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At the 8x8 Analyst Summit in Silicon Valley, CEO Sam Wilson made it clear that the company is playing offense. With four consecutive quarters of growth and 21 quarters of profitability, 8x8 is building on a stable foundation as it uses its network, platform, and past acquisitions to compete in an AI-driven market. Wilson was direct in describing how he views the market’s AI messaging and why 8x8 believes its approach is more practical. As he put it, "Companies that say they’re AI companies are stupid idiots – it’s like saying you’re an internet company 20 years ago. AI will be in everything.” It's not about being an AI company - it's all about using AI to solve our customers' problems. Our customers care about their business, not if AI does the routing or not." Key Themes From the Event Several themes stood out at the summit: · 8x8 positions its “One Platform” as a fully integrated environment spanning telephony, digital channels, IVA, video, and CX. · Its AI strategy centers on partnering for models rather than building them internally. As Wilson explained, “We own the network and the data - the platform is the product.” · The company placed strong emphasis on frontline workers, or “the 70% the market forgot.” Wilson argued that every worker should be treated as a first-class worker and that businesses need to stop overlooking digital orphans - employees without laptops, email, or other standard tools. · 8x8 is leaning in on usage-based AI pricing, which lowers the barrier to entry and gives organizations room to experiment and prove AI's value without a large upfront commitment. · The partner ecosystem is central to 8x8’s strategy. 8x8 provides “the network and the pipes,” while partners add complementary technologies and services. As Victor Belfor, GVP Business Dev & Strategic Partnerships, noted, “The ecosystem is part of our product. We’re the one back to pat, providing a single contract, low TCO, and no finger pointing. We own this from beginning to end – delivery, support, integration, etc." New Products Expand the Platform Story 8x8 also used the event to introduce several products, including 8x8 Resolve and 8x8 Pulse. 8x8 Resolve is a mobile-first critical communications and incident management solution designed to support businesses with distributed workforces. It helps organizations notify, track, and coordinate warehouse staff, retail associates, field technicians, and healthcare aides—workers who make up an estimated 70% of the global workforce and are often the last to know when something goes wrong. 8x8 Pulse is a conversational intelligence solution that turns conversations into business insights. It uses generative AI to analyze interactions and add context so the information can be used more reliably at the enterprise level. Pulse draws on conversation data to deliver interaction-based insights and recommendations for workforce management, customer engagement, sales, and operational improvement. It can analyze multiple communication channels, including calls, emails, voicemails, support tickets, external notes, CRM data, and more. According to Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, every conversation an organization has -customer calls, support interactions, emails, meeting transcripts, and CRM notes - creates data that can be mined for insight. 8x8 Pulse brings those sources together so organizations can generate insights from both structured and unstructured data. The company emphasized that while many organizations are generating large volumes of conversational data, much of it remains fragmented across systems. By bringing those sources into a single platform view, 8x8 aims to help businesses surface insights and improve decision-making across departments. Built on the conversations organizations already generate, 8x8 Pulse is designed to surface relevant intelligence for the right person at the right time, from executives to frontline employees. I spoke with Igor Mostovoy, Director, CPaaS Product, and Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, about Pulse and Resolve, as well as Engage. One Platform Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer, presented 8x8’s vision and roadmap, and how 8x8 will differentiate in the market. While much of his presentation was NDA, Middleton summarized many of the themes discussed throughout the event in this video interview. He covered 8x8’s transformation, the “One Platform” approach, and 8x8's thinking around agentic AI and 8x8 AI Studio. As Middleton explained, the “One Platform” approach goes beyond integrating UCaaS and CCaaS applications. It extends below the application layer to the communications fabric, creating a single communications system for the entire company. He also discussed 8x8’s approach to frontline workers and how non-contact-center staff, including employees without desk phones or laptops, can help customers resolve issues. He further explained how AI capabilities such as Agent Assist can help these workers support customers more effectively. Middleton also discussed AI Studio and 8x8’s approach to agentic AI. As he explained, 8x8 has taken a different route from many vendors by using the latest real-time APIs from LLM providers to enable more natural interactions, simplify workflow design, and shorten deployment timelines. This is an approach that was not practical even a year ago ,and gives 8x8 more flexibility to move quickly. 