CX Today

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423

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Jun 2026

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News and Insights for Today, and Tomorrow CX Today reports on the latest customer experience technology news and marketplace trends. Every day our tech journalists uncover the hottest topics and vendor innovations shaping the future of work. Our coverage is fully digital offering our audience authentic news and insights on the channel of their choice. We offer daily news, weekly features, video conversations and authority content aligned to the needs of business leaders in today's world.For industry professionals, our weekly newsletter offers a range of popular stories hand-picked by our editorial team. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.If you're seeking editorial coverage, connect with our news desk.

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June 16, 202621 min

Why Pega Is Ditching Token Costs and Betting on Business Outcomes Instead

The Director of Pega's AI Lab breaks down the real mechanics behind agentic marketing operations and why "magical thinking" is killing AI projects before they start. In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Peter van der Putten, Director of the AI Lab and Lead Scientist at Pegasystems. With agentic AI dominating the conversation across the CX space, Peter cuts through the noise to explain what it actually takes to make it work in enterprise marketing, and why orchestration, not individual agent capability, is the real differentiator. If you're trying to separate genuine AI progress from hype, this one's worth your time. Agentic AI is everywhere right now, but most of the conversation stays frustratingly shallow. Peter van der Putten goes deeper, explaining how Pega's newly launched Customer Engagement Studio works alongside Customer Decision Hub to give marketers a governed, agent-powered path from brief to live campaign in minutes. Outcome-based pricing: Pega is making a bold move away from token-based costs, betting they can tie agentic AI tightly enough to business outcomes to charge on results instead. Left brain meets right brain: Peter explains how CDH has handled analytical decisioning for over 30 years, with Wells Fargo running 6 billion next best actions a month through it, and how Customer Engagement Studio layers in generative and agentic AI to solve the content and marketing ops bottleneck, not the decisioning one. How the agents actually work together: A conversational agent orchestrates specialized agents across marketing strategy, creative, data science, compliance, and performance, each with a defined role, none operating in a silo. Why 40% of agentic AI projects fail: Peter points to "magical thinking", the assumption that throwing agents at a problem will sort itself out. The fix is embedding agents into real workflows tied to measurable business and customer outcomes.

June 16, 2026Episode 213 min

Stop Letting Your AI Agents Off the Hook

Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, is joined by Dave Rennyson, CEO of SuccessKPI, for a candid conversation about what it actually means to run a contact center where humans and AI agents work side by sideAs agentic AI takes on a growing share of customer interactions, Dave makes the case that the standards we apply to human agents must apply equally to AI, and that the organizations skipping that step are already storing up problems. Honest, specific, and refreshingly free of hype.The hybrid contact center isn't a future concept, it's the reality most operations leaders are already navigating.Dave Rennyson breaks down what it takes to manage it properly.AI agents are handling the simpler conversations, which means human agents are increasingly left with the harder, more complex ones. Dave argues this demands more recognition and support for human agents, not less.Quality management for AI agents is non-negotiable. Treating AI like a self-regulating system is, in Dave's words, like letting your builder do his own home inspections. Third-party QM, whether manual or automated, has to sit on top.CSAT isn't dead, it's due a rebirth. Dave makes the case for using AI to score every conversation on a normalized scale, cutting through the "haters and lovers" bias that has always made survey data unreliable."Good" in a hybrid contact center means managing the whole. Dave's vision is workforce decisions made minute-to-minute, based on task complexity, live performance data, and force-to-load, with humans and AI operating as a unified system.

June 16, 2026Episode 114 min

Contact Centre AI Is Only as Good as the Data Behind It – So Why Are We Ignoring the Data?

Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Dave Rennyson, CEO of SuccessKPI, to tackle one of the most pressing yet underexplored challenges in modern contact center operations: what it actually takes to build an AI-ready data foundation.As AI agents become a fixture of the contact center, Dave makes a compelling case that the real risk isn't the technology, it's the lack of governance, measurement, and rigor underneath it.If your organization is deploying AI without asking how you'll manage it, this is essential viewing.As contact centers race to deploy AI, most are skipping the hard work that makes it sustainable. Dave Rennyson pulls no punches on what's going wrong and what leaders need to do differently.AI agents actually produce more data than human agents, including failure signals and turn-taking data that human conversations never generate. The opportunity is significant, but only if you have the architecture to capture and act on it."Ground truth" is the step almost everyone skips. Dave breaks down what it means to establish a reliable baseline for AI performance, why it demands real scientific rigor, and what model drift looks like when you ignore it.Agentic AI is genuinely different from legacy IVR. The removal of linear flow constraints opens up a new design space, but only if organizations build the right orchestration and monitoring layers on top.Rather than declaring surveys dead, Dave argues that generative AI can now appraise every single conversation at scale, turning a historically biased metric into something far more powerful.For more Customer Experience tech news visit CX Today.

