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My favorite line from A Complete Unknown – “ Don’t be afraid to track some mud on the carpet ”. My favorite line – and pretty much everybody else’s from the 8x8 event – “ We’re on offense now ”. Being a music guy and a film guy, I really enjoyed watching A Complete Unknown  on the flight home from 8x8’s event last week, in Southampton, UK. I hadn’t planned to watch it, but am glad I did, as that line really made me think about 8x8. If you haven’t seen it, the film is about Bob Dylan’s early career, and his realization that he had to move on from the tradition-bound folk scene that nurtured his formative time in New York. The climax is the famous Newport Folk Festival in 1965, where he makes his definitive break from that all-acoustic world by playing the closing set with electric instruments. The times they were-a-changing, and he wasn’t going to wait around for blessings from the folk establishment. He still needed a boost of confidence before pulling this off, and he got it from Johnny Cash, who did his own set earlier in the program. Cash was the ultimate outlaw country singer, and by telling Dylan it’s ok to “ track some mud on the carpet ” before he went on – in the house of folk - he had all the blessings he needed to do his thing, and that’s the moment when Bobby Dylan became Dylan. When CEO Sam Wilson told us “we’re on offense now” – something we really haven’t heard from 8x8 before – it sure sounds to me like they’re also ready to track some mud on the carpet in the cloud communications space. The company has long been in the shadow of larger players, but is still very much in the game. With the leadership transition from Bryan Martin to Sam Wilson now complete, Sam and his team is ready to execute on a vision they have been carefully honing the past three years. Time will tell how much mud they’ll be able to track in, but with the cloud communications space so crowded – and so fluid – they’re in as good a position as anyone to chart their own course and change with the times. I’m not alone in liking what they shared with the analyst community, and here are four key themes that tell me they’re ready for their moment. 1. Shift From Defense to Offense The main way they go on offense is to take a fresh approach to the “blurred lines” state of the cloud communications space. Sam Wilson talked about the growing overlap among CCaaS, UCaaS and CPaaS offerings, where it’s getting harder for buyers to know which platform to adopt. Nothing new there, but it’s all about how you read the landscape. Rather than focus on which platform the customer should buy, 8x8 is taking an outcomes-based approach to solving business problems. Other vendors are doing this too, but Sam summed up the reality very well by saying that customers don’t think in terms of which of type platform – agreed - so focus instead on the business issues – agreed as well. That’s the language customers understand, and since 8x8 has highly-integrated capabilities across CCaaS, UCaaS and CPaaS, it really doesn’t matter which one you wrap the offering with. 2. Focus on AI-Driven CX 8x8 has fully pivoted now to CX, and while they’re not alone in doing so, they’ve also tied their new branding to CX, so there’s a lot at stake here. The branding messaging is all about this, such as “Power your CX ambitions”, and “CX limits were meant to be broken”. For businesses embracing CX, these messages are aspirational and empowering, and by extension makes 8x8 look like the ideal company to partner with. While that messaging focuses on how the customer’s customers feel when CX is good/great, there’s a lot of AI behind the scenes making that happen. The new branding is about outcomes for end customers – as it should be – rather than trying to dazzle them with AI magic. The magic, actually, is to not  talk about AI, and let the end customer outcomes speak for themselves. In terms of a key takeaway, it’s important to note that CX is now front-and-center for 8x8, and their fortunes will ride on how well they can compete in this space. UCaaS and CPaaS remain in the mix, but it’s CX that will carry the day. With AI being everywhere now, the challenge will be how well they can make CX be AI-driven, and this takes us to their AI story, along with how the overall portfolio has evolved to support CX. 3. Broader AI Story There’s a lot to like in their AI story, and as the next section will outline, it’s broader than you might think. All the CCaaS vendors are now using conversational AI and agentic AI for customer service, and it will quickly be difficult to differentiate this way. Aside from what the vendors are doing, AI adoption will ultimately be driven by how fast contact centers can move on their AI journey. 8x8 understands this, arguably better than most, as their customer base has been closer to SMB/mid-market than large enterprise, where new tech adoption happens at a slower pace. Hunter Middleton did a great job articulating this, starting with the fact that most customers are still on their voice journey. Their journeys to digital channels, to AI and for some, even cloud, are further down the tech evolution path. The good news is that AI can do wonderful things with voice – today – but many contact centers are not willing/able to go all-in yet. However, they recognize the value that can be extracted from voice for improving CX, but don’t know how to get there. Hunter talked about “building an incremental adoption pathway” for AI, where they don’t get overwhelmed by the endless features all the vendors are offering. 