8x8 Technology Partner Synthflow As mentioned, ecosystem partners are a key part of 8x8’s strategy. Conversation AI vendor Synthflow is a new partner, providing an end-to-end Voice AI platform that enables businesses to design, launch, and operate Voice AI agents with configurable workflows, enterprise telephony, and analytics. I spoke with Synthflow’s VP of Channels and Alliances, Matt Alexander, about the company, its partnership with 8x8, and how Synthflow stands out in a crowded market for voice AI agents and conversational AI platforms. Final Thoughts The summit highlighted a company focused on execution, platform integration, and practical uses for AI. Rather than treating AI as a standalone strategy, 8x8 emphasized how it can support business outcomes, improve worker experiences, and simplify customer engagement. I’ve been saying for years that the walls are coming down between UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS, and CRM. 8x8 is focused on a single platform built around the capabilities customers need rather than the acronyms. By tightly integrating its technology with ecosystem partners, 8x8 is differentiating not just through individual applications, but through the platform itself. While 8x8 didn’t use the term “agentic” as often as some competitors, it is clearly laying the groundwork for agentic AI through AI Studio and partner-driven capabilities. 8x8 has evolved from its early days as a UCaaS vendor into a communications platform provider delivering AI-ready voice at global scale. The company sees an opportunity to support the broader workforce with integrated communications, CX, and AI capabilities. I agree with 8x8’s view that as AI handles routine tasks, every worker becomes more of a knowledge worker. The company’s focus on knowledge workers who “make up the 70% of the workforce that the market forgot” points to a sizable market opportunity. With 8x8 Engage and a soon-to-be-announced product, 8x8 appears well positioned to pursue that market. While some vendors are investing heavily in in-house AI, 8x8 is leaning on partners and newer capabilities from companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. That approach may help the company move faster and stay flexible. Time will tell how well it works.

Set aside any preconceived notions about Zendesk. While the company built its reputation around service and ticketing, its focus today is on the Autonomous Service Workforce, AI agents, and resolutions. At Zendesk Relate 2026, the company’s annual event that brought together more than 2,000 attendees, Zendesk outlined its vision for the Autonomous Service Workforce, built on the Zendesk Resolution Platform. Service and ticketing remain core parts of the business, but the company’s AI portfolio - including AI agents, AI Copilot, and AI QA -grew more than 100% over the past year. Zendesk’s broader mission is to resolve customer issues through a combination of AI agents and human agents, powered by the Zendesk Resolution Platform, a connected system of agents and copilots designed to support service operations. As CEO Tom Eggemeier noted during his keynote, Zendesk introduced the Resolution Platform last year with the idea that customer resolutions require specialization. Trained on roughly 20 billion ticket interactions, the platform unifies data, intelligence, and workflows. The Resolution Learning Loop creates a continuous cycle of improvement, allowing the system to learn from every interaction and become more effective over time. The shift underway goes beyond automation. It reflects service organizations moving from assisted workflows to autonomous resolution, from disconnected tools to a unified learning system, and from reporting on past activity to continuously improving future outcomes. Autonomous Service Workforce The central theme of the event was the Autonomous Service Workforce, a collection of specialized AI agents designed to perform specific functions. The strategy centers on: AI agents that execute tasks AI copilots that improve employee performance and support human agents by identifying customer intent, recommending responses, and suggesting next-best actions A learning loop that continuously makes the system smarter According to Shashi Upadhyay, President, Product, Engineering, and AI, Zendesk is building a workforce that not only assists employees, but also completes work and changes how service is delivered. He explained that “The future isn’t one general purpose bot – it’s a network of specialized agents – agents for billing, returns, collections, claims, etc.” Each agent is grounded in the