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On this site, CX leaders can read about tech innovations, news and the latest best practices successful brands employ to create cutting edge digital experiences. https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Techtarget Feed Generator en Thu, 19 Feb 2026 05:31:19 GMT https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience editor@techtarget.com <p>Salesforce's planned acquisition of commerce technology startup Cimulate promises to expand Agentforce Commerce's capabilities in a world where search engines are replacing website clicks with AI summaries.</p> <p>Cimulate includes a basket of <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/12-of-the-best-large-language-models">large language model</a> (LLM)-fueled AI features, including AI-powered search and browse, a product recommendation engine, AI content optimization, conversational shopping agents and agentic interfaces. Merchandising features also offer analytics insights.</p> <p>The company's customers include blue-chip retailers such as Pacsun, Boot Barn and CDW. In a press release detailing the sale, Salesforce said Cimulate will provide customers with better "intent-driven" shopping experiences.</p> <p>Understanding <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/semantic-search">searcher intent</a> is a general benefit of LLMs. Cimulate's CommerceGPT LLM-based operating system incorporates <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/natural-language-understanding-NLU">natural language</a> into shopping search and product recommendations. For example, when a customer searches for "blouse," "shirt" or "top," the LLM knows what they're talking about, unlike rules- or keyword-based search engines that CommerceGPT would replace.</p> <div class="youtube-iframe-container"> <iframe id="ytplayer-0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LUmydzv96ok?autoplay=0&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;widget_referrer=null&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.techtarget.com" type="text/html" height="360" width="640" frameborder="0"></iframe> </div> <p>Futurum vice president and research director Keith Kirkpatrick said that Cimulate could help Salesforce keep up with evolving commerce experiences. Customers increasingly expect to be able to jump channels -- such as from messaging to web to SMS text -- while researching and buying, and Cimulate technology could fill gaps in the Agentforce Commerce -- formerly Commerce Cloud -- platform.</p> <p>"It's very much like <a target="_blank" href="https://buckrogers.fandom.com/wiki/Buck_Rogers_Wiki" rel="noopener">Buck Rogers</a>, where everything, all the time, is at your fingertips," Kirkpatrick said. "That is how you're going to capture the customer in a world where everything is pretty much undifferentiated in terms of product quality."</p> <p>Yet even the ideas around how shopping works outside the browser are still being invented. Digital marketing experts can't yet even agree on what to call the function of making something rank well in AI search summaries. Some call it <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366626187/Adobe-takes-on-AI-search-optimization-with-LLM-Optimizer">generative engine optimization</a> or generative experience optimization (GEO); others call it AI search optimization (AISO); still others, such as Cimulate, call it Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). Some have <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366634642/Adobe-bolsters-AI-SEO-with-planned-19B-Semrush-acquisition">different definitions</a> for those terms, while others use them interchangeably.</p> <p>Whatever terminology the users of marketing and e-commerce technology settle upon, it's still in its infancy -- as marketers rush to find an edge in these new digital spaces. At the same time, AI search summaries gobble up what used to be customer clicks to their websites.</p> <p>Cimulate will also bring technology to Salesforce that will enable the creation of autonomous shopping agents. While consumers may or may not adopt shopping agents -- <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366638716/Vendors-hawk-everything-AI-retailers-take-measured-approach">opting instead for the dopamine hit</a> of doing their own shopping -- there is an opportunity for shopping agents to automate B2B transactions and ordering, especially for standing or repeat orders of supplies or inventory.</p> <p>In rules-based inventory management, it's pretty easy for a hardware store to look at, for example, snow shovel inventory. The store could figure out how many it sold last year, look at weather predictions for this year, and guess how many to order before the first snow. Kirkpatrick said that generative AI models will be able to process far more complex signals than rules-based analytics to determine how much shovel inventory to allocate and where to distribute it.</p> <p>"Obviously, we're beyond [the basics of inventory management], but we're not at that level of 'Let's try to optimize production and supply chain, making sure that we're taking the right route and optimizing fuel,' because that stuff is going to take a bit more time to get right," Kirkpatrick said. "I certainly see agents as being a part of that."</p> <p>The acquisition of Cimulate is expected to close in the next three months, Salesforce said in a press release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> Agentforce Commerce is the beneficiary of Salesforce's latest startup buy. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/iot_g1206800961.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366639253/Salesforces-acquisition-of-Cimulate-to-boost-AI-shopping Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:04:00 GMT <p>Is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff fiddling while Rome burns?</p> <p>Recent happenings at the company make observers wonder:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/tech-company-layoffs-the-covid-tech-bubble-bursts-sep-14" rel="noopener">Like many tech companies</a>, Salesforce is laying off employees by the thousands; another roughly 1,000 were let go this week, with many outlets reporting that across-the-board reductions are hitting marketing, product management, analytics and Agentforce teams.</li> <li>Also affected in the layoffs was the Heroku <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/definition/Platform-as-a-Service-PaaS">platform as a service</a> team. Salesforce said this week that Heroku will be sunsetted -- no new features will be developed, no new Enterprise Account contracts will be signed, but current customers will be able to continue using Heroku.</li> <li>There's also been a shakeup in the upper echelons of Salesforce leadership: Agentforce executive vice president and general manager Adam Evans departed earlier this week, following recent exits by chief marketing officer Ariel Kelman, who went to chipmaker AMD, Tableau president and CEO <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchbusinessanalytics/news/366536579/Ryan-Aytay-named-new-CEO-of-Tableau-filling-vacant-slot">Ryan Aytay</a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7424460967029313536/">after 19 years</a> with Salesforce, and Slack CEO <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcontentmanagement/news/366599305/Salesforce-Box-integrate-document-AI-into-Slack">Denise Dresser</a>, who left for OpenAI last December.</li> </ul> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/adam_evans-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/adam_evans-f_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/adam_evans-f_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/adam_evans-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Picture of Adam Evans at Dreamforce 2025" data-credit="Salesforce" height="373" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Ex-Agentforce chief Adam Evans (pictured here at Dreamforce 2025) has left Salesforce. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>While all this is going on, Benioff has maintained his political about-face that <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/opinion/For-Salesforce-is-Ohana-over">started last year</a>. The latest was an awkward joke about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers present "in the building" after asking international employees to stand at an internal Salesforce event in Las Vegas last Monday. He reportedly doubled down by repeating the joke in his keynote. Multiple industry reports said that his comments lit up employee Slack channels with angry reactions.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which ICE falls under, is a <a target="_blank" href="https://investigate.afsc.org/company/salesforce" rel="noopener">well-established Salesforce customer</a> and has long been a sore spot among employees, prompting protests dating back to 2018. Last October, an <a target="_blank" href="https://dearmarcbenioff.com/" rel="noopener">open letter to Benioff</a> signed by employees and others took things further.</p> <p>CNBC reported that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/10/salesforce-employees-call-on-ceo-benioff-to-cancel-ice-opportunities.html" rel="noopener">another letter</a> circulating within Salesforce this week has been signed by 1,400 employees as of Tuesday. Its authors plan to send it to Benioff on Friday. It raises concerns that Agentforce, in the hands of ICE, could automate processes such as handling tipline reports and violate Salesforce's policies on the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.salesforce.com/company/ethical-and-humane-use/" rel="noopener">ethical and humane use of technology</a>.</p> <p>At least <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/28/deaths-ice-2026-" rel="noopener">32 people died</a> in ICE custody last year, and at least nine so far this year, including the high-profile shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.salesforce.com/company/ethical-use-policy/#:~:text=Policy%20work%20guided%20by%20principles,when%20it%20is%20autonomously%20delivered." rel="noopener">Salesforce's principles dictate</a> that "we work to ensure the direct use of our technologies upholds equal and inalienable protections for all individuals."</p> <p>While it's not a crime to enter President Trump's orbit, or to get chummy at parties with people such as Trump attorney general Pam Bondi and <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/Benioff/status/1991125950008816107" rel="noopener">crow about it on X</a>, Benioff appears to have made a 180-degree turn from just seven years ago, when in his book <i>Trailblazer </i>and in an op-ed in <i>The New York Times</i> he laid a blueprint for corporate responsibility he called "stakeholder capitalism."</p> <p>Back then, he made the case that companies can create competitive advantages by adopting values that, at least for Salesforce, support LGBTQ rights, equal pay, the fight against climate change, and address social inequality.</p> <p>"Like a growing child, culture needs to be continuously nurtured as the company gets bigger and ages," Benioff wrote in <i>Trailblazer.</i> "I consider this to be one of my most important jobs at Salesforce."</p> <p>The company he keeps now in D.C. is the very tribe working to reverse the progress he and his $183 billion company have made on their bedrock causes over the years.</p> <p>Later this month, Salesforce will announce its earnings for its most recent quarter and for the full fiscal year that ended January 31. Other tech companies have seen their stocks battered by Wall Street despite earnings beats. One example is Oracle, down more than 18% this year after a rosy earnings call last December 10.</p> <p>Who knows, maybe an amazing quarter can stop the bleeding for Benioff and Salesforce. At the moment, however, it's not looking that great. As the tech world wobbles amid AI disruption, Salesforce -- the original SaaS monolith -- is among the companies with the most to lose. Its CEO is not helping matters as the company hemorrhages talent and its user base watches him turn his back on the values that once made Salesforce worthy of their loyalty.</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> Salesforce lays off more, turnover hits the top echelons, and Benioff's ICE wisecracks draw fire from the employees who remain. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/digdeeper/4.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/opinion/Salesforce-layoffs-continue-as-high-ranking-executives-leave Wed, 11 Feb 2026 14:25:00 GMT <p>IT decisions lock in sooner than leaders realize. By the time enterprise software platforms are deployed, the window to course-correct has already narrowed.</p> <p>Long-term commitment to architectures, platforms and technologies is now happening either during planning or almost immediately after deployment. That shift matters. The working assumption used to be that there was room for course correction -- that paths could be revisited once systems were live and real-world conditions became clearer.</p> <p>What executives are increasingly confronting is a quieter realization: They are no longer fully in control of their IT environments -- not just at the hardware layer, but across the entire application stack. Decisions that once felt adjustable now carry consequences that surface earlier and prove harder to unwind.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> IT decisions lock in sooner than leaders realize. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>IT decision-makers have never been comfortable with the idea of being locked into a single direction. Flexibility has long been treated as an underlying assumption. Even with contracts, shifting vendor relationships and changing technology, there was a belief that some level of reversibility would always remain.</p> <p>What the patterns across enterprise software now suggest is that this margin for error is shrinking. Once a path is chosen -- and often before its implications are fully visible -- the ability to change direction begins to diminish, particularly as organizations commit to platform architectures, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/tip/ERP-trends-that-leaders-should-plan-for-in-2026">data foundations and vendor ecosystems</a>.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Where reversibility quietly disappears"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Where reversibility quietly disappears</h2> <p>Reversibility tends to disappear early -- somewhere between the moment an IT decision is made and the point where the resulting platform is fully deployed. The most consequential moment often sits in between, when contracts are signed and commitments become real.</p> <p>The reasons vary by domain, but they cluster around the same forces: integration, automation, compliance, governance and control. Of these, integration does the quietest work. It cuts across enterprise software domains and reduces room to maneuver in ways that are difficult to unwind later.</p> <p>In ERP environments, integration reshapes data models, embeds financial controls and reinforces compliance assumptions. In CX, the issue is less about the contact center itself and more about how those platforms integrate into broader CRM ecosystems -- pulling analytics, identity and automation into a shared operational fabric.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Reversibility tends to disappear early -- somewhere between the moment an IT decision is made and the point where the resulting platform is fully deployed. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>That integration pressure -- particularly across CRM, analytics and orchestration layers -- arises when <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/CX-trends-enterprise-leaders-should-know">dependency buildup spans systems and teams</a> rather than isolated tools.</p> <p>Communications and collaboration platforms follow a similar trajectory. As unified communications as a service (UCaaS) expands beyond meetings and messaging, it connects into adjacent workflows and systems, increasing its influence over how work gets done and how decisions ripple outward.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="How dependencies accumulate across enterprise systems"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>How dependencies accumulate across enterprise systems</h2> <p>Across these technology areas, dependencies tend to accumulate once systems are in place -- often in ways that aren't especially visible beforehand. Whether the driver is reliance on AI capabilities or the consolidation of data for analysis, the buildup happens gradually, after initial decisions feel settled.</p> <p>In HR platforms, that accumulation shows up during the consolidation of data and AI capabilities, as organizations attempt to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchhrsoftware/tip/HR-software-trends-CHROs-should-learn-about-for-2026">align workforce systems, automation and productivity</a> goals on uneven foundations.</p> <p>In end-user computing (EUC) and mobility, dependency accumulation emerges through identity and access controls that cut across devices, applications and policies. In ERP environments, AI adoption depends on data foundations that span the entire platform and are difficult to revisit once set.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Once governance starts operating across platforms -- touching identity, data access, compliance and controls -- stepping back becomes harder. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>That shift -- where <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterprisedesktop/feature/End-user-computing-trends-to-watch">identity becomes the organizing control layer</a> across devices, access and policy -- is central to the management of EUC devices.</p> <p>In CX, analytics and orchestration increasingly imply coordination across systems, teams and functions. What links these developments isn't a single technology choice, but the way governance measures begin to span systems.</p> <p>Once governance starts operating across platforms -- touching identity, data access, compliance and controls -- stepping back becomes harder. Decisions that follow tend to stack on top of that foundation.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Other ways the margin for error narrows"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Other ways the margin for error narrows</h2> <p>Governance isn't always the primary driver. In some cases, flexibility erodes for more practical reasons that feel less deliberate but are no less binding.</p> <p>In ERP environments, vendor requirements often fix configuration settings early. Combined with contract terms, those constraints can limit the ability to backtrack even before systems are fully operational.</p> <p>AI introduces a different kind of pressure. Elevated expectations around productivity and ROI create momentum that's difficult to slow or reverse. As teams begin to rely on emerging capabilities, confidence in those systems can grow faster than their maturity.</p> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/tip/The-future-of-work-Key-UCaaS-trends-for-IT-leaders">UCaaS platforms sit at the intersection</a> of both dynamics. Like ERP, they bring cloud economics and vendor-defined structures. Like other integrated systems, they extend into adjacent workflows, accumulating dependencies that make stepping away feel increasingly impractical.</p> <p>Across these cases, reversal starts to feel like the less acceptable option -- not because it's impossible, but because the platform or system appears to represent the right direction and investment. Momentum and expectation do much of the work.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Recognizing when flexibility is already narrowing"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Recognizing when flexibility is already narrowing</h2> <p>The margin for error rarely disappears all at once. More often, it contracts quietly, as commitments take shape before leaders experience them as commitments.</p> <p>Timing is one indication. When constraints surface during planning or immediately after deployment -- rather than later, as systems settle -- flexibility is already under pressure. Scope is another. As decisions begin to span multiple systems, teams and workflows at the same time, backing out becomes harder than it first appears.</p> <p>There's also a perceptual shift. When stepping away from a platform or capability starts to feel less like an option and more like an admission of failure -- even when results are still emerging -- the margin for error has already narrowed.</p> <p>None of this arrives as a single turning point. It accumulates gradually. By the time leaders fully recognize how much flexibility has been lost, the path forward often feels inevitable.</p> <p><i>James Alan Miller is a veteran technology editor and writer who leads Informa TechTarget's Enterprise Software group. He oversees coverage of ERP &amp; Supply Chain, HR Software, Customer Experience, Communications &amp; Collaboration and End-User Computing topics.</i></p> </section> As dependencies pile up, enterprise software decisions lock in earlier than leaders expect -- reducing flexibility across platforms, systems and architectures. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/strategy_a268589527.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Enterprise-ITs-shrinking-margin-for-error-on-major-decisions Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:00:00 GMT <p>Contact centers sit at the intersection of customer experience, brand trust and operational efficiency. As customer expectations rise and AI becomes embedded in service operations, the challenges facing contact centers have grown more complex -- and more consequential.</p> <p>Customer service has moved beyond single-channel support, with contact centers now expected to manage interactions across voice and digital channels while maintaining consistency, context and speed. Contact centers have <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Call-center-vs-contact-center-Whats-the-difference">evolved beyond mere call-handling hubs</a> into sophisticated, multichannel engagement centers that play a vital role in shaping customer experiences. With the advent of digital transformation, contact centers now integrate various communication platforms, including phone calls, email, chat, social media and video conferencing.</p> <p>The commercial landscape for businesses and customers is rapidly changing, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Important-contact-center-AI-features-and-their-benefits">driven by technological advancements</a>, evolving customer expectations and the increasing importance of personalized service. Enterprises are under pressure to deliver consistent, high-quality customer interactions over different modes of communication, while managing costs and maintaining operational efficiency.</p> <p>Customer interactions now span multiple channels, yet customers expect consistent context, personalization and responsiveness regardless of how they engage. This complex environment necessitates a strategic approach to managing contact centers, addressing inherent challenges and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/How-to-choose-a-contact-center-software-system">using technology to enhance customer service capabilities</a>.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Key contact center challenges and remedies"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Key contact center challenges and remedies</h2> <p>Providing different modes of interaction is among the many challenges for modern contact centers. Other issues include agent attrition, increased customer expectations, ever-growing customer queues, generalization of content, barriers to understanding and security.</p> <h3>1. Meeting customer expectations</h3> <p>Customers expect quick, personalized and seamless interactions across all channels. They also expect an interaction in one channel to be consistent with the experience they've had in other channels. They increasingly demand high levels of service and are less tolerant of delays, repeating their information and impersonal responses.</p> <p>Advanced CRM systems and AI-driven analytics can help understand, contextualize and anticipate customer needs, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-to-comprehensively-personalize-the-customer-experience">enabling more personalized and consistent interactions</a>. Regularly updating service protocols to align with customer feedback is equally important.</p> <p>Meeting these expectations increasingly depends on how well organizations unify customer data and govern AI-assisted interactions across channels, not just on agent performance alone.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/addressing_the_demands_of_todays_complex_contact_centers-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/addressing_the_demands_of_todays_complex_contact_centers-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/addressing_the_demands_of_todays_complex_contact_centers-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/addressing_the_demands_of_todays_complex_contact_centers-f.png 1280w" alt="Contact center challenges and remedies" height="487" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>For every challenge confronting contact centers, there's a remedy. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <h3>2. High contact volumes and longer wait times</h3> <p>Managing the high volumes of customer contacts, especially during peak times, can lead to long wait times and customer dissatisfaction. When customers call into contact centers of certain businesses, the first response they might typically get is a recording, "We're currently experiencing high call volumes" -- at least during normal business hours. This kind of experience, exacerbated by limited staffing and inefficient call routing, frustrates customers.</p> <p>Implementing intelligent call routing and queuing systems can optimize resource allocation and reduce wait times. Most new systems <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-to-manage-remote-call-center-agents">enable contact center agents to work from home</a>, which increases the flexibility of companies deploying agents globally. Self-service options, such as chatbots and automated responses, can reduce contact volumes, but they also raise expectations for the quality and efficiency of the interactions that reach live agents.</p> <p>Chatbots can handle routine types of interactions, like password resets, quick orders and simple questions, but complex situations that require empathy and understanding are still best left to humans. Improvements in machine learning and AI can also help mitigate high contact volumes and wait times and provide customers with other ways to resolve their queries independently.</p> <h3>3. Personalization shortfalls and content generification</h3> <p>Generic responses and interactions usually fail to meet customer expectations for personalized service. This lack of personalization inevitably results in decreased customer satisfaction and loyalty.</p> <p>Using <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Customer-interaction-analytics-spurs-better-business-results">customer data and analytics to tailor interactions</a> and recommendations can improve personalization, but doing so effectively requires strong data governance and consistent context across channels. Training call center agents to express empathy and use customer information effectively during their interactions is especially important. New large language models can improve the quality of agent responses by combining the specifics of customer data with best practices in knowledge bases.</p> <h3>4. Language barriers</h3> <p>Contact centers often serve a diverse, global customer base. Language barriers can impede effective communication, leading to misunderstandings and frustration. Any enterprise that aspires to be global must deal with this issue. Even companies that see themselves as local will become global when they put their presence on the web.</p> <p>Hiring multilingual agents and providing language training can bridge communication gaps. Additionally, real-time translation services and AI-powered language tools have come a long way and can facilitate smoother interactions.</p> <h3>5. Agent attrition</h3> <p>High turnover rates among contact center agents <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Why-contact-centers-have-high-turnover-and-how-to-combat-it">pose a significant challenge</a>. Increased job openings and competition for talent in good economies can only make this problem worse. Attrition is usually costly, impacting operational efficiency and the quality of customer interactions. Factors contributing to high attrition include job stress, lack of career advancement opportunities and inadequate compensation.</p> <p>In many environments, tool sprawl and cognitive overload also contribute to burnout, making technology simplification as important as compensation and career development.