8x8 is taking a more practical approach, to help customers “visualize the outcomes with AI”. Hunter used a Lego analogy, where customers will need some hand-holding with pre-built models, but also to give them a blank slate where they can create their own solutions based on what end customers are asking for. This is where an open, API-based platform comes into play, along with a best-of-breed partner ecosystem. For customers, the end result is to use AI on their terms to advance their voice journey, both for basic modernization, but also to leverage the more advanced capabilities for voice, such as customer sentiment. Not to be overlooked here is the foundational importance of voice, which Hunter and others rightfully stressed. One of their slides stated that 40% of self-service interactions are voice, and they did a good job connecting the dots between voice and AI. Only with AI, do contact centers have to the tools to capture voice interactions in a way that can help make everything better, and for this reason, they stressed the importance of transcription accuracy. AI outputs will only be as good as the inputs, and they cited a Tolly study showing 8x8 to have the most accurate scores. To be fair, many vendors have their own studies that show them to be the best, so this always has to be taken with a grain of salt. That aside, the important point is for contact centers still on their voice journey – and there are many – they need to see why AI voice is so central for CX, and how this should be a key criterion for choosing a CX partner. 4. Portfolio Transformation is Done This theme warrants a separate post, as much of our time with 8x8 was about the platform, the new announcements and the roadmap. While much of this was NDA, the main message is that they have finally evolved from a suite of platforms (XCaaS), to a broad, but highly-integrated set of offerings. As Sam Wilson noted, they have gone from having 2 to 20+ products. While much of it is native technology, they have a “curated set of partners” that are certified and integrated with their core platform. The underlying message here for customers is that 8x8 provides a full set of capabilities, so they don’t have to worry about making all the pieces fit together. The partner ecosystem itself is interesting, as it reflects the growing need to have an integrated offering to become truly AI-driven. This goes well beyond standard integrations around WFM or CRM, and good examples include Cognigy for agentic AI, Meltwater for social listening, and support for vertical applications, such as SpinSci for healthcare. As AI advances, this ecosystem will expand, and with the right partners, this model will help 8x8 track even more mud on to the carpet. Not only will this broaden the markets they can compete in, but it also helps them develop new offerings that you might not expect from 8x8. Two examples would be CIDP and RCS. CIDP – Comprehensive Interaction Data Layer – reflects much of their internal AI story, where all interactions are tracked and analyzed to provide a 360 view of the customer. With all that data, the AI piece identifies anomalies that need attention, along with actionable insights across the organization – CX leaders, supervisors and agents. Most CX vendors have similar capabilities now, but coming back to the full integration across UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS, CIDP brings rich customer journey orchestration that 8x8’s customers never had before. RCS – Rich Communication Services - is another interesting piece of the puzzle, as this reflects how mobile-centric CX is becoming. Mainly the domain of brands as an outbound channel to engage customers and prospects, 8x8 sees use cases to make mobile CX better. Instead of static, text-based engagement via SMS, RCS can add video and images for deeper engagement – over a channel that reflects where customers are. RCS may not yet be mainstream in North America, but it’s coming, and will soon become core to the CX landscape.   Conclusion There is a lot more to cover, especially around 8x8’s portfolio, and announcements during the event - and for some of that detail, I’ll steer you to fellow BCStrategies colleague, Blair Pleasant. You can find her post here – on our newly refreshed website – which includes some video interviews done at the event. Overall, it looks like things are coming together in a good way now for 8x8, both in terms of their offerings and the team that’s in place now. Sam Wilson brings a compelling vision, and those around him bring the passion he talked about on Day 1. Those are pretty good building blocks, and if the portfolio resonates with both channels and customers – we got validation from both during the sessions – then 2025 should be a good year for 8x8. Now let’s hope some of that rubs off on the Southampton Saints, an 8x8 customer that hosted us for the event. If they can somehow leverage all this good technology to make the team better, and perhaps stave off relegation from the EPL, that would be next-level for tracking mud on the carpet, or in this case, the pitch. Nothing is impossible with AI, right? Before you go, if you want to literally see more about 8x8’s event, I’ve posted a set of photos on my blog, and you can view them here .