appropriate data and designed to handle real-world complexity, while the system coordinates work and drives outcomes. These AI agents are aligned with customer workflows, integrated into customer environments, and available out of the box. A central component of this strategy is the Resolution Learning Loop, where every interaction becomes a learning signal that improves AI agent performance. The process focuses on identifying where AI failed, determining the root cause, learning from those failures, and feeding that information back into knowledge management systems to improve future interactions. More resolutions generate more learning data, which leads to additional recommendations and improvements, ultimately driving better outcomes over time. Outcome-Based Pricing This shift also requires a new business and pricing model. Zendesk argues that traditional seat-based software pricing is becoming less relevant in an AI-driven environment. Instead, the company is positioning itself as an early mover in outcome-based pricing, where customers pay only for outcomes produced by AI agents that are verifiably resolved or contained. According to Zendesk, “If we don’t resolve the problem, we don’t get paid; customers will only pay for outcomes that are verifiably resolved or contained." New Products and Anouncements Zendesk announced a large number of new products and capabilities at Relate, including: Agentic AI agents — specialized AI agents that can reason across messaging, email, voice, and backend systems. Built on Zendesk’s acquisition of Forethought, these agents operate across messaging, email, voice, and AI platforms, as well as both Zendesk and third-party service environments. Agent Builder, a no-code interface that allows teams to create and refine custom agents using natural language Voice AI Agents for both Zendesk Voice and Zendesk Contact Center Proactive copilots for agents, administrators, knowledge teams, analysts, and service leaders Action Flows, MCP, and expanded Knowledge Connectors that allow AI agents to take action across existing enterprise systems Zendesk Contact Center, a native unified contact center offering A modern ITSM solution built on the same Resolution Platform Zendesk Contact Center For analysts covering the contact center market, one of the key focuses at the event was Zendesk Contact Center. Built on the acquisition of Local Measure, Zendesk Contact Center is a native, AI-powered contact center built on the Zendesk Resolution Platform. The platform unifies voice, digital, and self-service interactions into a single workspace. With multimodal capabilities, digital and video channels become part of the customer interaction experience. AI-powered workforce engagement management (WEM) is also built into the platform, supporting forecasting, scheduling, and interaction monitoring. Built on Amazon Connect and leveraging AWS and Amazon Connect AI capabilities, the solution provides agentic AI capabilities through Voice AI agents embedded directly into the Zendesk Resolution Platform. This enabling seamless transfers to live agents with full context when escalation is required. Zendesk Contact Center supports: Voice routing Omnichannel interactions Voice AI Agents that understand customers in real time and take action toward resolution Voice Copilots that provide AI-driven call guidance and next-best actions AI-powered voice assistance Video calling and screen sharing Real-time transcription Workforce support Voice QA across 100% of voice transcripts An integrated agent workspace While Zendesk Contact Center is currently targeted primarily at SMBs, the company sees opportunities to expand further into larger enterprise environments over time. Although the offering will likely appeal most to existing Zendesk customers, Zendesk Contact Center will also be available as a standalone offering, broadening its potential market. As CRM and CCaaS platforms continue to converge, Zendesk (along with companies such as Salesforce) is betting that customer service organizations will increasingly prefer a single vendor that can deliver an integrated solution with fewer vendors, tighter workflows, and broader functionality. Differentiation As shown in this video, I had the opportunity to speak with Keith Pearce, SVP, Product Marketing, about the Autonomous Service Workforce, the Agent Builder for creating custom AI agents, Zendesk Contact Center, and other announcements. He also discussed Zendesk’s differentiation strategy and its approach to outcome-based pricing. Thoughts Zendesk has evolved significantly from its origins as a ticketing vendor. The company now has a broader vision centered on an AI-first operating model and the changing relationship between humans and AI in customer service. The company’s focus on resolution rather than tickets aligns well with broader market trends, and the outcome-based pricing model reinforces that positioning. A recurring theme throughout the event was the need for businesses to rethink workflows and operational processes. While