</p> <p>Good customer service is vital to retention and brand loyalty. <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Best-practices-for-call-center-agent-training-programs">Implementing comprehensive training programs</a>, offering competitive salaries and creating clear career progression paths can help reduce attrition. Providing a supportive work environment and recognizing agent contributions also play a crucial role in retaining talent. Technology has made it possible for more agents to work remotely, enabling companies to find the best qualified representatives wherever they're located.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/average_call_center_agent_salaries-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/average_call_center_agent_salaries-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/average_call_center_agent_salaries-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/average_call_center_agent_salaries-f.png 1280w" alt="Contact center agent salaries in the U.S." height="403" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Contact center agents in some regions demand higher than average salaries. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <h3>&nbsp;6. Lack of subject matter expertise</h3> <p>Agents often face complex queries requiring specialized knowledge. As the "first line of defense" in resolving customer inquiries, it's often difficult, if not impossible, for contact center agents to achieve mastery or even appear to be knowledgeable in all aspects of company products. The result could be incorrect or inadequate information conveyed to the customer.</p> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/answer/5-ways-to-improve-call-center-agent-performance">Continuous training and access to a centralized knowledge base</a> can empower remote work agents with the necessary information to handle complex queries effectively. Encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing among agents can also enhance overall understanding.</p> <h3>7. Quantitative and qualitative performance metrics</h3> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Top-7-call-center-agent-performance-metrics-to-track">Accurately measuring and analyzing contact center performance</a> is essential for continuous improvement. Traditional metrics often don't fully capture the quality of customer interactions or agent performance since measuring customer satisfaction can often be subjective.</p> <p>Adopting a comprehensive set of KPIs that include quantitative <i>and</i> qualitative metrics can provide a more accurate picture of performance. Incorporating customer feedback and sentiment analysis into performance reviews can also provide valuable insights and a more holistic view of contact center effectiveness.</p> <h3>8. Data access vs. protection</h3> <p>Contact centers store and handle sensitive customer information, making data security a foundational requirement for customer trust rather than a secondary compliance concern. As the types and frequency of interactions increase, breaches are becoming more frequent and consequential, leading to significant financial and reputational damage. More sophisticated deep fakes are rendering voice recognition ineffective as a method of customer verification.</p> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Call-center-security-best-practices-to-protect-customer-data">Implementing comprehensive cybersecurity measures</a>, including encryption, multifactor authentication, and regular security audits, safeguard customer data. Sensitive customer data can be better protected through advanced security protocols, security tools such as system scanners with <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-to-train-agents-on-call-center-fraud-detection">data loss prevention, and fraud detection</a>. Most companies need to adopt zero trust architectures and principles, and agents need to be trained on data protection protocols. It should be standard practice to have a culture of security awareness, including periodic companywide security training.</p> <p>Across these challenges, AI increasingly acts as both a solution and a source of new complexity, raising the bar for data quality, governance and trust in contact center operations.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers.jpg 1280w" alt="Multifunctional contact centers" height="288" width="559"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Contact centers are evolving into complex facilities that meet business and customer needs. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Build on flexibility, scalability and humanity"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Build on flexibility, scalability and humanity</h2> <p>Addressing contact center challenges requires more than incremental tooling changes. As customer expectations rise and AI reshapes service interactions, contact centers must balance efficiency with empathy, automation with oversight, and data access with security. Organizations that approach these challenges strategically -- rather than tactically -- are better positioned to turn their contact centers into long-term assets rather than ongoing cost centers.</p> <p><b>Editor's note:</b><i>&nbsp;This article has been updated to reflect the changing nature of modern contact center challenges.</i></p> <p><i>Jerald Murphy is senior vice president of research and consulting at Nemertes Research. He has more than three decades of technology experience, including neural networking research, integrated circuit design, computer programming, global data center designing and CEO of a managed services company.</i></p> </section> Modern contact centers face persistent challenges around customer expectations, staffing and data access. Addressing them requires more than incremental operational fixes. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/chatbot_g1250576636.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Contact-center-challenges-and-how-to-overcome-them Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT <p>Although the terms <i>call center</i> and <i>contact center</i> are often used interchangeably, the distinction has become more consequential as organizations invest in omnichannel engagement, automation and AI-driven customer support.</p> <p>In a 2025 Gartner survey of service and support leaders, 77% said they feel pressure from senior executives to deploy AI, and 75% reported increased budgets for AI initiatives compared to the prior year. What was once a difference in channels now shapes technology strategy, data use and customer experience outcomes.</p> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/Call-Center">Call centers</a> were once the gold standard for customer service, but advances in digital communication, customer data platforms and automation have steadily reshaped how businesses interact with customers. That shift is reinforced by sustained enterprise investment: A 2024 Forrester survey found that 67% of AI decision-makers planned to increase spending on generative AI initiatives in the year ahead.</p> <p>As analog and simple telephone communication gave way to multiple digital channels, many call centers by necessity morphed into more complex, multifunctional <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/contact-center">contact centers</a>.</p> <p>A call center consists of customer service professionals, known as call center agents, who handle inbound and outbound calls. Agents who take inbound calls&nbsp;help customers with account inquiries, scheduling, technical support, complaints and questions about products and services. Outbound calls focus on telemarketing, fundraising, lead generation, scheduling, customer retention and debt collection.</p> <p>Call centers continue to provide dependable, real-time customer service through voice interactions. However, they are typically optimized for phone-based workflows and limited customer context compared with modern contact centers.</p> <p>While many contact centers include traditional call handling, they are designed to orchestrate interactions across voice and digital channels, unify customer context and route engagements based on intent and history. By using multiple channels, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Benefits-of-omnichannel-marketing">companies can collect more marketing data</a> and enable customers to interact with the business in more convenient ways.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/5_differences_between_call_centers_and_contact_centers-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/5_differences_between_call_centers_and_contact_centers-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/5_differences_between_call_centers_and_contact_centers-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/5_differences_between_call_centers_and_contact_centers-f.png 1280w" alt="Difference between call centers and contact centers" height="333" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Call centers and contact centers share some similarities, but their differences are noteworthy. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Call centers vs. contact centers"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Call centers vs. contact centers</h2> <p>Call centers and contact centers provide customer service and outreach, but they differ in several key areas, including channels of communication, types of customer data collected, customer self-service (<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/customer-self-service-CSS">CSS</a>) capabilities, agent skills and job requirements, and technologies and applications.</p> <h3>Channels of communication</h3> <p>Call centers emerged at a time before digital channels and they continue to use the phone as the major channel of communication. Still, they benefit many businesses because phone calls with live agents can offer a&nbsp;personalized experience&nbsp;that other channels often lack. However, the multiple channels provided by contact centers offer customers the convenience of interacting with a company on the channel of their choice.</p> <h3>Types of customer data collected</h3> <p>Because contact centers provide more communication channels than call centers, they can collect more diverse customer data, enhance&nbsp;<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/customer-profiling">customer profiling</a>, provide targeted customer support and improve customer experiences. Contact centers, for example, can use social media data to determine customer affiliations and attitudes that might not be apparent over the phone.</p> <p>Still, call centers can use speech analysis software to analyze phone calls and gain some degree of insight into a customer's behavior and buying patterns.</p> <h3>Customer self-service</h3> <p>For&nbsp;CSS capabilities, most call centers use interactive voice response (<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/Interactive-Voice-Response-IVR">IVR</a>) systems -- automated phone assistants that respond to voices and keypad entries. IVR systems can route callers to relevant agents and perform simple tasks, such as reorders, but they can also annoy customers with lengthy menu options that fail to address specific needs.</p> <p>Contact center CSS&nbsp;goes beyond IVR and includes chatbots, FAQ webpages, forums and online knowledge bases to help customers resolve inquiries independently. Contact center CSS can also provide automated text messages that confirm or cancel appointments and mobile applications where customers can place or change orders. CSS tools can help reduce customer wait times, live agent workloads and operating costs.</p> <h3>Agent skills and job requirements</h3> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Best-practices-for-call-center-agent-training-programs">Customer service skills and experience are essential</a> for call center and contact centers agents to solve problems and provide customers with the intangibles of empathy, patience and friendliness. Contact center agents require additional skills to handle interactions over multiple channels, including phone, email, live chat, text messaging and social media. Their job might require reading comprehension, sound writing skills, social media etiquette and multitasking capabilities.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/crm-contact_centers.jpg 1280w" alt="multidimensional contact centers image" height="288" width="559"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Contact centers are seen as a multidimensional force for businesses. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Why the distinction matters now"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Why the distinction matters now</h2> <p>As organizations adopt advanced analytics, automation and GenAI, the gap between voice-centric call centers and omnichannel contact centers continues to widen. Contact centers are increasingly treated as engagement platforms that unify data, AI and human agents across channels, rather than as expanded call-handling operations.</p> <h3>Technologies and applications</h3> <p>Automation is also changing expectations for customer support. According to Metrigy <a target="_blank" href="https://metrigy.com/the-evolving-role-of-ai-in-customer-experience-insights-from-metrigys-2024-25-study/" rel="noopener">research</a>, AI is fully automating roughly 20% of customer interactions today, and CX leaders expect that figure to rise to approximately 37% by 2028. As automation expands, contact centers require broader data integration, orchestration and governance capabilities that extend beyond traditional call center models.</p> <p>Aside from the basic requirements of phones, computers and headsets, call center technologies include the following:</p> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><strong>IVR.</strong>&nbsp;Automated phone assistants select the right agent or department to service a customer based on voice and keypad responses.</li> <li><strong>Automated call distributor (ACD).&nbsp;</strong>After an IVR determines the best route for the caller, an ACD automatically transfers the caller to that agent or department.</li> <li><strong>Speech analysis software.&nbsp;</strong>These tools can <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Sentiment-analysis-Why-its-necessary-and-how-it-improves-CX">analyze calls to detect customer emotions</a>, such as satisfaction and anger. They also determine when to follow up with unsatisfied customers.</li> <li><strong>Workforce management (WFM) system.</strong>&nbsp;Certain days in a call center can be busier than others. WFM systems can&nbsp;schedule the appropriate number of agents for each day.</li> <li><strong>Enhanced internet access.&nbsp;</strong>Agents who work remotely need a fast and secure connection to use call center software, which might require internet upgrades.</li> </ul> <p>Although some call center and contact center technologies overlap, the multifunctional aspects of contact centers, together with <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/opinion/How-contact-center-modernization-plays-into-AI-strategies">GenAI's penetration into the contact center</a>, dictate implementing additional technologies and applications, including the following:</p> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><strong>Email response management system.</strong>&nbsp;These systems can organize, track and archive large volumes of emails.</li> <li><strong>Omnichannel routing.&nbsp;</strong>Because contact centers use multiple channels, agents might struggle to manage various interactions. Omnichannel routing&nbsp;uses AI to identify a customer's intent&nbsp;and forward all requests to a live agent, regardless of the channel.</li> <li><b>Advanced analytics</b><strong>.</strong>&nbsp;This capability includes various AI technologies and analysis techniques, providing a holistic view of the customer journey and predictive insights into a customer's future choices.</li> <li><strong>Channel reports.&nbsp;</strong>Reporting software collects raw data across channels to create key performance indicators (KPIs), such as first contact resolution and customer effort scores.&nbsp;Managers can monitor KPIs&nbsp;to ensure quality assurance across channels.</li> </ul> <p>Gartner <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-03-05-gartner-predicts-agentic-ai-will-autonomously-resolve-80-percent-of-common-customer-service-issues-without-human-intervention-by-20290" rel="noopener">forecasts</a> that agentic AI will autonomously resolve the majority of common customer service issues over time, reducing operational costs and reshaping agent roles. Against that backdrop, GenAI is expected to enhance automated customer support through chatbots and virtual assistants, personalize interactions with tailored responses, improve agent effectiveness with real-time assistance and simulation training, and accelerate content creation for FAQs and knowledge bases.</p> <p>For organizations evaluating customer support strategies, the difference between a call center and a contact center is no longer semantic. It reflects how customer interactions are captured, analyzed and acted on across the business. Companies that approach contact centers as integrated engagement platforms -- rather than as upgraded call centers -- are better positioned to scale service quality, govern automation responsibly and adapt to evolving customer expectations.</p> <div class="youtube-iframe-container"> <iframe id="ytplayer-0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SRKWbLNV4bs?autoplay=0&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;widget_referrer=null&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.techtarget.com" type="text/html" height="360" width="640" frameborder="0"></iframe> </div> <p><strong>Editor's note:</strong><i> This article has been updated to provide the latest information on call centers and contact centers</i><i> and provide enterprise technology buyers up-to-date insights on market advancements.</i></p> <p><i>Tim Murphy is a former site editor for TechTarget's Customer Experience and Content Management sites. He now covers broader CIO topics.</i></p> <p><i>Ron Karjian is an industry editor and writer at TechTarget covering business analytics, artificial intelligence, data management, security and enterprise applications.</i></p> </section> Call centers focus on voice support, while contact centers manage customer interactions across channels using shared data, automation and AI to shape modern CX strategies. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/customer_service11.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Call-center-vs-contact-center-Whats-the-difference Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT <p>Contact center software has existed since the dawn of digital contact centers decades ago. But, in recent years, the contact center software industry has changed significantly.</p> <p>New technologies, such as generative AI, have spawned powerful and innovative contact center features. Hyperscalers, too, like Microsoft and Amazon, have entered the space, hoping to use their command of adjacent markets to claim a slice of the contact center software ecosystem.</p> <p>All these developments prompt a re-evaluation of <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/The-ultimate-guide-to-contact-center-modernization">modern contact center platform options</a>. Below, we identify the leading contact center platforms and summarize their key features and drawbacks so businesses can make informed decisions when evaluating these products.</p> <p>In developing this list, we examined research and independent user reviews from leading analyst firms and buyer intelligence platforms. Based on this analysis, we created an unranked list of the top 19 contact center platforms. The list is in alphabetical order.</p> <p>The software providers range from new players to more established vendors. While they all deliver <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/How-to-choose-a-contact-center-software-system">core contact center software capabilities</a>, they vary in areas like major features, pricing, AI capabilities, scalability and integrations.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="1. 8x8"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>1. 8x8</h2> <p>Founded in 1987, 8x8 has built up its contact center platform over many years, largely through acquisitions. What began as a basic voice calling tool has evolved into a full-fledged platform for multi-channel customer interaction.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Analytics.</b> Detailed analytics and reporting provide real-time feedback on customer interactions.</li> <li><b>Intelligent call routing.</b> Interactive voice response and customized call routing help to personalize the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/customer-experience-CX">customer experience</a> (CX).</li> <li><b>Extensive CRM integration.</b> Integrations with popular CRM platforms make it easy to use CRM data during customer interactions.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>8x8's cloud-based hosting model allows the platform's software to scale easily. Flexible licensing also helps enable scalability from a purchasing standpoint.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>8x8 integrates by default with major CRM and communications platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Teams. An API enables custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Pricing varies widely depending on feature selection, and 8x8 offers custom quotes rather than publishing pricing details publicly. As a baseline, however, pricing generally starts around $20 per user per month, although it can extend above $100 per user per month for feature-rich plans.</p> <p>8x8 is most notable for its affordable pricing for basic plans and easy integration with external platforms.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="2. Amazon Connect"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>2. Amazon Connect</h2> <p>Introduced in 2017, Amazon Connect offers a centralized hub from which <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/answer/5-ways-to-improve-call-center-agent-performance?Offer=ab_MeteredFormCopyEoc_var3">contact center agents</a> can engage with customers across multiple channels, including voice, chat and messaging. It also integrates with other Amazon products and services. In 2023, Amazon Connect incorporated several AI-based capabilities, such as support for creating virtual assistants.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Centralized interface.</b> Contact center agents can handle interactions via voice, chat, email and text through a centralized channel.</li> <li><b>No-code flow builder.</b> To configure workflows for different types of interactions or customer needs, businesses can use a visual workflow builder.</li> <li><b>AI-driven automation.</b> Partly via integrations with other Amazon services -- such as Lex, which powers AI chatbots -- Amazon Connect enables the automation of some interactions using AI. For example, users can use Amazon Q in Connect to deploy GenAI chatbots. AI features can also automatically route requests to agents.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>As a platform hosted across multiple regions in the AWS cloud, Connect is a highly scalable and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/tip/Compare-high-availability-vs-fault-tolerance-in-AWS?Offer=ab_MeteredFormCopyEoc_var3">fault-tolerant service</a>. It can support a virtually unlimited volume of agents or interactions.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Connect integrates most closely with other services within the Amazon cloud. However, it supports limited integrations with external platforms, such as Salesforce and Zendesk, which businesses can use to look up or import data during customer interactions.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Connect pricing is based mostly on volume usage. It starts at around $0.018 per minute for voice calls and $0.004 per chat message. Additional fees apply for using optional features, like Amazon Q.</p> <p>Amazon Connect is most notable for hyperscale-level scalability and availability, as well as tight integration with other Amazon services.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/ai_sharpens_contact_center_features_and_actions-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/ai_sharpens_contact_center_features_and_actions-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/ai_sharpens_contact_center_features_and_actions-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/ai_sharpens_contact_center_features_and_actions-f.png 1280w" alt="Integrating AI in contact center software" height="355" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>AI and generative AI integration is remaking contact center software. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="3. Avaya"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>3. Avaya</h2> <p>Traditionally, Avaya focused its contact center software on <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/On-premises-vs-cloud-contact-center-Whats-the-difference">on-premises hosting models</a>. However, it has expanded into cloud-based options that support public and private cloud deployments. Avaya provides all the core capabilities that businesses expect from a modern contact center platform as well as certain innovative features like AI-based virtual assistants.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Flexible deployment options.</b> Avaya offers on-premises and cloud-based contact center products. The on-prem offering may be an advantage for organizations that, due to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Call-center-compliance-checklist-for-hybrid-workforces">compliance or privacy concerns</a>, can't or don't want to store contact center data on third-party infrastructure.</li> <li><b>Process optimization.</b> Native features assist with the optimization of tasks such as scheduling and agent training.</li> <li><b>Real-time reporting.</b> Continuous analytics further assist with the identification of opportunities to optimize.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>While the scalability of Avaya's on-premises offering is limited by the scope of the host infrastructure, its cloud-based platform can scale virtually without limit.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Avaya integrates with popular CRM platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Custom integrations are available through an API.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>The cost of Avaya starts at $20 per user per month for the Core plan. The highest-cost plan is priced at $35 per user per month. These prices reflect a 20% discount for a yearly contractual commitment.</p> <p>Avaya is most notable for its on-premises deployment option and competitive pricing.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="4. Cisco Contact Center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>4. Cisco Contact Center</h2> <p>Although Cisco is best known for its networking and communications tools, it has also invested significantly in the contact center space. Its Contact Center product employs Webex, a meeting and collaboration application, as the foundation for omnichannel customer interactions.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Security.</b> Cisco Contact Center goes <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Call-center-security-best-practices-to-protect-customer-data">above and beyond in the security realm</a>, offering advanced capabilities like endpoint hardening and data masking.</li> <li><b>Enterprise scalability.</b> While the product can work for small businesses, it's designed especially for large-scale, enterprise-grade communications.</li> <li><b>Customer sentiment analysis.</b> The platform uses AI to assess customer reactions to interactions.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Cisco Contact Center scales especially well for large enterprises.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Cisco Contact Center integrates tightly with other Cisco tools, particularly the Webex and Jabber communication apps. In fact, to some extent, the contact center service depends on these integrations with other Cisco tools. Integrations are also available for major CRM and IT ticketing platforms.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Cisco doesn't publish pricing details for its contact center service, and costs vary depending on features and usage. As a rough baseline, expect to pay anywhere in the range of $30 to $200 per user per month.</p> <p>Cisco Contact Center is most notable for its security features and enterprise-grade scalability.