Not all AI chatbots are created equal, especially for business professionals! In this video, I break down the best AI assistants and rank them based on their real-world capabilities. This isn’t about which AI is the smartest, it’s about which ones actually help you get work done efficiently. 🚀 What’s in this Tier List? ✅ A & B Tiers: AI tools that integrate directly with your work in real time (Zoom AI, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini) ✅ C & D Tiers: Great chatbots, but they require copy-pasting or file uploads to see your work (ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek) ✅ Honorable Mentions: AI-driven business tools that don’t quite fit the “conversational assistant” category (Cisco AI, RingCentral AI) ✅ S Tier: No AI assistant qualifies yet! To reach S Tier, an AI needs to be a unified assistant that follows the conversation seamlessly between apps. Right now, switching from Copilot in Word to Copilot in Outlook means starting over. Once an AI truly remembers and connects across all your work apps, it’ll earn S Tier status. 💡 What do you think? Would you rank them differently? Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments! OpenAI   Google   Microsoft   Anthropic   Cisco   Zoom   DeepSeek AI   RingCentral   Eric S. Yuan   Leo Boulton   Ilya Bukshteyn   Tim Dreyer   Anne Purvis-Blomquist   Alison St.Cyr (Parker)   Julie Steele

If event hosts simply started using the tools that are available today, we could instantly enjoy a massive positive transformation in the world of conferences and trade shows. The world of conferences and trade shows was hit as hard as an industry could possibly be hit by the Covid pandemic. The industry was completely dependent on physical events, which were almost totally shut down for over a year. During that time, we scrambled to shift everything to completely online events. Unfortunately, the leading events platforms at the time the pandemic hit weren’t ready for prime time. The top services were primarily designed for in-person events to handle registration and badging. They were quickly modified to add video feeds and were sold as virtual event platforms. Event hosts and attendees found the resulting experience to be confusing, cumbersome, glitchy, unreliable, and low quality. Several big players in the video space (including Zoom, Cisco, RingCentral, and others), rushed to acquire and/or develop true hybrid event platforms that provide an acceptable, even excellent, experience for remote attendees. However, the adoption of these new, current generation, hybrid event platforms is suffering. They have some happy customers and are generating some profit for their respective companies, but they aren’t seeing the adoption that I think they warrant. For example, I’m not seeing widespread usage of them in our leading trade shows. The Hybrid Event Platform Adoption Struggle There are two big reasons why trade shows aren’t giving enough attention to the hybrid aspect of their shows and these new hybrid event platforms. The primary reason is that they had such horrible experiences with hybrid during the pandemic. They just want to go back to the good old days of focusing on the in-person event. They don’t know, and don’t care, that the platforms have been improved and the hybrid experience can be excellent. The second reason is that they don’t fully understand, or appreciate, the benefits of a hybrid event. Their mindset is that the event is physical and anyone who needs to be there should hop on a plane to fully experience the conference. At best, some events may video record some of the sessions and put them on the web for people who couldn’t attend. That is not a hybrid experience! For hybrid events to achieve their true potential, the events community must do a better job of communicating and understanding the benefits of hybrid events.   Benefits of Hybrid Events There seems to be this perception that a hybrid event is somehow a lesser version of a trade show or conference. I’ve heard many event planners say that they “had to go hybrid/virtual” because of Covid or other issues. I’m not hearing event planners say they “choose to go hybrid” because they understand that it will be a better overall event for everyone, including the in-person attendees. Fortunately, I have attended a few fantastic, truly hybrid, events. Notably, they were events hosted by event platform providers. The 2023 Zoomtopia and Webex One events in particular showed the true power of hybrid. To be clear, I attended both events in person, yet I still enjoyed the benefits of the hybrid event experience. The fact that remote attendees were not just passive viewers of a video feed but were able to participate (for example in live QA sessions), made it feel like a bigger, more important, and valuable event for me. My hope is to see a lot more successful hybrid events, but by actual customers of these services. The benefits for in-person attendees are certainly significant, but they pale in comparison to the benefits for the event hosts! Hybrid events can massively increase their audience, and potential