June 16, 2026Episode 126 min

From Conversation to Case Action: Automating ServiceNow Workflows from Live Voice with Vonage

Rob Wilkinson speaks with Jonathan Kershaw, Director of Product Management at Vonage, about how live voice can bring real-time voice transcription and context directly into ServiceNow to trigger workflows during the call, not after it.Kershaw explains where the pain shows up most clearly: agents toggling between up to nine systems, inconsistent case notes, delayed case creation, and AI outcomes that fall short because they are missing the most important customer context. He shares practical scenarios, from IT outages to payment and fraud-related calls, showing how native voice in ServiceNow can support intent-based routing, mid-call escalations, warm handoffs powered by AI summaries, and faster wrap-up with automated dispositions.The conversation also covers what to automate first, how to prove ROI using credible baselines, and which KPIs tend to move earliest, including average handle time, after-call work, data quality, and reductions in follow-up contacts. The core message is straightforward: treat AI like any other business tool. Start with measurable operational gains, then scale.For more Customer Experience tech news visit CX Today.

June 12, 202618 min

Tool Overload is Killing Your Contact Center from the Inside Out

Mitel’s Stuart Aldridge discusses why the gap between what IT thinks it's delivering and what agents actually experience is quietly destroying customer service quality.In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Stuart Aldridge, Head of UK, Ireland & South Africa at Mitel, to dig into the findings of Mitel's State of Workforce Communication in the AI Era report. With contact center agents juggling upwards of 12 tools on a single call while still being pressured to deliver exceptional customer experiences, the cracks in enterprise communication strategy are getting harder to ignore. If you work in CX leadership, this one hits close to home. Mitel's latest research surveyed over 2,000 IT decision-makers, desk workers, and frontline workers across the UK, US, Canada, Germany, and France, and the results are uncomfortable reading for anyone responsible for agent experience or customer outcomes. The perception gap is enormous: 81% of IT leaders believe they're listening to user needs and delivering accordingly. Only 28% of frontline workers agree, and in healthcare that number drops to 17%. Tool overload is the real villain: Agents are routinely navigating 10-14 applications on a live call, and 61% of workers say switching between tools is actively costing them productivity every single day. Shadow IT is a symptom, not the problem: 76% of workers admit to using non-approved tools, not to break the rules, but because those tools are simply easier. The compliance and data risk that creates in a contact center environment is significant. Consultative selling has gone missing: Stuart argues that vendors and resellers are too focused on closing deals and not nearly enough time sitting with the "Carols" of the world, the actual end users, to understand what they genuinely need before adding yet another layer to an already overwhelming stack.

June 11, 202623 min

Salesforce Agentforce Heats Up the Consolidation Fight, UJET Says It Could Backfire

Salesforce’s launch of the Agentforce Contact Center has reignited a familiar debate in customer experience: should enterprises consolidate around one major platform, or keep the flexibility to pick best fit tools.In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson sits down with Baker Johnson, Chief Business Officer at UJET, to unpack what he calls the integration trap. They explore why many organizations feel “stuck” in CRM ecosystems, how switching costs and interdependent integrations slow down change, and why agents often become the human integration layer across four to 10 disconnected systems.Baker also challenges common assumptions about “context” in AI driven customer service, arguing that real value comes from real time journey context, not just historical CRM records. The conversation closes with practical advice for CX leaders building AI strategies: focus on the customer experience first, and treat AI as a forcing function to simplify operational complexity, not a cure all.

June 10, 202629 min

Kustomer: CX AI Needs Outcomes, Not Tokens

AI is everywhere in customer experience, but CX leaders are under pressure to prove it is moving the needle. In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Brad Birnbaum, CEO and Co-Founder of Kustomer, about the shift from measuring AI by deflection rates and activity to measuring it by outcomes that matter to the business.Birnbaum explains why the right metrics depend on the company, from revenue uplift in retail to upsell and expansion in B2B SaaS, and why traditional CX measures like CSAT and handle time still matter but cannot be the full story. The conversation also digs into AI governance, observability, and trust, including how teams can evaluate non-deterministic models and reduce risk as automation expands.Finally, Birnbaum shares practical guidance for rolling out CX AI without chaos, including why consolidating fragmented tools and starting small beats trying to boil the ocean. He also outlines where human-in-the-loop remains essential and why the goal should be turning humans from creators into reviewers.