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="5. CloudTalk"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>5. CloudTalk</h2> <p>CloudTalk is most notable for its heavy focus on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cloudtalk.io/blog/call-center-analytics-guide/" rel="noopener">automation and analytics features</a> designed to streamline contact center performance and increase operations efficiency. It also offers innovative AI-powered features, such as topic extraction, which automatically monitors conversational topics.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Agent collaboration.</b> In addition to supporting multi-channel customer engagement, CloudTalk offers native features for agent collaboration, like internal call conferencing and shared workspaces.</li> <li><b>Advanced analytics.</b> CloudTalk offers particularly detailed reporting on engagement metrics and agent performance.</li> <li><b>Extensive integrations.</b> The platform provides a broad range of integrations that include major CRM platforms and communication and automation tools like Slack and Zapier.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>As a cloud-based offering, CloudTalk works well at virtually any scale. Flexible pricing terms also enable easy scalability.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>As noted above, CloudTalk integrates out-of-the-box with a particularly wide range of external platforms. It also provides an API for custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>CloudTalk pricing starts around $25 per user per month. The most feature-rich plan costs about $50 per user per month.</p> <p>CloudTalk is notable for its advanced analytics and broad integrations.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="6. Content Guru"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>6. Content Guru</h2> <p>Launched in 2005, Content Guru offers a contact center and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/customer-engagement">customer engagement</a> service tailored for verticals that require high availability and security, like government and finance. Although the service can be and is used by all types of businesses.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI-powered automation.</b> Content Guru makes extensive use of AI to automate tasks like call routing. It also supports AI-powered virtual agents.</li> <li><b>Workforce management.</b> Native capabilities assist with scheduling contact center agents and managing workflows.</li> <li><b>Video call support.</b> Supports customer engagement via video as well as more conventional channels, such as voice and text.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Cloud-based deployment enables easy scalability up and down.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Content Guru integrates with major CRM platforms out-of-the-box, and an API is available for developing custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Content Guru pricing varies based on total agent count, type and feature availability. It starts at $22 per digital-only agent per month. Voice agents cost at least $70 per month.</p> <p>Content Guru is most notable for AI-powered automation and workflow optimization capabilities.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="7. Dialpad"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>7. Dialpad</h2> <p>Dialpad initially focused on providing internal communications software for businesses and added contact center software capabilities in 2018. Dialpad is most notable for its extensive investment in AI-based capabilities, such as AI-driven voice analysis and call summaries, as well as AI-powered <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/virtual-agent">virtual agents</a>.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI capabilities.</b> Dialpad makes especially extensive use of AI to provide capabilities like real-time transcription and sentiment analysis.</li> <li><b>Collaboration.</b> Built-in chat, file sharing and other collaboration tools help agents communicate.</li> <li><b>Broad integrations.</b> Dialpad integrates with external productivity and collaboration platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams in addition to CRM tools.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Cloud-based deployment and multiple pricing plans make Dialpad easy to scale for businesses of virtually all sizes.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>As mentioned, Dialpad is notable for integrating with popular CRM platforms, like Salesforce and Zendesk, and productivity and collaboration suites, like Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams. Customers can also build custom workflows.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Dialpad pricing starts at $15 per user per month for the Standard plan. The Pro plan is $25 per user per month. An Enterprise plan is also available.</p> <p>Dialpad is most notable for advanced AI features, extensive integrations and competitive entry-level pricing.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="8. Five9"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>8. Five9</h2> <p>Five9 provides a fully cloud-based call and contact center platform. It also places special emphasis on transparency and security for businesses concerned with <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/answer/How-do-companies-protect-customer-data">protecting sensitive customer data</a> or meeting strict compliance mandates related to customer calls.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Dynamic routing.</b> Five9 offers a particularly powerful routing tool that can route calls based on a variety of factors, such as priority level, agent expertise and geographical location.</li> <li><b>Workforce management.</b> Built-in capabilities, including forecasting and automated scheduling, assist with agent workforce management.</li> <li><b>AI capabilities.</b> Five9 includes advanced AI features such as speech recognition and predictive dialing.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Five9 is highly scalable because of its cloud-based deployment model and its flexible pricing terms and plans, which cater to a wide range of business sizes.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Five9 integrates with CRM platforms as well as popular IT management suites, like ServiceNow.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Five9 doesn't publish full pricing details of all its plans, but its most basic plan starts at $119 per user per month. Its Core plan, which has more features, is $159 per user per month.</p> <p>Five9 is most notable for especially efficient and flexible call routing capabilities and advanced AI features.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/basic_contact_center_business_goals-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/basic_contact_center_business_goals-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/basic_contact_center_business_goals-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/basic_contact_center_business_goals-f.png 1280w" alt="Business goals for contact center software" height="260" width="559"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Today's contact center software must satisfy several business goals. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="9. Genesys"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>9. Genesys</h2> <p>Founded in 1990, Genesys has spent decades building a feature-rich contact center and customer engagement platform. The company caters especially to medium-size and large businesses.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>On-premises option.</b> An on-premises deployment option is available, as well as a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/tip/Evaluate-on-premises-vs-cloud-computing-pros-and-cons">cloud-based offering</a>.</li> <li><b>Virtual agents.</b> AI capabilities include virtual agents.</li> <li><b>Collaboration.</b> Internal screen sharing and conferencing capabilities help agents collaborate.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Genesys can operate on any scale, but it focuses especially on deployments for midsize and enterprise customers.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Out-of-the-box integrations focus mostly on CRM platforms. An API is available for custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Costs start at $75 per user per month and range up to $240 per user per month.</p> <p>Genesys is most notable for its on-premises deployment option and extensive collaboration capabilities.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="10. Google Cloud Contact Center as a Service"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>10. Google Cloud Contact Center as a Service</h2> <p>Google Cloud Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) -- also referred to as Google's Contact Center AI Platform (CCAI Platform) -- is among the newer cloud-based contact center products and is focused on AI capabilities such as virtual agents. Behind the scenes, however, Google's contact center offering is powered largely by UJET, an independent contact center platform known for its analytics features and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Contact-center-back-end-integrations-drive-revenue-growth">integration with CRM systems</a>.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI capabilities.</b> Advanced AI capabilities include chatbots and virtual agents.</li> <li><b>Speech recognition.</b> AI also enables real-time speech transcription and sentiment analysis.</li> <li><b>Google Cloud integrations.</b> Google's contact center integrates tightly with other Google Cloud services.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Although designed especially for large enterprise customers, Google Cloud's CCaaS can also support smaller teams.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>The contact center integrates most seamlessly with other Google Cloud products and services, as well as popular CRMs like Salesforce. An API is available for developing custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Pricing is mostly a pay-as-you-go model and starts at around $0.06 per chat session and $0.05 per voice minute. Some capabilities cost extra, like Conversational Insights, which provides engagement analytics.</p> <p>The CCAI Platform is most notable for its close integration with Google Cloud services and enterprise-grade scalability.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="11. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>11. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center</h2> <p>Microsoft developed the Microsoft Dynamics contact center platform in-house and released it in July 2024. Microsoft emphasizes self-service on a customer-preferred channel as well as <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Best-practices-for-call-center-monitoring">monitoring and reporting features to improve operational efficiency</a>.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Workforce management.</b> Built-in tools assist with agent scheduling and performance assessment.</li> <li><b>Microsoft integrations.</b> Dynamics 365 Contact Center connects to other Microsoft tools and platforms, like Teams, Outlook and Power BI.</li> <li><b>AI features.</b> Dynamics 365 Contact Center uses GenAI services hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud to enable virtual agents and chatbots.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>As a hyperscale-based service, Dynamics 365 offers immense scalability from an infrastructure perspective. That said, its pricing models are flexible enough to accommodate the needs of smaller teams as well.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>The contact center service integrates most tightly with other Microsoft products, as well as popular CRM platforms. Custom integrations are possible through an API.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Costs begin at $95 per user per month. A free trial is also available.</p> <p>Dynamics 365 Contact Center is most notable for integration with other Microsoft products, which facilitates integrating contact center capabilities into broader Microsoft software suites.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="12. Nextiva"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>12. Nextiva</h2> <p>Nextiva offers all the key features that businesses need to operate an effective contact center, such as<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/skill-based-routing-SBR"> skills-based call routing</a> and advanced call management. Nextiva has invested in AI-based capabilities and places special emphasis on platform reliability and a fast response to service requests from its customers.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Intelligent call routing.</b> Nextiva provides highly flexible and efficient call routing capabilities based on criteria defined by users.</li> <li><b>AI capabilities.</b> The platform uses AI to generate call summaries. An AI answering feature is also available.</li> <li><b>High availability.</b> Nextiva's platform is cloud-based, and the company focuses on achieving particularly high availability through a multi-site hosting model.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Multi-site hosting and flexible pricing plans enable a high degree of scalability.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Nextiva connects to major CRM platforms. An API supports custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Costs start at $15 per user per month, and increase to $75 per user per month for more features geared toward small businesses. Larger enterprise plans are also available.</p> <p>Nextiva is most notable for reliability and affordable entry-level pricing.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="13. NiCE CXone Mpower"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>13. NiCE CXone Mpower</h2> <p>Launched in 2024, CXone Mpower from NiCE is one of the newest contact center platforms on our list. The company promotes CXone Mpower as a "CX-aware" service because it uses AI to inject <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transform-customer-experiences-real-time-using-contextual-goyal-hlw8c/" rel="noopener">context into customer interactions</a>.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI integrations.</b> The platform makes extensive use of AI to help optimize workflows and generate context for customer integrations.</li> <li><b>Chatbots and virtual agents.</b> AI also supports chatbots and virtual agents within CXone Mpower.</li> <li><b>Scalability.</b> The platform is particularly notable for its ability to cater to customers of all types and sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>As noted above, CXone Mpower is an especially scalable service due to its cloud-based hosting model and the ease of accommodating increased customers or communication channels.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Core integrations support major CRM platforms. Custom integrations are possible through an API.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Costs range from $110 to $249 per user per month.</p> <p>NiCE CXone Mpower is most notable for AI-enhanced efficiency capabilities.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="14. RingCentral"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>14. RingCentral</h2> <p>Founded in 1999, RingCentral originally specialized in on-premises phone connectivity. Since then, it has expanded into a broad set of business communication and collaboration services, including a contact center platform.&nbsp;</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Mobile app for agents.</b> A mobile app allows agents to engage with customers from virtually any location.</li> <li><b>Collaboration.</b> Internal video calling, team messaging and file sharing help agents collaborate.</li> <li><b>Analytics.</b> RingCentral supports both real-time and historical reporting on agent performance and service levels.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>A cloud-based deployment model enables a high degree of scalability.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>RingCentral integrates with major CRM platforms as well as certain business productivity suites, such as Google Workspace.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>RingCentral's RingCX product features a Standard plan at $65 per user per month. The Professional plan is $95 per user per month, and the Elite plan is $145 per user per month. An enterprise package is also available.</p> <p>RingCentral is most notable for its agent <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/7-reasons-why-businesses-need-mobile-apps">mobile app option</a>, collaboration features and scalability.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="15. Salesforce Service Cloud Contact Center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>15. Salesforce Service Cloud Contact Center</h2> <p>Although Salesforce is best known for CRM, its Service Cloud platform includes a contact center offering to pull customer data into contact center engagements and tightly integrate with the Salesforce product ecosystem.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI features.</b> Using Salesforce's Einstein AI tools, Service Cloud uses AI to automate tasks like routing.</li> <li><b>Custom chatbots.</b> Businesses can also use Einstein AI to configure custom AI chatbots to serve as virtual agents.</li> <li><b>Knowledge management.</b> Built-in knowledge management capabilities aim to accelerate the rate at which agents can solve customer requests.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Service Cloud can support businesses of all sizes, but it's geared especially toward large, enterprise-scale customers.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Salesforce contact center integrates most tightly with other Salesforce products but also provides core integration with certain third-party platforms, such as Zendesk and HubSpot.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Salesforce offers one pricing plan, at $150 per user per month, for its contact center software.</p> <p>The Salesforce contact center is most notable for enterprise-grade scalability and extensive Salesforce integrations.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="16. Talkdesk"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>16. Talkdesk</h2> <p>Talkdesk promotes its CX automation via its AI multi-agent workflows and AI-first <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/5-customer-journey-phases-for-businesses-to-understand">customer journey</a>. Talkdesk also emphasizes its capabilities across several vertical industries. The product -- dubbed Customer Experience Automation, or CXA -- is known for its ease of use, intuitive interface and call routing capabilities.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Virtual agents.</b> Talkdesk offers GenAI-powered virtual agents to automate customer interactions.</li> <li><b>No-code workflow management.</b> A visual interface enables workflow configuration and modifications.</li> <li><b>Hybrid cloud deployment option.</b> While Talkdesk can't run fully on-premises, a hybrid deployment model is available that allows businesses to route communications through on-prem telephony infrastructure, which can be advantageous from a privacy and compliance standpoint.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>A flexible deployment architecture enables a high degree of scalability, making Talkdesk appropriate for small businesses and large enterprises.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Integrations focus mostly on CRM platforms, but Google Workspace is also supported, and a custom integration API is available.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Costs range from $85 to $225 per user per month.</p> <p>Talkdesk is most notable for its feature-rich virtual agents and hybrid deployment option.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="17. Vonage Contact Center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>17. Vonage Contact Center</h2> <p>Vonage Contact Center's natively built features, including AI-powered virtual assistants, rely on integrations with external platforms, particularly Salesforce, to power some of its capabilities and access customer data. Vonage also emphasizes <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vonage.com/resources/articles/video-contact-center/" rel="noopener">video-based customer engagement</a>.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI-based sentiment analysis.</b> Vonage uses AI to evaluate customer interactions across multiple channels, including voice, text and social media.</li> <li><b>Virtual agents.</b> AI also powers virtual agents, which businesses can configure to perform a range of custom tasks.</li> <li><b>Business continuity.</b> Vonage offers business continuity and disaster recovery features, such as emergency call routing options.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Cloud-based deployment provides a high degree of scalability.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Integrations focus mostly on CRM platforms, with an API available for custom integrations.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Vonage does not list pricing information on its website specifically for its contact center plans, which include a Priority plan, Premium plan and add-on options. It offers volume-based API pricing with rates at $0.00809 per SMS and $0.01446 per minute for voice calls. Additional capabilities, like anti-fraud features and customer identification, cost extra.</p> <p>Vonage is most notable for omnichannel sentiment analysis, affordable volume-based pricing and business continuity features.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="18. Zendesk Contact Center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>18. Zendesk Contact Center</h2> <p>Although primarily a CRM platform, Zendesk also provides a dedicated contact center offering. The company first entered the call center space in 2011, but it completed a major overhaul of its customer communications and engagement platform in 2025, which now features cutting-edge AI capabilities.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI-powered automation.</b> Zendesk contact center makes extensive use of AI to automate virtually all core tasks, from routing to agent response.</li> <li><b>Chatbots.</b> AI-powered chatbots can perform custom tasks.</li> <li><b>Knowledge management.</b> Native knowledge management tools assist agents in finding the information they need to address customer requests.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Zendesk contact center can support businesses of all sizes, but it caters especially to midsize and enterprise organizations.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Core integrations support other Zendesk products and other popular CRMs, including Salesforce and HubSpot, as well as communications platforms like Slack.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Price plans start at $19 per user per month. The Suite Enterprise plan is $169 per user per month for enterprise-grade capabilities. Other plans are priced at $55 and $115 per user per month.</p> <p>Zendesk is most notable for its AI capabilities and a broad set of pricing options.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="19. Zoom Contact Center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>19. Zoom Contact Center</h2> <p>Best known for its teleconferencing software, Zoom launched a contact center platform originally called Video Engagement Center and rebranded as Zoom Contact Center. The platform offers all core contact center software features with a focus on video-based customer meetings, while supporting other communications media over multiple channels.</p> <h3>Key features</h3> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>AI agent assist.</b> AI capabilities help guide human agents by suggesting actions and providing information during customer interactions.</li> <li><b>Virtual agents.</b> Fully independent, AI-powered agents are also available for engaging customers.</li> <li><b>Video support.</b> Zoom Contact Center supports customer engagement via video as well as more traditional channels.</li> </ul> <h3>Scalability</h3> <p>Zoom Contact Center provides a high degree of scalability due to its cloud-based deployment model, although its pricing plans are geared mainly toward midsize and larger organizations.</p> <h3>Integrations</h3> <p>Zoom Contact Center integrates with popular CRM platforms as well as other Zoom software.</p> <h3>Pricing</h3> <p>Pricing ranges from $69 to $149 per user per month.</p> <p>Zoom is most notable for its video calling support and AI capabilities that can assist human agents as well as power autonomous virtual agents.</p> <p>Clearly, the contact center market is crowded with many options for contact center buyers and C-suite decision-makers. Many of the platforms have similar and overlapping features, especially around AI capabilities, integrations with adjacent products and scalability performance. Contact center buyers need to evaluate these platforms carefully to find the right one for their organization.</p> <p><b>Editor's note:</b>&nbsp;<i>This article was updated to reflect recent developments in contact center platforms and the market in general.</i></p> <p><i>Chris Tozzi is an adjunct research adviser at IDC as well as an adviser for Fixate IO and a professor of IT and society at a polytechnic university in upstate New York.</i></p> </section> By now, many contact center software providers offer similar features. But large and small enterprises should consider some key differences among vendors. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/chatbot_g1206801125.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Top-10-contact-center-platforms Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT <p>It's not that retailers don't <i>want</i> to use every single cool agentic AI tool offered by vendors. It's that fragmented data, variegated application stacks, and pesky fluctuating margins and tariffs cause drag on their spending power to deploy all that technology.</p> <p>That said, the National Retail Federation's NRF '26: Retail's Big Show last month was abuzz with agentic AI tools.</p> <p>More than a thousand exhibitors showed agents that were small and tactical -- such as computer vision to detect shoplifting from security video, or to fetch data from down the supply chain -- up to sweeping, grandiose unveilings like Google's: a complete customer experience platform, <a href="https://aibusiness.com/agentic-ai/google-s-universal-commerce-protocol" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)</a> adoption and drone delivery systems for customers such as Walmart.</p> <p>"Not many of us really understand exactly where [AI's] going to take us, but we know it's going to change the world," said Ed Stack, the executive chairman of Dick's Sporting Goods -- son of founder Dick Stack -- in a keynote fireside chat with Bob Eddy, chairman, president and CEO of BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings Inc.</p> <p>"Right now we're looking at AI really as a productivity tool, more than a replacement of personnel," he continued. "I think that AI is going to change everything we're doing. It's going to change what we do from a marketing standpoint, what we do from an <a href="https://www.cgsinc.com/blog/retail-assortments-definition-usage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assortment</a> standpoint."</p> <p>Eddy said that BJ's is deploying AI to solve complex problems such as <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/definition/replenishment">logistics replenishment</a> for its stores. Take the example of a store that earns $40 million a year in revenue, while another earns $200 million. Modeling inventory plans for such contrasting locations is difficult for humans.</p> <p>"Those two cases are so wildly different that an average -- even a really good -- logistics planner has a very, very tough time figuring out those two models," Eddy said. "AI does it in 10 seconds."</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/nrf_google_drone-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/nrf_google_drone-f_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/nrf_google_drone-f_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/nrf_google_drone-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Picture of a Google Wing package delivery drone at NRF '26: Retail's Big Show" data-credit="Don Fluckinger" height="420" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Google shows off a package delivery drone from Alphabet subsidiary Wing at NRF '26: Retail's Big Show. These will soon deliver goods for customers, including Walmart. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Agents are coming, but what will they do?"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Agents are coming, but what will they do?