revenue by opening up their show to those who wouldn’t otherwise travel to attend. I believe event hosts fear that if a show goes hybrid, some attendees might forgo the $500 in-person ticket and choose to just catch the event online for $100. This fear is unfounded. The value of attending in-person is still massive. As wonderful as video can be, it will never match real human contact. Deals get made at these shows over handshakes. Events will not lose significant in-person attendance by going hybrid, but they may grow a significant virtual attendance. Of course, the greatest beneficiaries of hybrid events are the remote attendees. Accessibility should be a primary concern for event planners! People with disabilities or mobility limitations must be welcomed into our events and accommodated for. This doesn’t just mean having accommodations at the physical location. It means considering those who can’t physically attend, and not just including them but providing them with a great event experience. Accessibility isn’t just about physical barriers. There are also financial barriers. Obviously, we can’t just make our trade shows free to the world. It is necessary to charge high registration fees for in-person attendees to pay for the in-person event facilities. However, adding an affordable hybrid component can vastly increase the size of your community by including those with smaller budgets. Finally, accessibility can address geographic barriers. Members of your community may be willing to take a 3-hour flight to your show, but they may not think it merits a 12-hour flight. A hybrid event allows everyone to be included regardless of geographic location and willingness to travel. Hybrid Events Are More Than Broadcasts You can’t simply point a webcam at your keynote speaker, put it online, and call your event hybrid. That is a simple broadcast. A hybrid event requires much more. A crucial element of a true hybrid event is interactivity between remote and in-person attendees. One major way to do this is through internet “chat”. First, you obviously need some kind of “chat” that is accessible to all attendees. This part is easy as it is provided by all leading event platforms. It is even available on typical webinar platforms. The second part of the puzzle is a bit trickier. Remote attendees will automatically be placed in the chat when they enter the platform. But we need the in-person attendees to access the chat so that everyone can interact. This can be achieved by best practices during events. Chat can be displayed on a screen on-stage at the event. This ensures that in-person attendees are aware of remote attendees and encourages in-person attendees to join the chat to participate. Also, Q&A at events can be limited to online chat, pushing in-person attendees to join the chat to ask their questions. I’ve seen both practices put into effect with fantastic results. Once all attendees, remote and physical, are in the same chat, you have a community. Event platforms will have a separate chat for each session, and an overall event chat, or lobby chat. The leading event platforms do a great job of navigating attendees to the sessions and chats that they want to be in at the right times. But chat, and its proper usage, is just one example of how current generation event platforms foster interactivity. It’s worth doing a deep dive into the feature sets of these platforms to see how they can be used to create an accessible and interactive experience for your attendees. The Future of Hybrid Events The potential for hybrid events is ripe with opportunities for innovation and growth. We haven’t even talked about AI or VR yet, both of which have incredible implications for the virtual aspect of hybrid events! But if event hosts simply started using the tools that are available today, we could instantly enjoy a massive positive transformation in the world of conferences and trade shows. While I hate to be negative, I feel that I must have low expectations here. I would love to say that this is the year of the hybrid event, and that our cutting-edge hybrid event platforms will see a massive surge in usage and adoption. However, I fear that things will continue along the same lines. Event hosts are still freaked out from the pandemic and afraid to try anything new. The event platform vendors and community aren’t doing enough to educate the public about the value and benefits of hybrid events. There will certainly be more and more successful hybrid events as the years go on, and these events will shine. But I can’t, at this time, forecast that true hybrid events will be ubiquitous, as they should be. Most of our events will continue to be primarily physical, with some sort of virtual afterthought at best for remote attendees. I hope the world of events proves me wrong and quickly masters hybrid events. It would make the events themselves more successful, profitable, and enjoyable, would grow the communities that these events support, and do the right thing when it comes to accessibility. Until that time, we will all be missing out on better event experiences.