organizations want to move quickly with AI adoption, trust, security, and governance remain major considerations. The challenge is not only implementing new technology, but also redesigning workflows, modernizing knowledge management, and helping teams mature operationally so AI can deliver value at scale. As Zendesk expands its vision, it will also face several challenges. Acquisition alignment and integration: Zendesk has acquired multiple companies in recent years, including Forethought, Local Measure, Unleash, HyperArc, and Ultimate. These acquisitions have accelerated product development and expanded capabilities, but integrating technologies, infrastructure, analytics, and product roadmaps often takes longer than expected. Overlap between acquired and internally developed products will also need to be rationalized over time. For example, Zendesk currently offers internally developed Voice AI capabilities alongside capabilities gained through the Forethought acquisition. Zendesk must unify these experiences without creating inconsistencies across products and channels. If the platform appears fragmented, it could weaken the company’s broader “single system” message. Company perception: Zendesk is still widely viewed as a customer service and support company. The company will need to continue educating the market about its expanded AI capabilities and broader platform strategy. Many customers attending Relate still primarily use Zendesk for help desk and ticketing functions. While interest in the company’s AI tools was high, many organizations have not yet deployed them in production. Adoption will take time as customers become more comfortable with operational AI systems. Competition: As Zendesk expands into adjacent markets, it is also expanding its competitive landscape. Although Zendesk continues to partner with many CCaaS vendors, Zendesk Contact Center also places the company in direct competition with them. Established vendors such as Five9 and NICE already have strong enterprise credibility and mature voice infrastructures. Zendesk will need to differentiate through platform integration, workflow simplicity, and operational efficiency rather than feature parity alone. Trust: Many organizations remain cautious about deploying AI into production environments. Zendesk must demonstrate measurable ROI, strong governance controls, reliability, and consistent performance at scale. Pricing: The move toward outcome- or resolution-based pricing also introduces complexity. Defining what qualifies as a “resolution” can be difficult, and some organizations may view pricing variability as a risk. Zendesk will need to clearly demonstrate value so customers see the model as an improvement over traditional licensing structures. Despite these challenges, Zendesk is well-positioned to continue pushing the market toward resolution-centric service models. By focusing on outcomes rather than tickets, the company is attempting to redefine how customer service platforms create value. It's about impact, outcomes, resolutions - this is a message most businesses can relate to, helping them deliver better customer experiences.

Zoom held its Zoom Perspectives analyst conference at the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay, giving analysts the opportunity to hear about the company’s latest AI developments. The central theme of the event was “conversation to completion.” It's not about meetings any longer - it's about how conversations kick things off, but the real work is in how AI is used to deliver outcomes, completed tasks, and resolutions. A conversation may start in a meeting, on a phone call, in a customer service engagement. The value Zoom provides is capturing that information and applying its AI tools, including Zoom AI Companion and others, to complete the work at hand. This is a whole new ballgame, and where the industry as a whole needs to be headed. Strategic Priorities Kicking off the event, Head of Market Insights and Analyst Relations, Cheri Hulse introduced Zoom’s strategic priorities, which would be reinforced throughout the event: Elevate Workplace with AI Drive growth of new AI products Scale AI-first CX These strategic priorities are vastly different from what we've seen from Zoom in the past. The company is still focused on its core offerings in Workplace, but it's all about enhancing these offerings with AI. Of course every vendor in the industry is AI-focused, but Zoom is adding new AI products to its offerings, but Zoom is using AI to change the way people work and the way work gets done. Conversation to Completion CEO Eric Yuan explained the concept of conversation to completion, noting, “We focus on the conversation and aim for completion. Before the AI era, that wasn’t Zoom’s strength, but now with AI, everything is possible and we can focus on the completion part.” He added that Zoom is evolving from a collaboration- and communications-centric company into a conversation and completion company, with AI acting as the connector. Zoom continues to expand