</h2> <p>While AI in general was on the minds of attendees and exhibitors, they weren't talking much about agentic AI specifically. But the exhibitors were. They predicted a mass of agents that will perform tasks such as marrying supply-chain data systems to store inventory and analytics tools that predict demand and bring manufacturer operations closer in harmony with chain stores.</p> <p>Retailers who are early adopters of Salesforce's agentic AI want to create sales agents that think like in-store associates who guide shoppers, said Gordon Evans, chief marketing officer of Agentforce Commerce (formerly Commerce Cloud).</p> <p>"[Let's say] you're shopping for jewelry. You want to buy a gift for me for the holidays," Evans said. "You clearly have something in mind. You want a story behind that. You want this perfect item."</p> <p>Replicating a personalized in-store consultation online will likely require orchestrating multiple agents to poll inventory systems, analyze browser behavior and access the customer's order history. Working together, agents could make recommendations that are tightly personalized enough to secure consumer buy-in.</p> <p>"How would a store associate be able to take all that input and look at a bunch of different things that would make sense for you? How do we bring that experience into an agentic experience?" Evans said. "I think that's going to be the next challenge: how we have multi-factor agents -- or maybe an agent that orchestrates other agents -- to essentially deliver the business value."</p> <p>At the NRF show, Google released its agentic AI platform, <a href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/google-cloud-agentic-ai-brands-build-bots/809260/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience</a>. Early customers include Kroger, Lowe's and Papa Johns. The company also unveiled <a href="https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">checkout tools and Direct Offers</a> for retailers to reach consumers who browse in AI Mode and bypass <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/search-engine-results-page-SERP">traditional search engine results</a>.</p> <figure class="main-article-image half-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/google_image_for_nrf_piece_direct_offers_still-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/google_image_for_nrf_piece_direct_offers_still-f_half_column_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/google_image_for_nrf_piece_direct_offers_still-f_half_column_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/google_image_for_nrf_piece_direct_offers_still-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Phone screenshot of Google Direct Offers" data-credit="Google"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Google Direct Offers floats shopping deals when browsing in AI mode. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>The open UCP standard for e-commerce, developed by Google and Shopify with feedback from Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, provides a common language to enable these experiences across commerce sites. Many companies, such as Salesforce, Mastercard, Stripe and American Express, have signed on as partners. Customers can permit agents to complete transactions with UCP, which also promises to manage the handoff between agent and human merchandisers or customer service agents.</p> <p>"The UCP has really been built so that [a company's] brand voice shows up," said Jose Gomes, vice president of Retail &amp; Consumer at Google Cloud. "We want to make sure that the brand is able to tailor [experiences] based off what they know about you and your history. Getting all of that into the UCP has been super important."</p> <p>The holy grail of agentic AI -- bots that buy things on behalf of consumers and businesses -- still seems to be far off, because consumers don't necessarily fully trust AI with their pocketbooks yet. Also, they love to shop, whether in-store or online, and aren't yet ready to give up the dopamine hit of shopping to an AI agent.</p> <p>That could change as consumers get used to the idea and retailers modernize their commerce and inventory data systems, said independent analyst Brendan Witcher. Judging by the customers paraded by technology vendors, only the largest of the large retail chains are the early adopters of agentic AI -- even though the vendors discuss it as if everyone's doing it.</p> <p>"History is the best teacher of everything. Right now, when you hear the message about agentic AI, what's really happening is they're targeting companies with the balance sheets of small countries," Witcher said. "We saw the same thing with cloud computing. Midsize companies didn't move things into the cloud until it came downmarket, the prices got cheaper and the tech got easier. The same thing will happen with agentic AI."</p> <p>Consumers will eventually come around to using agents for routine recurring purchases, Witcher predicted, sort of like they set up Amazon subscriptions for things like soda water or dog food.</p> <p>Darshan Kantak, vice president of product for Applied AI at Google, also believes agentic AI will eventually find widespread adoption in retail.</p> <p>"I remember living in Brazil 12, 15 years ago, and the first ride-hailing apps for taxis happened. No one hailed a taxi like that, and they went to 80-year-old grandmothers hailing a taxi like that in three months," Kantak said. "That, to me, was the best example of how technology adoption [works]. Once we start solving problems for people in a really easy-to-use way, in a timely manner, adoption will increase disproportionately."</p> <p>Witcher cautioned that, while some consumers will welcome shopping agents, others might never embrace the technology. Most of us, he predicts, will save in-store visits for big purchases such as furniture or a refrigerator.</p> <p>"There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to consumer shopping," Witcher said. "There never will be. That's why we still have e-commerce, but we also still have stores."</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Tactical deployment the near-term AI strategy for retail"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Tactical deployment the near-term AI strategy for retail</h2> <p>Technology vendors <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366636690/Agentic-orchestration-the-next-AI-issue-for-CIOs-to-tackle">fantasize about multi-agentic orchestration</a>, with AI "super agents" that will manage teams of simpler, task-oriented agents. The reality on the ground is that customers are primarily deploying agents that do one thing at a time, if they're deploying any agents at all.</p> <p>Agentic AI might have endless capabilities and be the foundation on which to run a business. Still, the hard truth is that most users of the technology must build a data foundation before they can tap AI's potential. In the case of The Paper Store, a U.S. chain of more than 100 specialty gift stores, that meant the company had to standardize its catalog on a product information management system from Akeneo.</p> <p>"We're really focusing on back-end data structure for product information, how to structure it in order to be able to start achieving successful use of some of these AI platforms," said COO Craig Hewitt.</p> <p>The Paper Store is currently testing personalization tools on their commerce website, but it's challenging because "the customer isn't very forgiving when it comes to our testing," Hewitt said, as the company gets its data house in order. He envisions AI delivering more personalized information to customers based on how they're searching -- providing expanded product information, for example, or rendering how a particular home-décor item The Paper Store sells might look in the customer's home.</p> <p>Online intimates retailer Thirdlove, known for its deep selection, such as half-sizes that aren't available in physical stores, has begun deploying AI to personalize its customer hub. There will always be a time and place for in-person shopping, said chief marketing and digital officer Amy Carr, but AI can help raise the standards of online shopping experiences, bringing them closer to what customers might expect from a physical store.</p> <p>"I think an agent can do a lot around customer service; I think an agent can do a lot around product recommendations, with a little bit of data," Carr said. "That's kind of where we're starting."</p> <p>Trigo, an Israeli startup that uses AI to scan store security footage to detect shoplifting, is an example of single-focus generative AI. At the moment, the agent's findings are relayed to store employees, such as cashiers and security, and even the shoplifting customers themselves, by rules-based systems. But Trigo co-founder and CEO Daniel Gabay sees a not-too-distant future in which agents will autonomously perform many more tasks than loss prevention.</p> <p>"We're creating the data platform that all of the agents [will] run on," Gabay said. "We're trying to [bridge] this missing link between the video feed to agents -- running on the cloud, usually -- analyzing the video feeds to generate data for different applications … We have generated an application, but our vision is to open it completely, add many capabilities, [and enable] others to create additional capabilities."</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> </section> The vendors will build it, but will the retailers come? https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/chatbot_g1132487500.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366638716/Vendors-hawk-everything-AI-retailers-take-measured-approach Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:31:00 GMT <p>Customer interactions are brimming with valuable intelligence. Savvy customer experience leaders and other business executives use this data to drive CX improvements in operational efficiency, sales effectiveness and other initiatives. Such potential makes conversation and interaction analytics one of the most compelling technologies for the contact center today.</p> <p>All customer interactions are applicable, whether they occur between human agents and customers or AI agents, bots and customers.</p> <p>First, organizations should gather <a target="_blank" href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/salesforce-unstructured-data-customer-insights-agentforce-ai/727409/" rel="noopener">raw and unstructured customer interaction data</a>, such as text and audio. This includes transcripts of customer service calls, text messages from chatbot interactions, email, social media direct messages, video and screen-sharing sessions and call recordings. Next, make that data available for analysis, with the goal of understanding what was said, how it was said and why it was said.</p> <p>This is where conversation analytics, the use of software and machine learning, including <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/natural-language-processing-NLP">natural language processing</a>, comes in. Applying conversation analytics enables companies to derive business value from their conversation data; they analyze it to extract meaning, insights and quantitative metrics.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Gather, analyze and act on customer data"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Gather, analyze and act on customer data</h2> <p>In a CX context, conversation analytics identifies sentiment, intent, behavior patterns, agent performance and other crucial factors in near real time. Conversation analytics, in other words, is the process of turning raw customer conversation data into meaningful, structured and actionable knowledge.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Conversation analytics is the process of turning raw customer conversation data into meaningful, structured and actionable knowledge. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>Of course, just gathering and analyzing the data isn't enough. Acting on it is imperative.</p> <p>Historically, however, Metrigy's research has shown significant drop-offs from the percentage of companies gathering customer data to those analyzing it and, especially, those acting on it. Fortunately, the gap is starting to shrink. In a 2024 CX study, 50% of companies that gathered data also acted on it. In 2025, that percentage grew to 59.1%.</p> <p>In part, the change is fueled by the rise of conversation and interaction analytics, which has shifted from a contact center innovation to a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Contact-center-back-end-integrations-drive-revenue-growth">strategic asset used across departments</a> such as customer service, marketing and sales.</p> <p>Nearly 50% of companies already use interaction analytics, and another 29.9% plan to implement the technology this year, according to Metrigy's "AI for Business Success 2025-26" global study of 1,104 companies. Based on these results, it's clear to see that customer interaction analytics is quickly becoming an imperative for business success.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Customer interaction data becomes vital"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Customer interaction data becomes vital</h2> <p>The rise of generative AI large language models (LLMs) has propelled customer interaction analytics into the realm of a corporate-wide strategic asset.</p> <p>LLMs analyze large volumes of unstructured data, including call transcripts, recordings, videos and screen sharing at a rapid clip to produce meaningful insights. LLMs also uplevel deliverables with interactivity, meaning business leaders can access static intelligence and query those insights in real time. CX leaders and other company executives can dive into the data, ask questions to refine findings or drill down into the root cause of a trend, ultimately resulting in actionable advice.</p> <p>No surprise, then, that Metrigy research participants agree that customer interaction data is a critical source of business intelligence for their organizations. About 90% of companies using conversation analytics consider customer interaction data the most important, or among the most important, data available to them for <a target="_blank" href="https://metrigy.com/optimizing-customer-interactions-insights-from-metrigys-latest-research/" rel="noopener">improving business metrics</a>. Specifically, 39.4% rate it as "vital," and 51.2% rate it as "important."</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Conversational data transcends contact center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Conversational data transcends contact center</h2> <p>Contact center supervisors are the chief beneficiaries of the insights from conversation data. With the data, contact center managers learn how agents are performing, identify skills gaps and uncover next-best actions, such as assigning hands-on training or AI coaching.</p> <p>But the interest in and reliance on conversational insights extends beyond the traditional contact center. Sales, product management, technology, security and compliance are among the other roles that can tap into the intelligence from conversational data.</p> <p>Here are examples of how these roles can use the data:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li><b>Sales leaders.</b> Evaluate metrics like word choice, time spent listening versus talking and customer sentiment for greater sales pipeline accuracy, improved close rates and more targeted coaching, especially for effective conversion and upsell techniques.</li> <li><b>Product managers.</b> Determine product updates and revisions that meet customer demand and have the biggest effect on revenue and customer satisfaction (<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/customer-satisfaction-CSAT">CSAT</a>).</li> <li><b>Technology analysts.</b> Examine channel usage, application efficiency and service interactions to correlate patterns with CSAT, providing insights to optimize digital experiences and inform IT strategy.</li> <li><b>Security and compliance leaders.</b> Identify potential data leakage, inappropriate communications and capture personally identifiable information.</li> </ul> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="C-suite wants access to customer interaction data"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>C-suite wants access to customer interaction data</h2> <p>Interest in customer interaction data is extending all the way to the top of the corporate ladder, so to speak. In Metrigy's AI study, more than 80% of companies said that analyzing customer interaction data should be a standard component of C-suite decision-makers' performance dashboards. For the highest-performing companies, based on measured business improvements, this conviction is even higher at 96.7%.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Interest in customer interaction data is extending all the way to the top of the corporate ladder. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>With access to a conversation analytics-powered dashboard, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Proactive-customer-service-drives-satisfaction-and-revenue">executives can proactively address emerging issues</a>. For example, if analysis reveals a spike in complaints about a product defect, a dashboard alert could inform customer service, communications and marketing executives in real time so they can swiftly coordinate a fix before viral social media posts cause financial and reputational problems.</p> <p>Today, companies are primarily applying interaction analytics to customer service and sales conversations. For some, this includes using analytics to compare human agent and AI agent performance. For 46.2% of companies, this benchmarking of effectiveness, quality and outcomes is the single most valuable use of the technology.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Customer analytics poses cost and security caveats"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Customer analytics poses cost and security caveats</h2> <p>As interest in conversational analytics extends to different roles, the types of conversations analyzed expand beyond customer interactions. For example, one emerging and valuable use case is analyzing internal employee conversations to uncover workflow bottlenecks and improve collaboration. Conversational analytics could expand to IT, HR and frontline employees to uncover operational inefficiencies, identify high and low performers and assess campaign outcomes.</p> <p>However, as with all things AI -- whether companies are implementing conversation analytics for customer service solely or more broadly -- there are caveats. For example, successfully using conversation analytics requires access to customer interaction data in a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/answer/How-do-companies-protect-customer-data">secure way that doesn't compromise privacy</a>.</p> <p>Additionally, companies must scrutinize the cost of implementing conversation analytics and managing related expenses as use expands. As conversation analytics increasingly drives strategic business decisions, they must ensure that organizational processes are in place to guide proper use.</p> <p>When implemented with proper due diligence, customer interaction analytics can be a game-changer, no doubt. It's clear that investing in conversation analytics is no longer merely about listening to calls; it's about extracting actionable intelligence that drives tangible business improvements. By using the power of generative AI and making conversation data visible to the C-suite, organizations are equipped to make faster, data-based decisions, leading to higher CSAT ratings, improved agent efficiency and increased revenue generation.</p> <p><i>Beth Schultz is vice president of research and principal analyst at Metrigy. She focuses her research on unified communications, collaboration and digital customer experience.</i></p> </section> Collect, dissect and act on customer interaction data. Integrate it with different company departments, especially the C-suite. And watch out for privacy issues. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/customer_service16.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Customer-interaction-analytics-spurs-better-business-results Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:53:00 GMT <p>A focus on improving CX, the growth of cloud platforms and overlapping communication needs have pushed UCaaS and CCaaS toward closer integration.</p> <p>Vendors in the unified communications as a service (<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/definition/UCaaS-Unified-Communications-as-a-Service">UCaaS</a>) and contact center as a service (<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/contact-center-as-a-service-CCaS">CCaaS</a>) markets follow various strategies to support the convergence of these platforms, including acquisitions, strategic partnerships and internal product development. Examples of vendors that offer, bundle or tightly integrate <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/feature/UCaaS-vs-CCaaS-vs-CPaaS-Whats-the-difference">UCaaS and CCaaS capabilities</a> include 8x8, RingCentral, Vonage and Zoom.</p> <p>Vendors are moving in this direction because the market has signaled that a converged UCaaS and CCaaS platform can improve CX and customer service.</p> <h3>What does a UCaaS and CCaaS integration mean?</h3> <p>UCaaS and CCaaS platforms can each streamline interactions, drive efficiency and enhance CX -- regardless of whether the customers are internal or external. Integrating these platforms can give users access to capabilities traditionally associated with both UCaaS and CCaaS environments.</p> <p>Organizations shouldn't worry about whether a single vendor offers the converged platform or if different vendors develop a tightly integrated platform. If an organization chooses the latter, it must ensure a level of comfort with support from different vendor teams.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/whats_the_difference_between_ucaas_and_ccaas-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/whats_the_difference_between_ucaas_and_ccaas-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/whats_the_difference_between_ucaas_and_ccaas-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/whats_the_difference_between_ucaas_and_ccaas-f.png 1280w" alt="Comparison of UCaaS and CCaaS platforms showing differences in purpose, features, integrations and vendors." height="306" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>UCaaS and CCaaS platforms serve different primary purposes, but overlapping features and integrations are driving convergence between internal and customer communications systems. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>The effect of convergence varies by role, with different benefits for internal business users and contact center agents.</p> <p>This “Eye on Tech” video provides a quick overview of the differences between UCaaS and CCaaS before organizations evaluate how and where the two platforms converge.</p> <div class="youtube-iframe-container"> <iframe id="ytplayer-0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AMPEABWHPW4?autoplay=0&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;widget_referrer=null&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.techtarget.com" type="text/html" height="360" width="640" frameborder="0"></iframe> </div> <h3>Business benefits of a converged platform</h3> <p>A converged UCaaS and CCaaS platform can benefit organizations, internal business users and customer service agents.</p> <p>Because both platforms are cloud-based, cloud-related benefits include the following:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>More easily supports remote work environments.</li> <li>Improves ability to scale and address fluctuating staffing needs.</li> <li>Offers easier access to advanced technologies for business and contact center users.</li> <li>Reduces the number of vendors supporting different platforms.</li> <li>Lowers the number of integrations required for other systems, such as CRM platforms.</li> <li>Improves <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/customer-journey-map">customer journey</a> reporting even as customers travel between contact center agents and individuals outside the contact center.</li> <li>Offers better pricing.</li> </ul> <p>Internal business users could also gain access to tools previously only available to contact center agents, including the following:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Screen pop-ups, which let business users quickly see details about other call participants.</li> <li>Quality <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Best-practices-for-call-center-monitoring">monitoring tools</a> to ensure users interact with customers properly.</li> <li><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/speech-analytics">Speech analytics</a> to analyze calls, determine a call's root cause and identify interactions that might require additional treatment.</li> </ul> <p>Contact center agents would gain access to tools previously used only by internal business users, including the following:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Team collaboration tools to get support from experts outside of the contact center.</li> <li>Video conferencing as an alternative communication channel with customers.</li> </ul> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> A converged UCaaS and CCaaS platform can improve CX and customer service. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <h3>Considerations before adoption</h3> <p>Even with the benefits available from a converged UCaaS and CCaaS platform, organizations must still perform due diligence to ensure that this strategy can work for their operations.</p> <p>Before deciding, organizations should take the following actions:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Develop business requirements for users and contact center agents to ensure the system can support their needs.</li> <li>Ensure the converged platform delivers clear operational or CX value beyond what separate UCaaS and CCaaS tools provide. Avoid adopting convergence based on market momentum alone.</li> <li>When selecting the platform, organizations need a single point of support when issues arise. Reaching out to references and researching can help.</li> </ul> <p>The convergence of UCaaS and CCaaS is in motion. Vendors are moving quickly to develop new offerings in the marketplace. Organizations must determine how a converged platform could improve the experiences of internal and external customers and take advantage of this opportunity.</p> <p>As vendors continue to blur the lines between internal and customer communications, organizations will need to revisit platform decisions regularly as capabilities and integration depth evolve.</p> <p><b>Editor's note:</b> <i>This article was updated in January 2026 to i</i><i>mprove clarity, flow and the overall reader experience.</i><i> </i></p> <p><em>Scott Sachs is president and founder of SJS Solutions, a consultancy that specializes in contact center strategy assessments and technology selection.</em></p> UCaaS and CCaaS platforms continue to converge as organizations look to unify internal and customer communications. Integration can deliver benefits, but it requires planning and clear requirements. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/telecommunications_g1247980427.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-the-convergence-of-UCaaS-and-CCaaS-affects-businesses Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:15:00 GMT <p>The days of waiting for the customer to call you are over -- or should be. That is, if your customer experience strategy relies on inbound interactions, you're already behind. Today, leading companies see proactive customer service outreach as a strategic imperative. As a result, they are shifting their focus from reactive problem solving to proactive customer support.</p> <p>Why the urgency? Because consumers expect it, and your bottom line demands it.</p> <p>Metrigy checked in with CX professionals on their plans for proactive outreach. In its "Customer Experience Optimization (CXO): 2025-26" study, Metrigy found all but 4% of companies weren't reaching out to customers proactively, planning to start doing so by the end of the year, or evaluating how to get started.</p> <p>Earlier Metrigy research showed that nearly 70% of companies expect customer service to shift from being mostly inbound to mostly proactive by 2027. Based on this research, it's clear to see why companies are <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/The-importance-of-being-proactive-in-customer-service">forging ahead on proactive outreach</a>.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="What is proactive outreach?"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>What is proactive outreach?</h2> <p>Proactive outreach is a CX strategy that initiates communication with customers based on predicted needs or potential issues, rather than waiting for customers to reach out. Proactive outreach, especially when paired with AI, alleviates inbound calling volumes.