CX Today

Diabolocom’s AI Product Manager Tom Azernour on why orchestration, not automation, is the real future of contact center AI Host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with T om Azernour, AI Product Manager at Diabolocom , to unpack why the virtual agent category is long overdue for a rethink.  As contact centers move beyond legacy voice bots into the agentic era, Tom explains what &q...

Jeannie Walters and Dr. Alyona Medelyan reveal what nearly 2,000 unfiltered airline reviews say about the chasm between brand promise and operational reality, and what CX leaders must do about it.  In this CX Today discussion, host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor, sits down with two leading voices in customer experience: Jeannie Walters, CX expert and author, and Dr. Alyona Medelyan, CEO of Thematic...

Are traditional survey links dead? With response rates at historic lows, the answer might be yes. In this episode, Rob Scott sits down with Sprinklr’s Sonal Singhal, Direct of Product, and Valarie Grant, Director of Solutions Consulting, to explore why relying on static, post-interaction forms leaves CX leaders with delayed insights, blind spots, and a fractured view of the customer experience. Wh...

Live from the floor of CCW Las Vegas, the mood has noticeably shifted. The industry is exhausted by the endless promises of AI replacing human agents and the daunting prospect of ripping out legacy systems. Leaders are facing severe system fatigue, and the mandate from the boardroom is clear: show me the ROI, and show it to me now.   To make sense of this tension, I sat down with Matt Clare, VP of...

Rob Scott sits down with Pasquale DeMaio (VP, Amazon Connect) , Deepak Nair (SVP, AI Transformation, Citizens Bank) , and Justin Robbins (Founder and Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa) , fresh off the main stage at CCW 2026 in Las Vegas. Pasquale made a deliberate statement on stage: deflection is dead. In this debrief, the three unpack what killed it, what replaces it, and why half of all agentic...

In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Jonathan Barouch, GM of Contact Center at Zendesk , about what “AI-native” and “agentic” actually mean in practice, where enterprise teams get stuck (data silos, authentication, brittle infrastructure), and how to roll out automation without betting the whole operation on day one. The conversation also challenges a common CX metric: containment...

Rob Scott, Publisher at CX Today , sits down with Jeremie Abou, Sales Lead at Diabolocom , on the floor of CCW Las Vegas to ask the question the industry keeps dodging: is AI actually improving customer experience, or just cutting costs? Jeremie doesn't pull punches. From automation hype to the uncomfortable gap between slick demos and live contact centre reality, this conversation gets into...

In this CX Today interview, Marcus Law speaks with Ilan Avner, Director of Product Management at AudioCodes , about the practical reality of moving Voice AI from proof of concept into production. The conversation explores why so many Voice AI projects stall after promising pilots, what enterprises often underestimate about voice infrastructure, and why connectivity, latency, noise handling, scalab...

At CCW Vegas 2026, Rob Scott sits down with J onathan 'JR' Ranger, Chief Customer Officer at CallMiner , to explore the company's latest AI innovation, 'Real-Time AI Guidance,' and what it actually means for agents, customers, and contact center leaders navigating an increasingly AI-driven world.  JR breaks down how the technology works in practice, why hold times and tran...

In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Jonathan Rosenberg, Chief Technology Officer at Five9 , about the role of human-in-the-loop design in AI-powered customer experience. Rosenberg explains why mature AI strategies should not treat human intervention as a failure or last resort. Instead, humans play a critical role in continuous learning, governance, high-risk decisions, and cust...

Forethought’s Antoine Nasr discusses how outcome-based AI is reshaping the way enterprises measure the true value of customer service automation  In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Antoine Nasr, Head of AI at Forethought, recently acquired by Zendesk. The pair discuss Forethought’s agentic AI push to tackle one of the most uncomfortable conversations in the CX...

How customer feedback has quietly become the most powerful trust signal in the age of AI search  CX Today's Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Alicia Skubick, Chief Customer Officer at Trustpilot, to unpack the platform's latest research.  With AI now shaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands before they ever land on a website, the rules of visibility have changed. This...

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 la...

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 side As 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 sk...

 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...

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...

 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 Er...

 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 organization...

 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, fr...

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...

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-...

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 l...

Is your board expecting AI ROI in six months while your contact centre needs eighteen? You're not alone — and that gap is producing some genuinely bad decisions. In this interview, Rob Scott sits down with Gautam Vasudev, SVP of Agentforce Contact Center at Salesforce, to get into the real story behind enterprise AI deployments — why 95% of pilots fail to deliver measurable business impact, w...

At Cisco Live 2026, Cisco pulled back the curtain on a suite of AI-native tools designed to help organizations orchestrate, secure, and manage a blended workforce of human and AI agents. To get the inside track, CX Today’s Rhys Fisher sat down with Vinod Muthukrishnan , VP and GM of Webex CX at Cisco , for a wide-ranging conversation on what the shift to AI-native CX actually demands in practice....

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...