June 8, 202619 min

Zoom: Genius or Mad Scientist? Zeus Kerravala on the Bold Transformation Reshaping CX

The Principal Analyst at ZK Research breaks down whether Zoom's 'system of action' pivot is the real deal or just clever repositioning In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research. Zeus recently published a deep-dive on Zoom's strategic transformation, and the findings are more surprising than most in the industry expect. If you work in CX, contact center, or IT, and you still think of Zoom as a meetings tool, this conversation will change that. Zoom has quietly built something most of the industry hasn't clocked yet. Zeus Kerravala joins CX Today to unpack what he calls the shift from “collaboration to completion” – and why it could fundamentally change how CX leaders think about their tech stack. Further along than you think: Zeus argues Zoom is closer to its system-of-action vision than most realize, with Zoomtopia later this year likely to be a major milestone – though true end-to-end completion is still a couple of years out. 🔴 CX is where it gets real: From Chelsea FC to Caliber Collision, real customers are already using Zoom to eliminate cold calls, automate case logging, and unify the full customer journey – contact center included. 🔴 Conversation over CRM: Zoom is betting that conversational data is more valuable than what lives in a CRM, and Zeus thinks they might even build their own CRM within the next two to three years. 🔴 The biggest challenge isn't product: Zeus is clear, Zoom's hardest problem right now is getting people to understand what they've actually built. Proof points and customer outcomes will be the unlock. Visit cxtoday.com for more coverage on Zoom and the contact center market Read Zeus Kerravala's full blog at SiliconAngle.com Follow ZK Research for ongoing analysis as Zoomtopia approachesFor more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com

June 4, 202620 min

Why Cloud-First CX Is No Longer Enough

CX Today’s Rhys Fisher sits down with Rupert Adair, Director of Product Management at Enghouse Interactive.The cloud migration era has run its course, but for many enterprises, it hasn't delivered the CX transformation promised.With Flexera's 2025 data showing over 20% of workloads being moved back from public cloud to on-prem environments, the conversation has shifted. It's no longer about whether you're in the cloud; it's about whether your architecture is built to win.Rupert Adair explains what that looks like in practice.Cloud got the industry moving. But moving fast in the wrong direction is still the wrong direction. Adair makes the case that the next competitive edge in CX is architectural thinking, not cloud adoption.🔴 The cloud-first playbook has real limits: data sovereignty, uptime requirements, and legacy integration mean that simply lifting workloads doesn't automatically improve customer experience. Rupert shares a real example: a European bank that completed its cloud uplift only to hit data residency issues, latency problems, and lost functionality – making things worse, not better. 🔴 Architecture has to come before deployment: instead of asking ‘what can we move to the cloud?’, winning organizations start with ‘what experience are we trying to deliver?’ As Rupert puts it: “Cloud first asks where should this run. Design first asks what are you trying to build.” 🔴 Hybrid is increasingly the destination, not a detour: Gartner predicts 90% of organizations will adopt hybrid cloud strategies by 2027. Rupert argues that for many enterprises, hybrid is a deliberate architectural end state that delivers both resilience and the flexibility to innovate with AI.For more Customer Experience tech news visit CX Today.

June 4, 202620 min

Kore.ai’s Raj Koneru Reveals the Multi-Agent CX Shift Leaders Can’t Ignore

As customer experience (CX) teams push beyond basic chatbot deployments, a new model is emerging: coordinated multi-agent AI systems that can execute end-to-end workflows across teams, tools, and policies. In this interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Raj Koneru, Founder and CEO at Kore.ai, about why this shift is happening now and what leaders should demand before they trust AI with real customer-facing execution.Koneru argues that the last 12 months have changed the game because AI models have improved dramatically in both generation and reasoning. That progress moves automation beyond question answering and into task completion, where agents can take action across systems and processes. In regulated and complex environments, he says, a single agent is limited by context and scope. A multi-agent approach better mirrors how organizations actually operate, with specialized functions like billing, fraud checks, fulfillment, and escalation requiring orchestration.Koneru also outlines what tends to fail in single-bot deployments: inconsistent answers, broken handoffs between bots and humans, actions taken without enough context, and heavy cleanup work for frontline teams. Risk and compliance leaders, he adds, often struggle because prompt chains offer limited traceability and control.For CX leaders, he recommends insisting on deterministic policy enforcement, clear permission boundaries, human escalation controls, and runtime observability before going live. He emphasizes that governance should not be bolted on after deployment. It needs to be embedded into the platform and runtime so teams can reproduce, audit, and optimize outcomes.Finally, Koneru shares the production metrics that matter: non-negotiables like failure recovery, auditability, and compliance, plus business outcomes like resolution rates, customer effort reduction, and time to resolution. He also highlights the “soft” impact of better experiences on brand loyalty and long-term value.