</p> <p>In large part, AI has sparked the transformation from reactive to proactive customer service. With AI, a company can ensure its proactive outreach is timely and highly personalized. In fact, AI is now the top method companies use to reach out proactively, using both agentic -- autonomous and task completing -- and non-agentic AI interactions, according to Metrigy. This is a shift from a year ago, when manual, human-initiated outreach was the top method.</p> <p>Year over year, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/how-negative-reviews-improve-customer-satisfaction/746944/" rel="noopener">improving customer satisfaction</a> has been a top benefit of proactive outreach, Metrigy research shows. But it's important to remember that proactive engagement won't lead to happy customers if it's too intrusive, delivered in the wrong channel or serves no tangible purpose for the individual. Proactive engagement works best when it delivers value -- before it's requested or expected.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Keep the customer front and center"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Keep the customer front and center</h2> <p>When plotting a proactive customer engagement strategy, keep these three goals in mind:</p> <ol class="default-list"> <li><b>Prevent a problem before it happens.</b> Solve issues before they escalate, such as alerting a customer to a delivery delay or a fee-triggering low bank balance. These steps build trust and loyalty.</li> <li><b>Save money.</b> Alert customers about upcoming sales or loyalty perks. This cements brand allegiance and fosters engagement.</li> <li><b>Save time.</b> Offer streamlined reordering or rescheduling options, which minimizes effort for time-conscious customers.</li> </ol> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Set a strong technology foundation"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Set a strong technology foundation</h2> <p>From a technology perspective, businesses need a strong foundation to shore up their proactive outreach. Set the groundwork by <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Contact-center-back-end-integrations-drive-revenue-growth">integrating CX and CX-adjacent platforms</a>, using AI to predict the need for proactive outreach and optimize communications. Also, embrace agentic capabilities to introduce autonomy into the process. And remember these three interrelated guidelines:</p> <ol class="default-list"> <li><b>Integrate everything.</b> Integrate contact center platforms with core enterprise systems, such customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Without such integration, the proactive effort may be too manually intensive. On the other hand, seamless CRM integration ensures companies can make proactive outreach decisions based on access to customer history, sales status and previous interactions. ERP integration adds financial, inventory and supply chain data. In short, platform integration is crucial to make outreach relevant rather than generic.</li> <li><b>Use AI to optimize outreach.</b> While many companies still use manual processes and rules-based automation, AI-powered proactive outreach now edges past these traditional methods. AI plays a central role in analyzing historical behavior, customer preferences and real-time sentiment by <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/tip/Learn-benefits-and-challenges-of-CRM-and-ERP-integration">pulling data from CRM, ERP</a> and other systems connected to the contact center to pinpoint outreach opportunities and generate messaging. AI helps determine the optimal message tone, timing and content based on context, such as negative reviews or support interactions. In Metrigy's <a target="_blank" href="https://metrigy.com/product/customer-experience-optimization-2025-26/" rel="noopener">study</a>, 52% of companies use AI analytics to determine the next-best customer for outreach, while another 32% plan to do so. The percentage breakdown is similar for companies using and planning to use AI to personalize proactive communications.</li> <li><b>Deploy agentic AI for streamlined workflows.</b> Agentic AI, which uses advanced frameworks to make decisions and act autonomously, can <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366634543/Early-adopters-of-agentic-AI-for-customer-service-offer-advice">manage complex tasks from start to finish</a>. Consider outbound sales campaigns, which 43% of companies studied are already conducting via proactive communication. For this use case, agentics can identify sales leads, qualify them, send the campaign and complete a sale without human intervention.</li> </ol> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Strategies to maximize proactive outreach"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Strategies to maximize proactive outreach</h2> <p>Proactive outreach can be a powerful revenue generator. The CXO study found 62% of companies using proactive outreach see revenue generation as a primary benefit. In fact, proactive outreach increased revenue 18%, on average, for some companies. Clearly, proactive outreach is proving highly effective to identify and close sales opportunities.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Proactive customer outreach increased revenue 18%, on average, for some companies. </figure> <figcaption> <strong>Metrigy</strong>CX Optimization study </figcaption> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>Here are examples of AI-fueled proactive strategies that help businesses bring in more money:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li><b>Create contextual upsell and renewal campaigns.</b> Use AI to analyze customer history and sentiment during interactions. If AI detects positive sentiment and relevant buying patterns, it can trigger a personalized upsell offer via a follow-up channel. In action, an investment firm could use AI to learn what prompts customers to invest. Do specific news events trigger investments, or do market fluctuations, for example? Based on this data, an AI agent reaches out on the customer's preferred channel to suggest a market pick, complete with analysis tailored to the investor's typical concerns.</li> <li><b>Personalize product recommendations.</b> To move beyond generic cross-sells, AI can analyze a customer's specific purchase history, style and demographics to recommend highly tailored items. Reminders to order or renew products or services are a top proactive use case.</li> <li><b>Accelerate cash flow and collections.</b> Even the historically sensitive area of collections -- the effort to recover money owed -- can <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-accounts-receivable-AI-increases-cash-flow-and-efficiency">benefit significantly from smart proactive outreach</a>. For collections, companies using proactive outreach technology have found a 33.6% increase in their success rate, Metrigy's research shows. With proactive outreach, use branded calling and texting, as people are more likely to respond when the outreach is clearly identified.</li> </ul> <p>Similarly, proactive engagements can positively affect customer loyalty and retention, netting companies repeat business. Proactive tactics here include:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li><b>Pre-empt churn with early alerts.</b> Use AI to identify at-risk customers before they formally complain or churn. Given the potential sensitivity of such customers, applying the human touch would work well here. Supervisors or agents should reach out manually to address the issue at hand before it results in lost business with the customer.</li> <li><b>Preventative fraud notification.</b> In financial services, 42.9% of companies studied use proactive outreach for fraud notifications. An agentic AI agent can detect anomalies in a bank account, lock the account and proactively notify the customer of the next steps, minimizing financial loss and boosting trust.</li> </ul> <p>By investing in platform integration and AI, businesses can intelligently automate outreach, tailor messages precisely and engage customers in the right channels at the right time. The future of CX is proactively seeking out customers and delivering value. If these steps are done correctly, customers will reward companies with increased loyalty and revenue.</p> <p><i>Beth Schultz is vice president of research and principal analyst at Metrigy. She focuses her research on unified communications, collaboration and digital customer experience.</i></p> </section> Proactive customer outreach provides several benefits for businesses. It generates revenue, improves customer satisfaction and takes advantage of AI workflows. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/customer_service04.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Proactive-customer-service-drives-satisfaction-and-revenue Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:48:00 GMT <p>Modern digital advertising relies on a complex web of third-party code, real-time actions and data-sharing services that few organizations fully understand or map end to end.</p> <p>A single page load can trigger a cascade of tags, pixels, JavaScript libraries, iframes and server-side calls across various platforms for different teams. That complexity creates an ad tech supply chain where <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/feature/4-basic-types-of-business-risks-in-the-enterprise">performance and risk are inseparable</a>, and third-party ad tech dependencies can silently become production dependencies.</p> <p>Now, ad tech risk management is becoming an IT responsibility, not just a marketing concern. Marketing teams may select and operate platforms, but IT leaders handle site reliability, security controls, incident response and data privacy compliance. When third-party ad tech dependencies run in the browser on high-traffic pages, they become production dependencies. They can slow the site, break page functionality, expand the attack surface or create unapproved data flows.</p> <p>Recent security events show why this cannot be treated as a low-risk add-on:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>In 2024, the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/366592015/Supply-chain-attacks-conducted-through-Polyfillio-service">Polyfill.io supply chain compromise</a> demonstrated how bad actors could alter a widely used third-party script source after ownership changes, exposing any site that still referenced it.</li> <li>In 2025, Microsoft <a target="_blank" href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/03/06/malvertising-campaign-leads-to-info-stealers-hosted-on-github/" rel="noopener">reported</a> a large-scale malvertising campaign it detected in December 2024, where redirects from illegal streaming sites led users to malware hosted on platforms, including GitHub. Attackers used multiple ad networks to spread malware to Android users, showing how bad actors can use the ad ecosystem as a distribution channel when controls fail upstream.&nbsp;</li> </ul> <p>Third-party ad tech dependency risk tends to show up as a chain reaction. A tag or vendor issue can start as a marketing tech problem, but quickly become a site reliability incident, a security investigation or a compliance problem.</p> <p>With the right governance and technical controls, organizations can maintain high marketing performance while reducing risk exposure across the ad tech stack.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Understanding third-party dependency risk in ad tech"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Understanding third-party dependency risk in ad tech</h2> <p>In ad tech, third-party dependency risk refers to the potential for externally managed code or services to harm the business through performance regressions, security exposure, compliance gaps, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatabackup/feature/The-cost-of-downtime-and-how-businesses-can-avoid-it">operational downtime</a> or brand damage. It includes everything the marketing organization adds to digital properties to acquire, measure and monetize audiences.</p> <p>For CIOs and enterprise architects, ad tech risk management should start with a shared vocabulary across IT, security, marketing and legal teams.</p> <p>The following categories represent the most common ways risk manifests.</p> <h3>Technical performance risk</h3> <p>Third-party scripts can slow down pages, as they add network requests, consume main-thread browser time and increase the likelihood of tag conflicts. Even well-optimized <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/First-party-vs-third-party-cookies-Whats-the-difference">first-party code can be hindered by third-party JavaScript</a> that loads late, loads inconsistently or works excessively during page interaction. Industry guidance and independent measurement both flag third-party scripts as a frequent cause of poor UX metrics.</p> <h3>Security risk</h3> <p>Any third-party script establishes an external trust relationship within the user's session. If a bad actor compromises a vendor or a dependency in its supply chain, malicious code can reach production pages without being deployed by the organization. The Polyfill.io compromise shows how a single shared script source can become a supply-chain event for many unrelated organizations.</p> <h3>Privacy and compliance risk</h3> <p>Ad tech often touches identifiers, cookies, device signals and behavioral data. Risk emerges when tags fire before consent, when consent settings are misconfigured, or when vendors collect more data than the business intended.</p> <p>This is where <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/State-of-data-privacy-laws">data privacy compliance</a> depends on technical enforcement, not just policy. If the consent model and tag model don't align, compliance gaps can appear quietly and persist for months.</p> <h3>Operational risk</h3> <p>Vendors have outages. They also push changes that can alter behavior, endpoints or data collection patterns. Google's own status reports show that even major platforms can experience multi-day incidents, and CIOs must plan for that risk in their monitoring and contingency playbooks.</p> <h3>Reputational risk</h3> <p>Customers tend to judge the brand, not the vendor, when pages break, performance degrades or data handling feels intrusive. Reputational risk also includes the downstream effects of the ad ecosystem itself, including user distrust and scrutiny from regulators or partners when the organization cannot explain what third parties do on its pages.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Governance models for ad tech dependencies"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Governance models for ad tech dependencies</h2> <p>Governance for third-party ad tech dependencies works best when it resembles a streamlined version of <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/feature/8-top-enterprise-risk-management-trends">third-party risk management</a>, rather than a one-off marketing process. It should help marketing teams move quickly, while making sure every new tag, pixel or integration meets business standards for security, privacy, reliability and support.</p> <p>A risk-based approach is important because not every tag carries the same exposure. Some simply measure page views. Others can access user identifiers, collect form data or open outbound connections to dozens of partners.</p> <p>A practical model starts with shared ownership across four functions:</p> <ol type="1" start="1" class="default-list"> <li>Marketing and marketing technology teams own business intent, use cases and vendor selection.</li> <li>IT and enterprise architecture teams own implementation patterns, performance standards and change control.</li> <li>Security teams own third-party access risk, monitoring expectations and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/feature/5-critical-steps-to-creating-an-effective-incident-response-plan">incident response alignment</a>.</li> <li>Legal and privacy teams own data processing terms, consent requirements and compliance obligations.</li> </ol> <p>An ad tech governance playbook should be a living document that defines how the organization onboards, reviews and retires ad tech. It should be short enough to use, but specific enough to enforce.</p> <p>A strong baseline includes the following criteria:</p> <ul type="disc" class="default-list"> <li><b>Approval workflow for new tags.</b> Require a short intake and risk-tiered review so teams can't deploy higher-risk scripts without approval from the security and privacy teams.</li> <li><b>Periodic script audits. </b>Run recurring <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/IT-audit-information-technology-audit">audits</a> to inventory tags, remove redundancies, retire unused vendors and confirm that consent and data flows still match the approved use case.</li> <li><b>Standardized contract language and service-level agreement expectations. </b>Standardize terms for uptime, support, change notifications, security controls and subcontractor disclosure so external dependencies have enforceable expectations.</li> <li><b>Data minimization standards. </b>Define what data can be collected, what is prohibited and what requires escalation, so tags capture only what is needed for the stated purpose.</li> <li><b>Breach and incident notification requirements. </b>Set notification timelines and escalation paths, so security teams are informed quickly and can coordinate a response across groups.</li> </ul> <p>With this playbook, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/tip/Top-IT-governance-best-practices">IT governance</a> for marketing technology becomes repeatable and measurable, and it creates a clean handoff to the technical controls that reduce day-to-day dependency risk.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/key_steps_in_third_party_risk_management-f.png"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/key_steps_in_third_party_risk_management-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/key_steps_in_third_party_risk_management-f_mobile.png 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/key_steps_in_third_party_risk_management-f.png 1280w" alt="A chart listing six steps for third-party risk management." height="299" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Whether ad tech or another system, these steps can help IT teams manage potential risks from third parties. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Technical controls to reduce risk"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Technical controls to reduce risk</h2> <p>Once a governance model exists, IT teams can automate risk reduction through tooling and guardrails, without relying on someone to remember a checklist.</p> <p>The most effective technical controls, listed below, focus on two components: limiting what third-party code can do, and simplifying problem detection and quick rollback when something changes.</p> <h3>Tag managers and container governance</h3> <p>Tag management best practices start with treating the tag manager like production code:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Limit publish rights.</li> <li>Require approvals.</li> <li>Separate development and production workflows.</li> <li>Reduce or eliminate unrestricted custom HTML tags unless they are reviewed like any other code change.</li> </ul> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/Types-of-access-control">Role-based access and strong authentication controls</a> are easy wins, because they directly reduce the chance of an accidental or unauthorized tag going live.</p> <h3>Real-time script monitoring and rollback</h3> <p>Organizations should monitor third-party behavior in real user sessions, including which vendors load, the latency they introduce and whether errors spike after tag changes.</p> <p>Teams should also have a rollback path that does not require a full site deployment. Third-party performance monitoring can help isolate which dependency causes regressions when marketing, analytics and ad services all change frequently.</p> <h3>Sandbox environment for vendor tags</h3> <p>IT teams should test high-risk tags in a controlled environment that mirrors production pages and consent behavior, so teams can validate performance, confirm data flows and observe unexpected downstream calls before release.</p> <h3>Limit permissions and isolate risky scripts</h3> <p><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/Browser-detection-and-response-fills-gaps-in-security-programs">Browser controls</a> like Content Security Policy <a target="_blank" href="https://content-security-policy.com/" rel="noopener">can reduce</a> exposure, restrict which script sources can run and narrow where data can be sent. These limits help contain the effect of a compromised or misbehaving dependency.</p> <h3>Integrity checks for third-party resources</h3> <p>Where feasible, security features like Subresource Integrity <a target="_blank" href="https://www.w3.org/TR/sri-2/" rel="noopener">can ensure</a> that a fetched script matches an expected version, providing a practical control against third-party resources that should not change silently.</p> <h3>Content delivery networks, failover and performance budgets</h3> <p>Organizations should include third-party limits in their site performance budgets, then enforce them with automated alerts and removal workflows when budgets are exceeded. This prevents tag bloat from becoming a long-term drag on digital experience.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Resilience in an evolving regulatory environment"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Resilience in an evolving regulatory environment</h2> <p>Data privacy compliance is a moving target because requirements vary by jurisdiction, and enforcement is increasing, especially around tracking and cookie consent. For many organizations, that means operating against a patchwork of U.S. state laws plus stricter expectations in the EU. Privacy teams need a reliable way to track what changes and when they become enforceable.</p> <p>At the same time, the third-party cookie roadmap remains unsettled. In April 2025, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Will-Google-kill-third-party-cookies">Google said Chrome would not introduce</a> a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies and would maintain its current approach, while continuing work on other tracking protections and Privacy Sandbox-related efforts. That uncertainty increases dependency risk because identity, measurement and attribution vendors can change behavior quickly in response.</p> <p>Resilience comes from treating consent and data controls as architecture:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Keep a clear record of which tags collect what.</li> <li>Enforce consent signals consistently.</li> <li>Reduce vendor data access to what is required.</li> <li>Review high-impact ad tech decisions alongside broader risk management priorities.</li> </ul> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Future-proofing the ad tech stack"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Future-proofing the ad tech stack</h2> <p>Future-proofing starts with a clear vendor strategy. Consolidation can reduce complexity and shrink the attack surface, but it also increases concentration risk if one platform outage or policy change takes down a critical workflow.</p> <p>The most durable approach is to standardize on a small set of core vendors, then maintain swap-ready alternatives for the few functions that are revenue-critical or high-risk: identity, measurement and ad serving. <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/infographic/Salesforce-acquisitions-of-2019-are-vendors-biggest-yet">Ad tech M&amp;A activity</a> has remained active, which is another reason to plan for vendor churn and product consolidation.</p> <p>AI is also reshaping ad delivery and campaign operations, including targeting, creative generation and optimization. That adds a new class of failure modes, such as off-brand outputs, brand integrity issues and decision logic that is harder to explain during audits or incidents, which makes governance and monitoring non-negotiable.</p> <p>From an architectural standpoint, resilience comes from modular design:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Isolate tags.</li> <li>Minimize data shared by default.</li> <li>Document dependencies.</li> <li>Make it possible to disable or replace a vendor without rewriting the site.</li> </ul> <p><em>Griffin LaFleur is a MarketingOps and RevOps professional working for Swing Education. Throughout his career, LaFleur has also worked at agencies and independently as a B2B sales and marketing consultant.</em></p> </section> Ad tech risk management is now vital for IT, not just marketing. Organizations must address third-party code risks to protect their brand's performance, security and compliance. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/mobile_g1182604339.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/tip/How-to-manage-dependency-risk-in-third-party-ad-tech Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:18:00 GMT <p>Field service operations have shifted significantly in recent years as businesses adapt to hybrid work models, rising customer expectations and increasingly complex asset environments. Some field service capabilities -- such as mobile scheduling, remote diagnostics and automated work orders -- were once considered nice-to-have features. Now, these have become mission-critical tools for large organizations managing distributed workforces and high-value assets.</p> <p>For enterprise technology buyers and C-suite teams, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/field-service-management-FSM">field service management</a> (FSM) software plays a direct role in operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and revenue protection.</p> <p>Executives evaluating FSM platforms must look beyond basic scheduling and dispatch features and focus on scalability, integration with ERP and CRM systems, real-time asset data, offline mobile reliability, security and analytics that support utilization, parts management and service-level agreement performance. Key concerns during vendor evaluation include total cost of ownership, implementation complexity, data governance and the vendor's ability to support global operations at scale.</p> <p>The move to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/15-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-remote-work">remote and hybrid work</a> accelerated adoption of FSM platforms that help businesses improve productivity, extend asset life and provide field technicians with tools they need to work efficiently. Modern FSM software typically combines scheduling, dispatch, inventory tracking, mobile workforce enablement and analytics into a single platform.</p> <p>In this article, explore the top field service management vendors to know in 2026. The vendors are listed in alphabetical order. This list was compiled based on a combination of market reports and vendor rankings from leading research firms, plus additional research by TechTarget editors.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="1. IFS Field Service Management"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>1. IFS Field Service Management</h2> <p>Gartner has labeled&nbsp;IFS Field Service Management&nbsp;a leader in field service management. The platform focuses on scheduling, contracts and operational execution, with capabilities to manage work orders, spare parts, service contracts, warranties and service projects. IFS supports integrations with major CRM and ERP platforms, including Salesforce, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ifs.com/book-a-demo" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;is available upon request.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>IFS Field Service Management excels at parts logistics, contracts, billing and warranty management. It also supports workforce forecasting, or planning, which vendors have historically overlooked. Configuration tools and business rules allow organizations to adapt workflows without extensive custom code.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>For large enterprises, implementation can be complex and resource-intensive, particularly in highly customized environments. Organizations may need to work with experienced implementation partners to manage integrations, change management and deployment timelines, which can affect overall project cost and duration.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="2. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>2. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service</h2> <p>Dynamics 365 Field Service is another leader in this market. The software includes common features for FSM, such as scheduling optimization, route planning, work order management and analytics, as well as IoT and augmented reality (AR) capabilities to support remote diagnostics and guided repairs.