys are no longer linear, and AI alone won’t fix the friction customers feel when they need fast, empathetic support.

In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Mike Clifton and Max Schwendner, Co-CEOs of Alorica, about how real-time data, emotionally aware AI, and human support are reshaping customer experience.

They explore why businesses need to move beyond generic personalization, how AI can help agents understand customer sentiment in real time, and why the best CX strategies focus on outcomes rather than technology for its own sake.

The conversation also covers multimodal customer journeys, data orchestration, global CX delivery, the role of human agents in complex interactions, and the importance of knowing when AI should step back and let a person take over.

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

What does it take to redesign a video platform used by teams across marketing, editorial, and media operations at scale?

In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche sits down with Alessandro Fumi, Product Manager at Brightcove, and Matteo Paoli, Product Designer at Brightcove, to unpack the thinking behind Prism, Brightcove’s newly redesigned platform interface.

The discussion explores how feedback from more than 100 customers shaped Prism’s focus on usability, consistency, and clearer information hierarchy. Fumi and Paoli explain why interface consistency matters in large-scale video operations, how onboarding has become critical as non-technical users increasingly rely on video tools, and how accessibility and design systems influence day-to-day productivity.

The conversation also looks ahead, covering Brightcove’s post-Prism roadmap, including embedded AI features, quality-of-life improvements, and ongoing design priorities that aim to support faster workflows without disrupting existing operations.

What happens when your “great” customer experience is optimised for humans, but your next customer is an AI agent? In this CX Today interview, Carrie Brough, Director of Strategy and Ops for TTEC Digital EMEA, argues that a single CX model is fast becoming a liability. 

Brough explains why AI-driven interactions need quick, decision-ready responses, while humans still need empathy, context, and brand nuance. Carrie breaks down the operational warning signs that your AI and human traffic are colliding, including repeat contacts, confused outcomes, and frontline teams being forced into a “clean-up” role. 

The conversation also covers when an interaction should move from the AI lane to a human agent, and why risk, not emotion, needs to drive escalation decisions.