its product breadth and depth with a full enterprise software stack and one connected platform. This is a different architectural diagram than we've seen in the past, with Zoom's many apps on the top layer, above the semantic layer, considered "the brain of the system." Similar to a routing engine, the Orchestrator turns conversations into coordinated actions and determines what happens next and where work needs to be done. Memory connects all your meetings, chats, documents, interactions, remembering what was discussed previously and carries that forward into the current conversations. Zoom's federated AI brings it all together. CFO Michelle Chang expanded on the conversations to completion concept, describing Zoom’s vision for a system of action. In this model, work happens both inside and outside the organization and is brought together into a unified system that drives outcomes. According to Chang, Zoom is redefining modern work by turning conversations and unstructured context into action and monetization. By connecting internal collaboration with external interactions, Zoom aims to transform conversations into outcomes through embedded context. She explained, “With the system of action, Zoom moves into a differentiated position in terms of the value we provide to customers. We bring context into action and move into a whole new relationship, and into a richer relationship with our customers.” Another major focus is reducing friction by connecting signals that already exist across the organization and turning them into actionable insights. Conversations take place across many environments—meeting rooms, webinars, and in-person interactions—creating a large amount of unstructured data. Zoom’s AI analyzes this information, extracts insights, and then drives automation and action. The System of Action for Modern Work Setting the stage for the rest of the sessions, CMO Kim Storin described Zoom’s system of action for modern work as a framework that turns live interaction into completed work. Built on Zoom’s integrated platform, the system captures context from conversations wherever work happens—both inside and outside the organization. This approach creates what Storin described as an execution surface that can observe and act on work in real time. AI then turns live context into completed workflows. For example, documents, presentations, and spreadsheets can be created directly within Zoom. The platform captures both the human-to-human interactions and the human-to-system and human-to-agent connections where work actually occurs. Storin explained that Zoom’s AI is embedded across the platform and captures context at the moment of interaction. Zoom’s federated AI model selects the most appropriate model for each task. As a result, the entire platform can be layered on top of this system-of-action concept. Storin also provided additional detail on the company’s strategic priorities. In this video interview, Storin discussed the key themes and messages from the event, as well as the Zoom Ahead marketing campaign. Scaling AI-First CX Analysts covering the customer experience market were particularly interested to hear that one of Zoom’s three priorities is scaling its AI-first CX strategy. While Zoom entered the CCaaS and CX market relatively recently, the company has moved quickly and now offers a competitive platform. As Chris Morrisey, GM of CX, pointed out, “At my first Zoom Perspectives two years ago, the contact center track was an interesting side conversation. Look at us today - we are a strategic pillar for the company.” The numbers reflect that momentum. Zoom CX grew in the high double digits in fiscal 2026, and all of the 10 largest CX deals in Q4 2025 included paid AI. Like most contact center vendors, Zoom is focusing on customer experience rather than just CCaaS. The goal is to enhance human intelligence with AI-driven automation. Scaling AI-first CX involves building a system of action across customer experience workflows and customer-facing processes. It also means unifying virtual agents and AI-assisted human agents to improve service outcomes while reducing costs. Morrisey explained that the Zoom CX platform delivers the same scalability and reliability as the broader Zoom platform, orchestrating workflows and completing tasks across the organization. The system-of-action approach includes more communication channels and customer touchpoints, all powered by federated AI. Building on the conversation-to-completion narrative, Zoom CX completes the customer journey by either taking action automatically or enabling the human agent when an interaction is transferred. Another important part of the CX strategy is CX Insights, which recommends automation opportunities—such as high-volume use cases—and estimates the impact on staffing levels. These insights also tie into Zoom’s workforce management capabilities. In this video, Chris Morrisey explained what conversation to completion means in the context of Zoom CX and provided an update on the platform. Drilling down further into Zoom CX, Michelle Couture discussed the key CX messages from the event. She expanded on Connected CX, which has a shared intelligence layer that provides insights and guidance to drive more connected customer journeys Couture also highlighted updates to Zoom Virtual Agent (ZVA) 3.0, including enhanced natural language, new administrative capabilities, and KB Suggest, where the virtual agent learns from live human engagement calls and autocreates knowledge.   