</p> <p>Dynamics 365 Field Service is free to try.&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365/products/field-service/pricing" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;starts at $50 per user monthly for the Contractor plan and $105 per user monthly for standard Field Service.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>Organizations can deploy Dynamics 365 Field Service in private, public,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/definition/G-cloud-government-cloud">government cloud</a>&nbsp;and hybrid environments. Microsoft's broad geographic reach means global customers can receive product support directly from the company or through one of its partners.</p> <p>The platform's strengths include its IoT capabilities for equipment triage and AR-guided support. Dynamics 365 Field Service can manage complete operations and integrate with customer portals.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Enterprises that are not already standardized on Microsoft technologies may face a learning curve. Advanced customization often depends on <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcontentmanagement/definition/Microsoft-Power-Platform?Offer=ab_MeteredFormCopyDef_var1">Power Platform</a> tools and partner expertise, which can increase implementation complexity for highly specialized service organizations.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="3. Oracle Field Service"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>3. Oracle Field Service</h2> <p>Oracle Field Service offers scheduling, routing and forecasting capabilities. Oracle touts&nbsp;<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/tip/Ways-AI-can-help-in-field-service-management">AI as a tool to optimize</a>&nbsp;and automatically route resources. It can also enable real-time traffic and street-level routing of field service technicians.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.oracle.com/cx/service/field-service-management/" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;for Oracle Field Service is available upon request.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>Oracle Field Service offers strong scheduling optimization and forecasting capabilities. The platform receives regular quarterly upgrades and offers configurable workflows that support complex service environments.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Some organizations report that dashboards and reporting require additional configuration to meet enterprise reporting needs. Support responsiveness and UI complexity may be considerations for large deployments.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="4. Praxedo"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>4. Praxedo</h2> <p>Praxedo is a true field service management vendor, as it only offers field service management software. The product offers web and mobile apps and includes technician performance tracking, schedule optimization and a customer portal. It also includes APIs and connectors to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/feature/Evaluating-todays-leading-ERP-software-vendors">ERP and other systems</a>.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.praxedo.com/our-pricing/" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;starts at $39 per user monthly for its Start tier, with additional tiers that increase in price.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>Praxedo is known for fast deployment, ease of use and relatively low implementation costs. The vendor offers industry-specific deployment approaches and flexible integration options, which can simplify onboarding for organizations modernizing legacy field service processes.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Praxedo offers fewer native capabilities for advanced IoT use cases, predictive maintenance and complex parts sourcing than larger enterprise FSM platforms. Organizations requiring those capabilities may need to rely on third-party integrations, which can increase overall complexity.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="5. Salesforce Field Service"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>5. Salesforce Field Service</h2> <p>As part of Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce Field Service may appeal to organizations that already use Salesforce products. Key features include automation for work order prioritization, intelligent technician assignment, virtual support and operational performance analytics.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.salesforce.com/service/field-service-management/pricing/" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;for this platform is split into different tiers. Dispatcher and Technician plans are $175 per user monthly and $230 per user monthly for the Field Service Plus tier. Contractor licensing options are also available.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>Salesforce Field Service integrates tightly with Salesforce CRM and Service Cloud, providing a unified view of customer interactions and service operations. The platform supports extensive configuration through <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/Apex">Apex</a>&nbsp;and low-code tools and scales well for large, global enterprises.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Costs can increase significantly as organizations add users, features and additional Salesforce products. Enterprises with complex service models may require specialized Salesforce expertise to manage customization and long-term maintenance.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="6. SAP Field Service Management"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>6. SAP Field Service Management</h2> <p>Organizations that already use SAP may gravitate toward&nbsp;SAP Field Service Management&nbsp;to keep all its technology under one vendor. The platform offers real-time field service metrics, enables technicians to create reports on site and uses AI and machine learning (ML) for scheduling. SAP also offers this tool as a SaaS product.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.sap.com/products/scm/field-service-management/pricing.html" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;starts at $84 per resource per month, with additional editions and pricing structures available depending on deployment and contract terms.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>In addition to its tight integrations with other SAP products, this platform offers strong functionality to manage complex equipment structures, subcontractors and equipment and parts logistics. Additionally, users may find the tool relatively intuitive and easy to use.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Organizations that aren't SAP customers may view this platform's integration with other SAP products as a downside. Implementation and support responsiveness can vary depending on partner involvement and deployment scope.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="7. ServiceMax Core"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>7. ServiceMax Core</h2> <p>Organizations that need support for contracts, warranties and complex processes may turn to ServiceMax Core. This product features customer self-service and field change order support, which manages changes and updates in the field.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ptc.com/en/products/servicemax#contact-us" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;is available upon request.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>ServiceMax Core's strengths lie in its partnerships and alliances, which help extend functionality with AI for parts,&nbsp;low-code development&nbsp;and compliance requirements. The platform also offers a companion mobile app and real-time data to technicians.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Integration with existing enterprise systems can require significant configuration and API investment. Organizations with advanced scheduling requirements may need additional customization to meet operational needs.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="8. ServiceNow Field Service Management"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>8. ServiceNow Field Service Management</h2> <p>ServiceNow Field Service Management offers a dispatcher workspace, a mobile agent app, asset and cost management, contractor management and analytics. Advanced editions offer predictive intelligence, performance analytics and virtual agents.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.servicenow.com/products/field-service-management.html#plans-packages" rel="noopener">Pricing</a>&nbsp;is available upon request.</p> <h3>Benefits</h3> <p>ServiceNow Field Service Management offers scalability and lets users extend capabilities to other platforms. Organizations already using ServiceNow for IT or operations management can extend field service capabilities without adding a separate system.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>Because field service management is part of a broader platform strategy, organizations may need to invest time in configuration to support highly specialized service workflows. Enterprises seeking deep FSM specialization may compare ServiceNow against vendors that focus exclusively on field service use cases.</p> <p><b>Editor's note:</b>&nbsp;<i>This article was updated to reflect changes in field service management software features and pricing.</i></p> <p><i>Christine Campbell is a freelance writer specializing in business and B2B technology.</i></p> </section> The rise in remote work has spawned innovations in field service management. As a result, enterprise tech buyers now have several FSM product features to consider. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/strategy_a42425262.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Field-service-management-software-vendors-to-know Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT <p>Don't call it a copilot, Salesforce says, but here it is: A reimagined Slackbot, the agentic AI assistant for Slack users that was previewed at Dreamforce, has begun a phased rollout to groups of Slack users.</p> <p>With supporting integrations, the agentic AI-powered assistant will be able to analyze a user's data to answer plain-language queries, similar to its Microsoft Copilot counterpart, which can also be connected to Slack. Like Microsoft Copilot, Slackbot is designed to save time and reduce the drudgery of everyday tasks and reports that require gathering data, from basic HR vacation policy queries to complex annual reports.</p> <p>Early internal use cases at Slack include gathering data for annual employee reviews, narrowing customer lists to target specific customer groups for sales and promotions, and more across finance, marketing and engineering, according to Slack executives.</p> <p>Ideas for use cases spread throughout the company via prompt-sharing in groups and messaging as employees discover them, said Rob Seaman, chief product officer and interim CEO at Slack. In the case of early customer Beast Industries, the parent company for influencer MrBeast, one use case was setting up onboarding documents for new employees.</p> <p>"I just onboarded a new director in my department, and I told Slackbot to write a whole onboarding welcome package in <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/news/252525177/Slack-Canvas-helps-tame-information-overload-in-chat">Canvas</a> based on all the most recent projects in the last two to three months," said Luis Madrigal, CIO at Beast Industries. "Within less than 15 seconds, I had a full onboarding document. I continue to be amazed by the way that the company continues to leverage it and the use cases that we continue to find, up and down the chain, from entry-level staff all the way to the senior and executive level."</p> <p>At its launch, Slackbot can read video, presentations and images, but it cannot output to those formats. That is something Slack "is looking at" adding, said Amy Bauer, director of product management at Slack. In a similar vein, Slackbot can now read calendar data, but not create and book meetings; that functionality will be added soon, she said.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/benioff_dreamforce_2025-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/benioff_dreamforce_2025-f_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/benioff_dreamforce_2025-f_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/benioff_dreamforce_2025-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Photo of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaking at Dreamforce 2025" data-credit="Don Fluckinger" height="420" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff previewed the updated Slackbot at Dreamforce 2025. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Keeping Slack as its own entity"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Keeping Slack as its own entity</h2> <p>Slack, which is owned by Salesforce but operates as its own entity, remains a popular collaboration tool among a wide swath of developers who aren't necessarily connected to the Salesforce mothership, said Rebecca Wettemann, founder of Valoir, an independent technology analyst firm. Salesforce would like to hold on to those users who stayed on after Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/252528115/Salesforce-Slack-integrations-continue-as-cofounder-departs">left in January 2023</a>, a little more than two years after Salesforce bought his company.</p> <p>Providing those users with their own Slackbot development and automation suite is part of Salesforce's strategy to retain existing Slack users from before the merger -- and to challenge Microsoft Teams in the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/tip/Connected-workspace-apps-improve-collaboration-management">collaboration market</a>.</p> <p>"What Salesforce has recognized is that there is a valuable developer community there that is really, really critical for future battles against Microsoft," Wettemann said. "Embracing this Slackbot approach -- developing AI capabilities outside of Agentforce, talking about the Slack platform as a place for AI to live -- is an important part of them continuing to engage both the customer base and community."</p> <p>It's a balancing act, as Salesforce also wants to convince more of its users to deploy Slack. <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchbusinessanalytics/news/366622614/Tableau-enters-the-agentic-AI-era-with-the-launch-of-Next">As with Tableau</a>, Salesforce must cater to loyalists while also demonstrating to the Salesforce faithful how a tightly integrated collaboration platform can automate the work of sales, marketing, service and e-commerce -- or, as Benioff once called Slack, "the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/252505372/Initial-Salesforce-Slack-integrations-Sales-service-marketing">new interface for Salesforce</a>."</p> <p>Seaman said that there are more than a million Slack developers. Integration partners will be able to connect Slackbot as a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatamanagement/feature/One-year-of-MCP-Support-a-must-for-data-management-vendors">Model Context Protocol (MCP)</a> server for AI agents in the future. For now, developers have Enterprise Search connectors for Slackbot to access third-party data, in addition to <a target="_blank" href="https://salesforcedevops.net/index.php/2026/01/13/slackbot-gets-a-glow-up/" rel="noopener">a few other connectors</a> such as the aforementioned calendar integration.</p> <p>The updated Slackbot is free to Slack Business+ and Enterprise+ subscribers.</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> </section> Slack's chat assistant morphs into an agent. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/machine_learning_g1184268577.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366637263/Slackbots-agentic-AI-makeover-gives-users-their-copilot Wed, 14 Jan 2026 09:38:00 GMT <p>While visual search has been around for a long time, it remained a niche offering until recently. For example, Google Lens, an AI-powered visual search tool launched in 2017, logged 12 billion visual searches per month in 2023. Two years later, that figure jumped to more than 25 billion. In fact, Lens queries are one of the fastest growing types of search, according to Google, and one in five Lens searches shows commercial intent.</p> <p>That's pretty staggering growth. So what happened? AI happened. Advanced machine learning (ML) models now enable <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/GenAI-search-vs-traditional-search-engines-How-they-differ">more accurate and useful search results</a>. Additionally, the growth of AI search results has made the matching of images more important for an organization's search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.</p> <p>As a result, organizations must ensure that the images they publish online are optimized for today's AI-powered visual search. Organizations that don't adjust to visual search strategies could be left off search results and lose mind share and revenue. For that reason, it's vital that content managers and chief experience officers understand how to optimize their images to get products in front of customers online.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="What is visual search?"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>What is visual search?</h2> <p>Visual search is searching for something using an image instead of text. Imagine seeing a shirt, chair, piece of art or device that you don't recognize or want. You can snap a picture and pull up results that let you know exactly what you are seeing. Depending on the item, and how the images are tagged, you may even be able to buy the item right there.</p> <p>This differs from an image search that tries to locate images based on descriptions in text. The results of an image search depend on correctly guessing the terms that the image publisher used to tag it. Using a picture for searching is much easier to capture all those relevant details.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="How does visual search work?"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>How does visual search work?</h2> <p>Visual search begins with a picture and a question: "What is this?"</p> <p>From there, visual search uses a combination of AI and ML to process <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/image-recognition">image recognition</a>, separating the picture's key object from its background. The search engine then uses a repository to find matching images, creating a list of likely matches.</p> <p>The most important part of the result set is the embedded <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/image-metadata">metadata</a> that is returned with each image. Results help inform people about the item in their image. In addition to the name, the results may include a link to the source of the image and possibly the price of the item if it's for sale.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="How to optimize content for visual search"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>How to optimize content for visual search</h2> <p>As more people search for items through visual search or depend on AI search results, it has become more important for organizations to optimize for visual search. Many of the foundational aspects of SEO for websites remain important, but they are particularly crucial for images. Optimizing images correctly is essential for SEO and can significantly affect <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcontentmanagement/answer/How-does-e-commerce-search-work">e-commerce conversion rates</a>.</p> <p>High-quality images are vital. Before, images needed to be good enough for people to interpret. However, ML tools perform better with higher-quality images to process. Newer image formats, such as WebP or AVIF, provide <a target="_blank" href="https://crystallize.com/blog/avif-vs-webp" rel="noopener">higher-quality images</a> without increasing file size.</p> <p>Multiple images should be provided for each item. This supports visual search results because providing several pictures taken from different angles increases the chance of a match.</p> <p>Additionally, images should show items in the context in which they exist. Seeing a camp chair in the woods may help match a picture someone takes of a chair while camping. Seeing the same chair in a kitchen would make a successful match more difficult. Showing multiple appropriate contexts and environments will maximize the likelihood of a match.</p> <p>Finally, image metadata matters more than it once did, as people may not know the words to describe the image. In addition to strong alt text, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatamanagement/definition/schema">schema</a> markup can add details that help people confirm the match and evaluate the website where the image is located to determine if it has the information and features they need to take their next step.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="A look at visual search tools"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>A look at visual search tools</h2> <p>Both Google Lens and Microsoft's Bing Visual Search are visual search tools for general use. Google also provides a tool called Cloud Vision API to help organizations test images for indexing. It processes images and tells organizations what Google sees when it analyzes an image. If the analysis does not meet the desired result, then the image is likely not suitable for strong visual search.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/cloud_vision_api_pocketknife-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/cloud_vision_api_pocketknife-f_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/cloud_vision_api_pocketknife-f_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/cloud_vision_api_pocketknife-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Google Cloud Vision API identifies pocketknife image." data-credit="Laurence Hart" height="266" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Google's Cloud Vision API identifies objects in images. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>Pinterest has made visual search a key part of its platform. If a person uploads an image, the search function will search its site for matching images on Pinterest. To support those users, organizations need to upload images directly to Pinterest to feed the search engine. These images will subsequently be searched by other search engines, which helps broaden the reach. However, maintaining an additional channel for Pinterest images requires more work, so organizations should ensure that Pinterest demographics match their target audience.</p> <p>Visual search is growing in importance. Even if people visiting an organization's site may be less technically savvy, they are still seeing <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/Mastering-AI-search-optimization-Key-trends-and-strategies">AI search results on Google</a>. Those AI results are partially generated using visual search. Being part of those results is an important opportunity that organizations should not miss.</p> <p><i>Laurence Hart&nbsp;is director of consulting services at CGI Federal and has more than 20 years of IT experience.</i></p> </section> E-commerce professionals and CX leaders should follow certain visual search strategies to improve online product visibility and customer engagement. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/telecommunications_g1189468316.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Visual-search-optimizes-images-improves-customer-reach Mon, 12 Jan 2026 08:00:00 GMT <p>Salesforce's latest updates to Agentforce Commerce -- formerly Commerce Cloud -- inject AI-powered communications, personalization and purchasing tools into numerous shopping channels, including email, SMS text messaging and WhatsApp.</p> <p>The idea, Salesforce said, is that most marketing communications, including text, email and messaging app messages, are currently one-way with, depending on the channel, "Do not reply" verbiage or email addresses. To continue shopping, the customer clicks on a link to claim an offer or discount code. New Salesforce features will enable customers to respond to these messages -- and AI agents can manage the conversations, create personalized offers, upsell when opportunities present themselves, and close the sale by taking payment and facilitating orders.</p> <p>In concept, Salesforce's Two-Way Email, Two-Way SMS and Two-Way WhatsApp features could potentially convert marketing blasts into two-way conversations. In reality, the tools will help marketers manage upward of 1,000 or even 10,000 responses they receive after sending out a blast to hundreds of thousands of customers or more, said Liz Miller, analyst at Constellation Research.</p> <p>In her experience as a marketer, some small percentage of customers typically reply to, say, a coupon email offer. Many of these people would simply say, "Thanks!" But some would want to negotiate the terms of a purchase, such as expanding the items it might cover. Others would be confused if they had received multiple offers and weren't sure how or if they could be combined. Still others needed more information before using the coupon.</p> <p>The trouble is, on the scale of a million emails blasted, a couple of percentage points' response adds up to a lot of individual requests for a marketer or customer service team to address. Salesforce's <i>two-way</i> automation provides a means to feed those conversations to an AI agent, potentially scoring a few sales along the way.</p> <p>"It's solving the manpower issue of sorting through 6,000 email replies to get to the five that matter to experience," Miller said. "If I'm a marketer, you know what the least important thing in my day is? Sorting through 6,000 emails. I've got other things that I've got to do. I've got to go drive growth. I've got to go make some business."</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/two-way_email_2-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/two-way_email_2-f_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/two-way_email_2-f_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/two-way_email_2-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Salesforce Agentforce Commerce Two-Way Email screenshot" data-credit="Salesforce" height="341" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Two-Way Email connects a commerce-enabled AI chatbot to customers who answer marketing emails. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="AI search, personalization features also on tap"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>AI search, personalization features also on tap</h2> <p>Also in the works are AI-powered Agentforce Commerce tools that personalize buying experiences for users' customers over mobile and web channels:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Agentforce Commerce Guided Shopping contains conversational analytics to determine an agent's action and can be enabled to offer promos and other pot-sweeteners to close sales.</li> <li>Contextual Search gives agents and customers more targeted results based on the ongoing customer dialog.</li> <li>Marketing and Commerce Connected Journeys plug customer data into triggered events such as an email signup or re-engagement after cart abandonment.</li> </ul> <p>On the surface, Miller said, this batch of Agentforce Commerce features might appear to be incremental updates. However, using them effectively will make most retailers rethink processes and drive deeper collaboration between marketing and commerce teams.</p> <p>"They are going to force a new strategy for marketers themselves," Miller said. "We have to create intentional strategies that deploy content within these spaces in very, very different ways. I don't think we're prepared for that."</p> <p>Agentic AI is evolving so quickly that users need to stop and think about how it is rewriting tried-and-true processes.</p> <p>"Marketers are still being bombarded with the promise of AI and Agentforce, and how you can have all these agents," Miller said. "It is a really good time to hit pause for just five seconds, step back and [consider] how, in a world where I can have a bidirectional conversation with email that leads a customer to a shifting contextual website that has guided search, what do I do to make sure that experience slaps every time?"</p> <p>Some of the Agentforce Commerce features are available today as part of the Salesforce <a target="_blank" href="https://www.salesforce.com/products/innovation/winter-26-release/" rel="noopener">Winter '26 release</a>, and others will become available in February. Contextual Search is in open beta.</p> <p>Looking at holiday shopping data <a target="_blank" href="https://www.salesforce.com/retail/peak-holiday/" rel="noopener">aggregated from Salesforce customers</a>, Nitin Mangtani, senior vice president and general manager of Agentforce Commerce, said that consumers are taking their time to review more content about the things they're about to buy before making a purchase. In Salesforce's view, tools such as guided search and AI personalization might help retailers make the sale in those deciding moments prior to purchase.</p> <p>"During the 2025 holiday season, shoppers spent 35% more time on brand sites before buying compared to the previous year, while traffic to AI-search channels like ChatGPT doubled," Mangtani said. "This signals that consumers are becoming more discerning; they have a growing need for more product information and reassurance on the path to purchase, making conversational commerce a critical lever for conversion."</p> <p>Salesforce released and previewed its generative AI tools for retail at the National Retail Federation's NRF '26: <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/">Retail's Big Show</a>.</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> </section> Salesforce updates Agentforce Commerce with AI tools for personalization. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/iot_g1182604383.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366637193/E-commerce-AI-the-focus-of-Salesforce-Agentforce-updates Sat, 10 Jan 2026 08:00:00 GMT <p>SAP plans to release AI tools for customers in the retail vertical intended to unify data from sales, inventory, customers and suppliers -- and derive new insights for operational efficiency in the process.</p> <p>The company previewed Retail Intelligence, which uses AI to forecast merchandise demand and inventory by analyzing data from a retailer's own applications and those of its partners up the supply chain. Retail Intelligence could potentially automate processes that are currently manually performed across disparate applications and data sources.</p> <p>SAP also plans to release tools for its S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for retail, fashion and vertical business for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.shipbob.com/blog/assortment-planning/" rel="noopener">assortment planning</a>. Planners who create product assortments can use natural language queries with a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsap/news/366632263/SAP-pitches-role-based-Joule-assistants-as-ERP-work-partners">Joule generative AI agent</a> and receive recommendations for items to include and pricing, without engaging expert users as they might currently do.</p> <p>Another retailer tool to come is the Storefront MCP Server in SAP Commerce Cloud. <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/tip/How-the-Model-Context-Protocol-simplifies-AI-development">Model Context Protocol (MCP)</a> is a standard that makes data available to generative AI tools while maintaining security. In the case of Storefront MCP Server, an e-commerce operation can make its inventory and prices discoverable to search engines -- and available for AI summaries such as Google's, which have increasingly replaced traditional search results.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Retrofitting retail IT for agentic AI"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Retrofitting retail IT for agentic AI</h2> <p>Generative AI tools, including those SAP is developing, are tightening the ways suppliers and retailers work together, said Ananda Chakravarty, research vice president for retail merchandising and marketing analytics strategies at IDC. He predicts that generative AI's predictive powers will reverberate further up the supply chain than the technologies that preceded it, creating new efficiencies.</p> <p>"Things that were never [technically possible] in the past -- but people knew could make things more efficient -- are now going to become reality, because now you're able to capture the data, you're able to put the data into one place," Chakravarty said. "It's forcing the whole retail industry to start thinking in terms of one data set now, or one common goal in terms of their overall objective of building a business … It allows for that single point of engagement to solve a problem."</p> <p>SAP is positioned to deploy agentic AI across a strong retail customer base, many of whom use 40 to 50 applications in their operations, Chakravarty said. SAP has long deployed its expertise in integrating its own applications with others, recognizing that many retailers adopt a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/news/252492715/Panorama-Consultings-report-talks-best-of-breed-ERP-trend">best-of-breed</a> approach to their IT stack. That laid the foundation for interoperability and made it more straightforward for AI tech such as Joule agents to automate workflows across apps from many vendors.</p> <div class="youtube-iframe-container"> <iframe id="ytplayer-0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hlTpMlCMop8?autoplay=0&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;widget_referrer=null&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.techtarget.com" type="text/html" height="360" width="640" frameborder="0"></iframe> </div> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="AI shopping agents still nascent"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>AI shopping agents still nascent</h2> <p>Between consumers getting more accustomed to the capabilities of AI agents and recent economic complications, retailers need a solid data foundation from which AI tools can be launched, said Balaji Balasubramanian, president and chief product officer of SAP Customer Experience and Consumer Industries.</p> <p>"Retailers have a lot that is going on in a complex world of tariffs, in a complex world of customer expectations increasing on a day-to-day basis," Balasubramanian said.</p> <p>Balasubramanian added that, despite the hype surrounding generative <a target="_blank" href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/albertsons-agentic-ai-shopping-assistant/807067/" rel="noopener">AI shopping agents</a>, SAP retail customers have not yet seen many of them performing autonomous transactions. The company, however, is preparing for their potential emergence. In the generative AI realm, customers are, for now, concentrating on making their storefronts <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366634642/Adobe-bolsters-AI-SEO-with-planned-19B-Semrush-acquisition">discoverable to LLM search tools</a> such as Google Gemini.</p> <p>Regardless, back-end retail technology will likely be agnostic as to whether a shopping interaction is performed by a human or an agent.</p> <p>"The way we are thinking and building the stack is it should serve the [purchaser's] needs, irrespective of whether it's shopping agents that are doing it or users coming from different channels," Balasubramanian said. "It should not really matter because the stack should serve this at a scalable infrastructure level."</p> <p>SAP previewed its generative AI tools for retail at the <a target="_blank" href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/" rel="noopener">National Retail Federation's NRF 2026: Retail's Big Show</a>.</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> </section> SAP makes AI the focus of retail vertical updates. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/iot_g1206800961.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366636819/SAP-previews-AI-native-systems-for-retailers Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT <p><b>Executive summary: </b>In 2026, customer experience is a strategic priority for most businesses. Consequently, contact center leaders can no longer be the sole decision-makers regarding CX technology investments. The business outcomes of good and bad CX reverberate across an entire organization. Therefore, a broader range of business leaders -- including the C-suite -- need to help shape CX strategies.</p> <p>The CX landscape is transforming rapidly, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Generative-AI-in-CX-promises-benefits-but-obstacles-remain">largely driven by AI</a>. While CX leaders operate daily in this environment, other business leaders do not. As such, it's vital that <i>all</i> CX stakeholders have an up-to-date view of the top CX trends so they can make good planning decisions for 2026.</p> <p>To that end, all stakeholders must understand six key trends that will affect CX and businesses overall. These trends include contact center AI, agentic AI automation, agent copilots, analytics, data quality and identity-first CX. Let's delve deeper into these strategic trends that executive leadership should evaluate as they chart their business plans for 2026.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="1. Deepening role of AI for contact center modernization"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>1. Deepening role of AI for contact center modernization</h2> <p>Contact centers have been <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/The-ultimate-guide-to-contact-center-modernization">trying to modernize for some time</a>. But, in 2025, AI added a new layer of urgency. The transformative nature of AI will affect every aspect of contact center operations and customer service. Currently, conversations around this trend are strategic. Premises-based contact centers, for example, will feel new pressure for cloud adoption as this is a prerequisite for the higher-level benefits of AI.</p> <p>For this process to be effective, all stakeholders must have a shared vision of AI's role. This means contact center modernization cannot exist in a vacuum, as it has with legacy, purpose-built technologies. New thinking from all business leaders is needed. Contact center modernization needs to be tied to broader AI initiatives across the organization, especially for other customer-facing functions such as sales and marketing.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Contact center modernization needs to be tied to broader AI initiatives across the organization. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>This also means AI will go beyond automation and cost savings, as these efficiencies will need to translate into better experiences, both for customers and contact center agents. AI can generate <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366634433/Cisco-embeds-agentic-AI-across-customer-journey">automation across the entire customer journey</a>, such as call routing, self-service, back-office workflows and knowledge base for personalized interactions, among other benefits. Operationally, this will extend new forms of automation to workforce management, agent tasks such as call summaries, fraud detection and compliance.</p> <p>No other technology can affect so many facets of the contact center and integrate them with other business functions across the organization, making AI a leading trend for 2026. This degree of modernization goes beyond operational efficiencies to elevating CX and improving workplace satisfaction for agents and supervisors. AI can enable all this at scale, but only if CX stakeholders have a shared vision for AI's role in contact center modernization.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="2. Deploying agentic AI for CX automation, but with caution"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>2. Deploying agentic AI for CX automation, but with caution</h2> <p>The term <i>AI</i> is a meta-level reference to a family of technologies and is best viewed at a strategic level for planning purposes. Specific applications of AI are more tactical, as these relate to specific use cases within the contact center. For 2026, no AI application will be more important than <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/agentic-AI">agentic AI</a>, which gained CX traction in 2025. This application is about automation, especially for tasks and processes that an AI agent can manage end-to-end on its own.</p> <p>Every CX vendor has an agentic AI offering now, but there's a mix of hype and reality. Few deployments are truly agentic, and CX leaders need to understand what constitutes agentic as opposed to achieving automation with other, non-agentic forms of AI.</p> <p>This entails knowing the difference between deterministic and non-deterministic use cases. The former pertains to scenarios where AI bots can complete a task or manage an inquiry by using fixed logic and is usually best for simpler needs. More complex needs are less linear, have more ambiguity and cannot be handled effectively this way. Agentic AI adds elements that are more human-like, such as reasoning and judgment to navigate in ways that non-agentic bots cannot.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> CX leaders don't usually have a data science background. They'll need to uplevel their AI literacy, especially as C-level leaders raise their expectations about AI. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>While CX leaders don't usually have a data science background, they'll need to uplevel their AI literacy in 2026, especially as C-level leaders raise their expectations about AI. With agentic AI now on the leading edge of CX automation, this will be top-of-mind for the C-suite, and CX leaders will need to manage expectations.</p> <p>Agentic AI requires omnichannel orchestration and predictive capabilities to manage a wide range of data inputs to be effective. While the expectation will be for these AI agents to fully automate workflows or tasks, the <a href="https://www.nojitter.com/ai-automation/5-unexpected-realities-of-deploying-ai-cx-agents">reality is geared toward more simple tasks</a>. CX leaders are familiar with those realities, and they need C-level leaders to understand where agentic AI can best be deployed in 2026.</p> <p>There is little margin for error here. For that reason, CX leaders should initially use agentic AI for internal workflows, where miscues can be fine-tuned with little downside. Only at that point should AI agents be used for customer-facing engagement, where the risk is much higher if they are not accurate or interact in ways that make customers uncomfortable.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="3. Growing influence of AI copilots on the agent experience"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>3. Growing influence of AI copilots on the agent experience</h2> <p>Unlike agentic AI, copilots have been around for some time, both in the workplace and the contact center, and these use cases will continue in 2026. Copilots are a big part of AI's automation story, but with less risk and uncertainty as agentic AI.</p> <p>This should not be surprising for C-level leaders, as copilots are a key feature of all UCaaS platforms and familiar to most workers. The use cases for CX are more recent, but are becoming core to the agent experience. In these scenarios, copilots provide a constant presence that uses AI to provide real-time support for workers and agents.</p> <p>As the term implies, copilots work alongside workers, not in competition to replace them. This is a good example for business leaders to understand the nuances around AI's value to the organization. Some forms of <a href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/how-widespread-are-ai-caused-job-cuts/807105/">AI may lead to job cuts</a> and create cost savings through automation and improved efficiencies. Other forms, such as copilots, are primarily about improving productivity and performance, which contributes to top-line growth, rather than cost savings.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> While all businesses want to cut costs, AI can also drive revenue growth, especially when used to improve CX. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>That last point is another important nuance about AI because the C-suite needs to see AI as more than a vehicle for cost reduction. While all businesses want to cut costs, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-accounts-receivable-AI-increases-cash-flow-and-efficiency">AI can also drive revenue growth</a>, especially when used to improve CX. Copilots, in particular, can do this in many ways. When human agents struggle to say the right thing or type out a written response, copilots can use sentiment analysis to tailor a more effective response.</p> <p>Another example is how copilots can use AI to draw from various data sets and knowledge bases to present highly personalized offers to customers that agents could not procure on their own. These offers are designed to drive new purchases that are likely to follow once the agent provides a good resolution to the customer's issue. In these cases, the copilot is doing most of the work, freeing up the agent to focus more deeply on serving the customer.</p> <p>This may not be the outcome every time. But, for 2026, business leaders need to see copilots playing a growing role for how agents to do their jobs. This means copilots will become more central to automating workflows and integrating across multiple channels and back-office systems.</p> <p>To support this, business leaders will need the right tools in place to monitor accuracy, data security and compliance, especially once customer interactions lead to new purchases. This also means <a href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/consumer-trust-ai-transparency-accountability/758813/">guardrails are needed to set limits</a> around scenarios where AI can be trusted, along with governance to ensure new capabilities or use cases stay within those bounds.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="4. Expanding role of analytics for a holistic view of customers"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>4. Expanding role of analytics for a holistic view of customers</h2> <p>Analytics is what makes AI relatable to humans, as it reflects the expected effect of an action on an outcome, without a complex discourse about how that expectation was reached. This is particularly important for CX. Agents must interact with customers in real time, and they need analytics at their fingertips without having to look for it.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> With strategic CX, businesses must become more customer-centric, not just in the contact center but across the entire organization. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>With strategic CX, businesses must become more customer-centric, not just in the contact center but across the entire organization. In the past, the contact center was the repository for all customer knowledge. Now, customer-centric organizations collect data across the entire customer journey with a company. The more holistic view of the customers -- a 360-degree view -- the better the CX will be.</p> <p>However, to attain this holistic view, organizations need clear access to the data, deploy AI to analyze massive sets of data and make each <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-to-comprehensively-personalize-the-customer-experience">customer interaction highly personalized</a>. Without analytics, agents have limited visibility into underlying issues and often can only hope for the best outcome.</p> <p>AI-driven analytics offers a more effective way to use all that data, not just to guide agents to a better response, but to provide rich insights that personalize service with responses that are more prescriptive than reactive. Aside from those insights, AI can do this at scale across an entire customer base, a capability that businesses never had previously.</p> <p>This is where AI elevates CX and can put agents on a level playing field with customers. In this context, business leaders will see new value with analytics, as it allows agents to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/6-ways-to-use-analytics-to-improve-customer-engagement">keep pace with changing customer expectations</a>. By drawing data from across the organization, analytics can anticipate and predict outcomes, so these changes don't take agents by surprise.</p> <p>Doing this at scale can help the business forecast demand, and optimize resource deployment for running the contact center. As such, business leaders should view analytics as a core element to having a holistic view of the customer. From there, AI helps drive customer retention.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="5. Data quality becomes a priority for AI ROI"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>5. Data quality becomes a priority for AI ROI</h2> <p>Analytics drives a lot of the value for AI, especially around CX. But that value is largely dependent on the quality of the data. Business leaders may have the mistaken notion that having a large volume of data inside the organization ensures that AI initiatives will be successful and thus low risk.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Analytics drives a lot of the value for AI, especially around CX. But that value is largely dependent on the quality of the data. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>This is another area where business leaders need to uplevel their understanding about AI. Most existing data pre-dates AI and was never curated to be used with today's technologies. The inherent data still has value, but the associated metadata will be limited. As such, it's easy to overestimate the value of current and historical data for the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/tip/The-future-of-AI-What-to-expect-in-the-next-5-years">transformative effect business leaders are expecting with AI</a>.</p> <p>Data is managed differently now, and going forward it will have greater value for AI. Because of this, organizations need good governance to ensure data quality and to optimize inputs for AI-based applications. Since data increasingly drives business decisions, this issue is highly relevant to senior business leaders. Having quality data inputs is one thing, but having the right tools to extract value is another, and that is a key rationale for investing in AI, as data is the oxygen for AI to thrive.</p> <p>This is especially important for CX leaders, as the contact center is naturally rich with data, and for this reason it's a leading use case for AI. The better quality the data, the better the analytics. CX will benefit by having more accurate agentic AI outcomes, more efficient workflows to support agents and better orchestration across channels.</p> <p>The same is true for the business overall. Better CX translates into better results elsewhere, such as sales, marketing, legal and HR. For business leaders, then, the implication is to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/feature/9-data-quality-issues-that-can-sideline-AI-projects?Offer=ab_MeteredFormCopyEoc_var3">ensure data quality is a priority when investing in AI</a>.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="6. Developing an identity-first approach for trusted CX"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>6. Developing an identity-first approach for trusted CX</h2> <p>As customer service becomes further defined by digital technologies, issues related to ascertaining the customer's identity become more complex. Almost all customer interactions occur over digital channels, and often across multiple channels during a single session. The more touchpoints for these interactions, the greater the risks on several fronts.</p> <p>Fraud is an ongoing issue, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-to-train-agents-on-call-center-fraud-detection">especially in the contact center</a>, along with marketing and its outbound messaging campaigns. Without adequate controls, bad actors can impersonate customers, exposing the business to financial and brand risk, identity theft and compliance violations. Marketers are faced with similar and equally problematic risks, such as robocalls.</p> <p>As AI adoption broadens, business leaders should prioritize the importance of managing these risks in 2026. Becoming identity-first is part of that response, but requires a systemic approach that will unfold over time. Recognizing the risks is the important first step, as the threats are exponentially more powerful when all the touchpoints are digital.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Fraud and cybersecurity concerns will never be eliminated, but an identity-first posture helps mitigate the threats. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>Fraud and broader cybersecurity concerns will never be eliminated, but an identity-first posture goes a long way to mitigating the threats. The same applies to AI, as identity should be viewed as another strategic use case, not just for authenticating customers in real time, but also protecting them against identity theft. In support of this, business leaders should note that AI excels at <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/feature/How-AI-threat-detection-is-transforming-enterprise-cybersecurity?Offer=ab_MeteredFormCopyEoc_var3">pattern recognition and detecting anomalies</a>, and both are highly relevant here. Aside from protecting the identity of bona fide customers, AI can also flag bad actors in ways that human agents cannot.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="C-suite strategic guidance and action checklist"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>C-suite strategic guidance and action checklist</h2> <p>These trends are central to shaping CX outcomes in 2026, but other developments should be considered as well. Taken together, these trends should help business leaders see the bigger picture -- not just to make CX better, but also how that upside benefits the business as a whole.</p> <p>To recap, here's a CX 2026 action checklist for C-suite executives and CX business technology buyers:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li><b>Modernize the contact center with deeper AI integration.</b> In this process, all company stakeholders need a shared vision of AI's role. Enable AI to integrate contact center insights with other business functions and software. This step can produce better experiences for customers and contact center agents.</li> <li><b>Deploy agentic AI for CX automation. </b>Understand the difference between agentic AI and other forms of automation. Agentic AI agents can automatically manage tasks from start to finish. CX and C-suite leaders need to uplevel their AI literacy in 2026. At the same time, CX leaders must manage the C-suite's expectations of AI.</li> <li><b>Enable AI copilots to support human agents in real time.</b> Copilots work with workers, not in competition to replace them. Primarily, copilots aim to improve productivity, performance and customer personalization, which supports top-line growth. Copilots should integrate across channels and back-office systems.</li> <li><b>Expand analytics for a holistic view of customers.</b> Contact center and customer journey data should be integrated across an entire organization. Analytics can also help personalize customer interactions and support agents.</li> <li><b>Prioritize good, quality data.</b> Be cautious of old data that may not jibe with modern AI approaches. Good baseline data is important, but so are the extraction tools for that data. Contact centers are rich in data, which can yield insightful analytics, agentic AI workflows and improved orchestration across the company.</li> <li><b>Develop an identity-first strategy to boost security.</b> As customers interact with more digital touchpoints, security risks increase. Business leaders need to understand and mitigate these risks. Trusted CX takes an identity-first approach, which protects customers from identity theft while also streamlining log-ins.</li> </ul> <p>For the contact center, modernization is the strategic imperative, but this is more than just CX. Investment decisions and AI ROI criteria for the contact center should be made in a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cloudnowconsulting.com/news/how-to-measure-the-roi-of-ai-in-your-contact-center-a-step-by-step-framework" rel="noopener">broader context</a>, since CX now requires data inputs and insights from across the organization. This means CX must also be about agent experience and employee experience, as they have a role to play for elevating CX.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> CX must also be about the agent experience and employee experience. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>For technology decision-makers, this presents a strong rationale for platform consolidation where applications that bring all this together need to be tightly integrated. There needs to be seamless sharing of data across the organization -- not siloed -- and workflow orchestration for driving better CX, especially cross-team collaboration to support the contact center. This has been <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/How-the-convergence-of-UCaaS-and-CCaaS-affects-businesses">in play with CCaaS and UCaaS providers</a> for some time, where enterprises are moving to a common platform. And, in 2026, expect to see CPaaS become part of that platform consolidation trend.