Zoom Workplace No Zoom Perspectives event would be complete without a discussion about Zoom Workplace. In this video, Theresa Larkin, Head of Zoom Workplace & AI Product Marketing, discussed how the conversation-to-completion concept applies to the Workplace platform. Larkin explained how Zoom uses agentic capabilities to take actions such as triggering workflows, creating drafts, and building presentations. She also outlined Zoom’s agentic AI strategy and how the company combines structured and unstructured third-party data to trigger agent-driven workflows. In addition, Larkin highlighted new Workplace capabilities, including agentic features that enhance the meeting lifecycle. Closing Thoughts The conversation is no longer just about meetings and collaboration—it is about using AI and agentic AI to drive outcomes. Actions, task completion, and measurable results are the key focus areas, providing value beyond simply AI-enabling everything. Meeting summaries and interaction notes are useful, but the real value comes from what organizations do with that conversational data. This is where Zoom is placing its bets. Zoom occupies a unique position because it sits on top of many of the conversations organizations have internally and externally. These interactions occur across meetings, collaboration, calling, CX, workforce engagement (Workvivo), as well as events and webinars. Zoom is now extending beyond the conversation layer into completion capabilities, including the ability to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets directly within the Zoom app with AI Docs, AI Sheets, and AI Slides. While many wondered why Zoom was getting into this space, but now it's all making sense. One challenge Zoom—and many other vendors—faces is enabling channel partners to effectively sell AI capabilities. Selling AI and business outcomes is very different from selling a meeting license. Zoom is working to address this through partner enablement programs, including advanced analytics and profitability dashboards. One technique the company has found effective is providing trial licenses so partners can use the technology themselves and better understand its value. As Nick Tidd, head of global channel GTM, said about enabling partners to sell AI, “use it and they will come.” The messaging at Zoom Perspectives was clear: Conversation to completion A system of action built on Zoom’s embedded AI that brings context and understanding to the organization Differentiation through a unified platform that connects conversations happening both inside and outside the organization Every business communication vendor is trying to differentiate and figure out where they fit in the new agentic AI world. Some will succeed, some won't. Some will lead, some will follow. Some will disrupt, some will be disrupted. Zoom is placing its bets on being a leader and disrupter. Based on what I heard at the company's recent analyst event, I think they have a great shot at it. Zoom made a convincing argument for its system of action and conversations to completion approach. The company's focus and values have always been on simplicity and happiness (Work Happy). Hopefully Zoom can maintain these values while competing in the fast-changing agentic AI world.

Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of BCStrategies. As an independent industry analyst with over 30 years of experience, she provides strategic consulting services and market analysis on business communication applications, technologies, and markets, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically. Her primary focus areas are Contact Center, Customer Experience, Unified Communications and Collaboration, and other business communications technologies. Blair provides clients with a variety of custom consulting services, including market analysis, surveys and research, white papers, product assessment, competitive analysis, strategic development, vendor analysis, marketing and product positioning, partner development, and more. Named one of the top 50 CX Influencers in 2024, she is a frequent speaker and participant in industry conferences, webinars, podcasts, and other events to help educate customers, solution providers, channel partners, investors, and others about the evolving CX and UCC markets. Blair’s blogs and articles can be found on www.bcstrategies.com and nojitter.com . You can find her on LinkedIn and X . Featured Expert BC Strategies Expert analysis, insights, and opinions Featured Expert: Blair Pleasant

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