</p> <p>While CX is ultimately about human interaction between agents and customers, technology is the enabler for outcomes that are paramount to the business. This is especially true for AI given its transformational capabilities, but they will only be realized with a strategic approach shaped by leaders both inside the contact center and from business-level leaders who understand CX in terms of impacting overall success for the business.</p> <p><i>Jon Arnold is principal of J Arnold &amp; Associates, an independent analyst providing thought leadership and go-to-market counsel with a focus on the business-level effect of communications technology on digital transformation.</i></p> </section> Customer experience is undergoing a great deal of change. As a result, business tech buyers should take note of some key CX trends shaping the industry in 2026. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/customer_service03.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/CX-trends-enterprise-leaders-should-know Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT <p>As enterprise teams plan for the new year, many IT leaders are starting to look at AI decisions differently than they did even a few months ago. The conversation is shifting away from what individual tools can do toward harder questions about ownership, accountability and risk -- who is responsible for autonomous systems, how much freedom they are given and how they fit into existing operating models. That shift reflects a broader reset in how enterprises are evaluating AI within their control frameworks.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="When agentic AI becomes a governance decision"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>When agentic AI becomes a governance decision</h2> <p>As agentic AI moves from experimentation to real use, the core question changes. It is no longer just a matter of whether AI systems <i>can</i> act autonomously. The tougher issue is how organizations can keep those actions coordinated, controlled and accountable once they are operating at scale.</p> <p>Large enterprises already run hundreds of applications, many of them now embedding AI agents designed to automate work independently. The risk is not that any single agent fails; it is what happens when multiple agents act at the same time, across systems, without a shared understanding of intent or limits.</p> <p>That is where orchestration stops being a feature conversation and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366636690/Agentic-orchestration-the-next-AI-issue-for-CIOs-to-tackle">starts becoming a governance problem</a>. Teams struggle to line up outcomes, responsibilities and decision paths across AI systems, back-end platforms and the people who still need to stay involved.</p> <p>That reality pulls agentic AI directly into the CIO's scope of responsibility. Orchestration becomes less about squeezing efficiency out of automation and more about visibility, standards and control across a messy, multi-platform environment. Enterprises are not using only one vendor or one stack. Conflicts between autonomous agents are not edge cases -- they are expected. The real challenge is deciding who owns those interactions, how risk is managed and what must be in place before autonomy is allowed to expand.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> The risk is not that any single agent fails; it is what happens when multiple agents act at the same time, across systems, without a shared understanding of intent or limits. </figure> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Why security and control are moving upstream"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Why security and control are moving upstream</h2> <p>Recent acquisition activity makes this hard to miss. ServiceNow's deeper push into <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366636659/Agentic-AI-security-focus-of-ServiceNow-acquisition-targets">identity, security and AI risk management</a> is not about filling in gaps on a product roadmap. It reflects what teams start to encounter once autonomous systems are actually running in production. Security models were built around people logging in, typing and moving through predictable sessions. That model starts to fall apart when software makes decisions on its own. When bots interact with other bots, the signals security teams have relied on for years stop telling them much. At that point, questions around authentication, authorization and trust stop being theoretical and start determining what can safely be deployed.</p> <p>You see the same dynamic in more constrained environments. Salesforce's work <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366636392/What-Salesforces-AI-agents-can-do-for-nonprofits">deploying agentic AI in nonprofit organizations</a> demonstrates how quickly autonomy runs into operational limits. Many nonprofits operate with small IT teams and tight budgets, which leaves little room for loosely defined automation. AI can help, but only when it is applied carefully and tied to specific, well-understood workflows.</p> <p>In practice, this means that agents take on repetitive, back-end tasks, while people stay responsible for judgment, communication and relationships. When those boundaries are clear, AI reduces friction. When they are not, it creates more work instead of less.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <p></p> <h3 class="splash-heading">What enterprise teams are being forced to clarify</h3> <p>As agentic AI approaches practical implementation, organizations must now address questions they could previously evade:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Who is responsible for decisions made by autonomous systems?</li> <li>In what situations are agents permitted to operate independently, and when are they not?</li> <li>How do agents communicate and collaborate across different platforms and workflows?</li> <li>What measures are in place when automation contradicts established policies or intentions?</li> <li>At what point should humans intervene?</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p>Seen this way, the pattern is fairly consistent even though the examples come from different parts of the stack. Agentic AI does not behave like traditional automation, and treating it as such causes problems. It works best in environments where roles, limits and expectations are explicit. Without that clarity, autonomy tends to introduce confusion rather than value.</p> <p>Before enterprises push AI systems deeper into core workflows, they need a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/feature/AI-agents-increasingly-viable-for-enterprise-use">practical understanding of where agents operate</a>, what data they touch, how they interact with other systems and where people still need to remain involved. Governance, orchestration and control are not add-ons that can be sorted out later. They are what make agentic AI workable in the first place.</p> <p>For enterprise leaders, this is why AI decisions are starting to feel heavier. As autonomous systems move closer to the center of the business, the consequences of those decisions increase. Progress versus risk is not defined by how advanced the technology is, but by how clearly ownership is set, guardrails are enforced and accountability is maintained before scaling. The questions now surfacing around orchestration, security and control are early signals of how enterprise AI will actually be governed going forward.</p> <p><i>James Alan Miller is a veteran technology editor and writer who leads Informa TechTarget's Enterprise Software group. He oversees coverage of ERP &amp; Supply Chain, HR Software, Customer Experience, Communications &amp; Collaboration and End-User Computing topics.</i></p> </section> As teams plan for the year ahead, AI decisions are shifting away from capability questions and toward ownership, control and accountability. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/ai_a194810146.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Why-enterprise-AI-is-becoming-a-governance-issue Wed, 07 Jan 2026 08:00:00 GMT <p>When two employees have conflicting goals, they can work it out, perhaps by seeking counsel from a supervisor, playing a game of rock-paper-scissors, or even engaging in a friendly arm-wrestling match. But who wins when it's two generative AI agents in conflict?</p> <p>That will become a problem for most enterprises, Salesforce predicts in its "2025 MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark Report." It found that the average enterprise runs 897 apps. Many, if not most, software vendors are incorporating agentic AI tools to automate their workflows.</p> <p>"There are some smaller players out there that are just focusing on perfecting the single agent, but that can only get you so far," said Mike Szilagyi, senior vice president and general manager of product management at Genesys. "Agentic orchestration is [less about routing customers and] more about understanding customer intents and business intents, and then facilitating an outcome, whether it involves humans, AI or back-end systems."</p> <p>These are early days, with many companies either <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366634543/Early-adopters-of-agentic-AI-for-customer-service-offer-advice#:~:text=The%20AI%20hype%20cycle%20created,laying%20the%20groundwork%20for%20success.&amp;text=Salesforce%20Service%20Cloud%20AI%20agent,service%20issue%20to%20a%20human.">deploying their first AI agent or evaluating</a> which of their business processes are ripe for automation. As agentic AI proliferates, however, CIOs can <a target="_blank" href="https://medium.com/@asif_rehan/challenges-in-multi-agent-ai-systems-a-deep-dive-into-the-complexities-04bcd09dba42#:~:text=Multi%2Dagent%20systems%20are%20not,objectives%20is%20a%20delicate%20dance." rel="noopener">anticipate software conflicts</a> that the environment can introduce, potentially over issues such as data access and security, resource usage and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatamanagement/opinion/Trusted-data-is-the-foundation-of-data-driven-decisions-GenAI">data synchronization</a>.</p> <p>Vendors know this, and they would all like to own a piece of the agentic AI management layer, which could potentially control both their own and everyone else's AI agents. CX leaders can choose among a growing number of agent orchestration tools to manage agent interactions: ServiceNow's AI Control Tower, AWS's Amazon Bedrock <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/guidance/multi-agent-orchestration-on-aws/" rel="noopener">multi-agent collaboration</a>, Salesforce's MuleSoft Agent Fabric, IBM's <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/news/366623635/IBM-targets-AI-agentic-orchestration">Watsonx Orchestrate</a>, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcontentmanagement/news/366634563/OpenText-users-get-their-Aviator-enterprise-content-AI-platform">OpenText AI Data Platform</a>, Pegasystems' Pega Agentic Process Fabric, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366630514/Adobe-releases-AI-marketing-agents-orchestration-platform/">Adobe Agent Orchestrator</a>, to name a few of a rapidly expanding list.</p> <p>Even PwC <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/pwc-launches-ai-agent-operating-system-enterprises.html" rel="noopener">released its own</a>, called Agent OS.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/mulesoft_agent_fabric_mulesoft_agent_visualizer-f.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/mulesoft_agent_fabric_mulesoft_agent_visualizer-f_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/mulesoft_agent_fabric_mulesoft_agent_visualizer-f_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/mulesoft_agent_fabric_mulesoft_agent_visualizer-f.jpg 1280w" alt="Screenshot of Salesforce MuleSoft Agent Fabric" data-credit="Salesforce" height="417" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Salesforce's vision of how users manage agent orchestration in its environment. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>"In the enterprise space, there's no client that's going to be on a single AI tool, single platform, wall to wall," said Derek Santana, U.S. Salesforce Alliance Leader at PwC. "You're not going to use Agentforce for everything. You're not going to use all Copilot, or you name it, OpenAI."</p> <p>It's a complicated puzzle to solve, as AI agents are granted <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/autonomous-AI-agents">more autonomy</a> to do work. Tools such as ServiceNow's AI Control Tower can help CIOs grasp how AI is being deployed across their organizations and apply standards and governance to it, said Terence Chesire, vice president of Product Management, CRM &amp; Industry Workflows at ServiceNow.</p> <p>"The challenges are around putting together the strategy, the processes and the awareness across the organization," Chesire said. "This provides the tooling and capabilities to turn that into meaningful insight, so, as a leader, you can actually understand all the places where AI is being utilized and what the goals are for those use cases -- even though they're not ServiceNow use cases."</p> <p>Vendors are vying for control of the agentic AI orchestration layer because IT spend will be moving in that direction over the next few years -- and away from traditional seat licensing -- said Keith Kirkpatrick, research director for the Futurum Group.</p> <p>"ServiceNow realizes that the real value is going to be in gaining access to the entire tech stack," Kirkpatrick said. "The way they're going to do that is through AI agents, or at least that's the way they believe it's going to be -- managing not only their agents, but everybody else's as well."</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Customers still deploying first agents"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Customers still deploying first agents</h2> <p>Orchestration issues are predictive of a future state of enterprise IT. Currently, all but a few users are still perfecting their first agents.</p> <p>For PepsiCo, that first agent was a triumph, marking a five-year data migration to the cloud for its six million global customers, as well as a concurrent data and process harmonization initiative that enabled the use of data to analyze sales trends and costs at a neighborhood level. The agent can generate data-informed suggestions of what those customers could stock most profitably in their refrigerators.</p> <p>Now that PepsiCo has laid the foundation for agentic AI, there will be more agents to come, said Dave Dohnalik, senior vice president of technology strategy and enterprise products at PepsiCo.</p> <p>"We're early in our journey, for sure," Dohnalik said. "We see opportunity in terms of expanding some of the use cases around how aggressive we want to be with new product innovation, how aggressive we want to be with loyalty and incenting customers. We're testing and learning as we're working through this."</p> <p>PepsiCo's agent was built on Salesforce. For now, the agent is tightly controlled with human supervision -- "the hand on the wheel," as he puts it. But Dohnalik sees potential agents from other vendors coming online in the next few years. When it comes to the orchestration layer, he imagines PepsiCo developing something out of components from several different vendors, so the company is not beholden to "one large logo."</p> <p>"As we think about our AI strategy, we want to control that orchestration layer," Dohnalik said. "Everyone's 'Oh, I can do that on your behalf. I've got the control tower, I've got the orchestration layer.' We have a massive footprint, and so the way we think about it … we want to control that control plane."</p> <p>While multi-agent orchestration might be in the realm of theoretical -- or vendor wishful thinking -- for most users at the moment, the consultants charged with making this work say it's coming.</p> <p>"We're already having conversations where we're talking about taking Agentforce with a client who has decided to standardize on Gemini and Google's platform," said Chuck Tomanek, director of solutions delivery at Perficient. "So, taking Agentforce and having our agents be able to communicate back with Gemini and agents that might be built on other platforms is a very real thing -- through Gemini, through APIs, or through hopefully, what's coming up in the not too distant future [such as] <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/news/366622027/Google-intros-tools-for-building-agents-and-a-new-protocol">Agent2Agent</a>."</p> <p>Some vendors are helping to drive the adoption of agentic AI by embedding employees in their customers' IT organizations. Salesforce does it with what it calls "forward-deployed engineering."</p> <p>While Salesforce would like to be the single agentic AI vendor for its customers, it understands that isn't necessarily realistic and that some use cases will require agents outside the Salesforce platform, said Jennifer Cramer, senior vice president of forward deployed engineering and customer success for AI products at Salesforce.</p> <p>"We want to be the single agentic solution. But where they're having point agent solutions [from other companies], we want to be the layer that connects them all," Cramer said. "I don't think that multi-agent situations are that far out in our future, if they're not already here. Things happen so fast in this space, things we didn't think were at all possible this time last year."</p> <p><i>Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? </i><a href="mailto:don.fluckinger@informatechtarget.com?subject=Tip%20from%20article" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Email him</i></a><i>.</i></p> </section> Salesforce, ServiceNow, AWS and others would like to manage all of your AI agents. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/ai_a373894778.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366636690/Agentic-orchestration-the-next-AI-issue-for-CIOs-to-tackle Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:00:00 GMT <p>The pace of change in customer experience has never been faster, as technological innovation and customer expectations create competitive pressure on every business technology leader.</p> <p>For business leaders who pivot correctly, however, the transformations ahead of them hold significant promise. In Metrigy's "Customer Experience Optimization 2025-26" global study of 656 companies, several key points emerged to help IT and CX leaders <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/tip/How-digital-transformation-is-changing-customer-experience">navigate this rapidly changing era</a>.</p> <p>The report highlighted seven key trends that CX leaders should watch out for in 2026. CX tech buyers should evaluate these data-backed shifts for their strategic planning in the new year.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="1. Interaction analytics improve business decisions."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>1. Interaction analytics improve business decisions.</h2> <p>Interaction analytics, also known as <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Customer-interaction-analytics-spurs-better-business-results%20">conversation analytics or conversation intelligence</a>, is poised to accelerate and improve business decisions, employee performance and CX. The analytics tools use AI to pull important information out of every customer interaction, including topics discussed, length of interactions, performance of AI and human agents, customer sentiment and more.</p> <p>Although about half of companies are using interaction analytics now, more than 90% say it's the most valuable, or among the most valuable, data available within the company. Moreover, 84% say customer interaction analytics should be part of executive decisions via companywide dashboards.</p> <p>Moving into 2026, Metrigy expects more companies to adopt the technology, and those already using it will find more depth in the data and act on it more broadly. That action will result in better customer satisfaction.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> 84% of companies say customer interaction analytics should be part of executive decisions via companywide dashboards. </figure> <figcaption> <strong>Metrigy</strong>Global CX Optimization study </figcaption> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="2. Agentic agents become hierarchical."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>2. Agentic agents become hierarchical.</h2> <p>Despite all the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/feature/Tech-buyers-swamped-with-agentic-AI-choices">discussion around agentic agents</a>, only 48% of companies use them, and many of these applications are rudimentary. Part of the problem is only 61% of IT/CX leaders are familiar with the word <i>agentics</i>. So, as an industry, more education is needed.</p> <p>Along those lines, Metrigy's definition of agentics is: <i>An advanced AI framework that uses large language models to make decisions, learn, adapt and take actions autonomously with little or no human involvement. Agentics help humans in the moment and/or automate interactions or processes.</i></p> <p>As technology leaders become more comfortable with agentics in 2026 -- and see the value of these autonomous agents -- Metrigy expects a swift move to version 2.0, which includes a hierarchy of master AI agents working together and with sub-agents to analyze issues, take action, close the loop and report on results. Early users of agentics are seeing dramatic results, including a 27% increase in revenue, 21% reduction in costs and 35% improvement in customer satisfaction, to name a few metrics.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="3. AI helps generate sales in the contact center."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>3. AI helps generate sales in the contact center.</h2> <p>As customer service representatives become more productive -- thanks to agent assist and AI self-service agents -- supervisors have questioned how to optimize the saved time. For 17% of companies, idle time became high enough in 2025 that they laid off contact center employees. But that's not a sustainable approach for most organizations.</p> <p>Nearly 60% of companies now attach sales quotas to their service representatives. So, once they resolve an issue -- typically 28% faster with agent assist -- they jump to an upsell or cross-sell pitch. For 64% of those companies, the pitch comes from an AI agent, which also coaches the service rep to handle objections and close the sale. This has contributed to 75% of companies designating their <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/Contact-center-back-end-integrations-drive-revenue-growth">contact center as a value center and no longer a cost center</a>.</p> <p>In 2026, Metrigy expects AI to be involved in more sales interactions and more companies to attach sales quotas to their service agents. Then, the use of upsell pitches will be governed by AI analysis. When the contact center is too busy, AI will suspend upsell pitches to handle customer service inquiries in a timely manner. When business is a little slower, AI will enact the upsell pitches again, to drive more revenue while ensuring idle time stays low.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="4. AI vs. human analysis results in new baseline KPIs."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>4. AI vs. human analysis results in new baseline KPIs.</h2> <p>As companies increasingly use AI agents, 58% are conducting analysis on AI performance compared to human performance. The main metrics they are using for comparison are customer satisfaction (75%), time-to-resolve issues (63%), successful upsell (54%) and first-contact resolution (51%).</p> <p>In 2026, Metrigy expects companies to reset their baseline KPIs with different figures for AI and human agents in some cases. From there, they will adjust the circumstances and issues that merit <a target="_blank" href="https://metrigy.com/how-cx-leaders-are-mastering-the-ai-and-human-agent-partnership/" rel="noopener">human agents or AI agents</a> based on their performance to meet company goals. Customer satisfaction and first-contact resolution should be the same whether an AI agent or human agent handles the interaction; if it's not, then adjustments are required. However, AI agents typically take less time to resolve an issue, and human agents will be more likely to succeed with an upsell, so those KPIs would be different.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="5. Growing reliance on AI for supervisor functions."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>5. Growing reliance on AI for supervisor functions.</h2> <p>CX leaders often promote the value of agent assist, but they don't sing the praises of AI for supervisors as frequently.</p> <p>Metrigy's research shows significant value in using AI for quality management, coaching, scheduling and forecasting. For example, companies save 11.9 hours per week per supervisor when AI listens to calls for quality management functions; 7.4 hours per week when AI coaches agents; and 6.3 hours per week when AI handles scheduling and forecasting.</p> <p>In 2026, more companies will rely on AI for supervisor functions, and they will <a href="https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/ai-massive-disruption-contact-center-workforces/753737/">add new tasks to supervisors' job requirements</a>. For example, supervisors will reach out to at-risk customers -- designated by AI interaction analytics -- to reduce churn rates.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="6. IVRs start to disappear as we know them."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>6. IVRs start to disappear as we know them.</h2> <p>One reason customer service ratings are not as high as CX leaders would expect is the annoying decision tree of interactive voice response (IVR) that answers most calls to businesses. Few, if any, customers want to sit through a menu of multiple options that tell them to "Press 1" for this and "Press 2" for that. AI is starting to change this.</p> <p>Already, 38% of <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366629194/AI-receptionist-IVR-takes-flight-with-customer-service">companies plan to replace their IVR</a> with AI triage agents, according to Metrigy's study. But 63% of the Research Success Group -- those who have the highest measurable improvements in their business metrics by using AI in CX, and whose technology adoption plans are leading indicators -- say they're planning for the same. This enables customers to simply talk to a conversational AI agent to route their call based on natural language discussions.</p> <p>The major reason all companies aren't doing this now is cost. IVRs are typically less expensive or a sunk cost. Business leaders need to determine whether the higher cost of AI triage agents is worth the improved customer satisfaction. Metrigy expects more companies to shift from IVRs to AI starting in 2026.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="7. Technology more important than people alone to serve customers."> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>7. Technology more important than people alone to serve customers.</h2> <p>Last, but certainly not least, research shows a notable shift in IT/CX leaders' perspectives on the relative importance of technology.</p> <p>In 2024, Metrigy asked research participants: "Though both are important, which is more important to delivering successful customer interactions: people or technology?" At that time, 72% of companies said people. One year later, that figure dropped to 59% -- still the majority, but a big year-over-year drop. Moreover, 58% of the Research Success Group said technology is more important than people in 2025, up from 48% in 2024.</p> <p>The shift is an acknowledgment of three core benefits of technology in CX. First, technology makes humans better; without it, human agents would not be as good as they are. Second, technology in the form of AI agents can automate resolution, freeing humans to handle complex issues. Third, analytics delivers crucial data to inform CX leaders about whether their strategy is working.</p> <p>In 2026, this trend should continue, potentially with more people saying technology is more important than people to deliver successful customer interactions. This does not mean technology replaces people -- though it will replace some of their workflows and address designated issues -- but it's crucial to empowering people further in their roles.</p> <p><i>Robin Gareiss is CEO and principal analyst at Metrigy, which conducts research and advises enterprises and technology providers. She leads coverage into AI, customer experience and contact center operations.</i></p> </section> Customer interaction analytics, autonomous agents and AI-driven upsells are some of the CX trends that could boost revenue, cut costs and improve customer service. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/customer_service12.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/7-customer-experience-trends-to-have-on-your-radar-in-2023 Tue, 23 Dec 2025 11:00:00 GMT 60 webmaster@techtarget.com