In this exclusive interview, Adam Heimlich, Founder and CEO of Chalice AI, breaks down how his company is disrupting the ad tech space by using custom AI to create highly personalized advertising solutions with a small, efficient team, just like DeepSeek’s revolutionary approach in tech. David explores Chalice’s mission, how it connects data and AI to reshape advertising, and the future of value-driven impressions. Adam shares insights on why AI won’t replace creativity in ad tech and how Chalice is making big waves with their lean, powerful team.

Eye contact has been a challenge in video calls since the beginning, but real innovation is finally happening! In this video, I break down three different approaches to solving the problem, explaining how they work and their pros and cons. AI Eye Contact Correction: I demo NVIDIA Broadcast to see how well AI can fake eye contact.Teleprompter & Mirror-Based Solutions: These setups place the camera behind a reflective screen, but are they practical? In-Front-of-the-Screen Solutions: I test the iContact Camera Pro, a simple and portable way to keep natural eye contact without AI. Which solution do you think works best? Let me know in the comments! Check out the iContact Camera Pro here: https://icontactcamera.com/

Discover how Vedubox simplifies online learning by replacing a jumble of apps with one integrated platform. In this brief video, we cover the basics and key benefits of Vedubox, from streamlining live classes with Zoom integration to scaling for big organizations. If you’re looking to streamline your online training or education program, watch on to see why Vedubox could be the perfect solution. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights! Learn more here: https://vedubox.co.uk/

As we welcome 2025, it’s time for the annual tradition of making predictions for the coming year. AI Adoption and Training: I hope and expect to see vendors pay more attention to adoption, usage, training, and change management for AI in both the enterprise and contact centers. While some AI capabilities are intuitive, some require training (for more information, see my NoJitter article on this topic). You probably don’t need much training for summarizing a meeting, but more complex tasks, such as  using Microsoft Copilot to analyze data or create charts in Excel, training is needed to help users get the most out of it. Contact center agents need to know not just how to use the AI tools, but why they should be using AI and understanding the “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM) so they’ll be more likely to embrace the AI tools. Vendors such as Microsoft and Cisco are doing a good job of providing adoption and training tools for their AI, and I’m hoping that most other vendors will follow suit. (I’ll be doing a  session  at EC on this topic.) Focus on tangible benefits of AI: While most of the focus on AI in 2024 has been on experimentation with the technology and use cases, the focus in 2025 will be on the quantitative benefits and ROI of AI deployments. Businesses were quick to try out different AI tools without considering the true costs and ROI, but that is changing. Vendors need to not just talk about their AI technology but the tangible business value it provides to customers. Customers need to ask how these tools will help them increase sales, reduce costs, improve productivity, etc. and how that turns into quantitative benefits and results. Expect to see vendors also experiment with various pricing models to try to figure out the best way to monetize AI. The finance folks and C-suite will get more involved in AI decisions and deployments, requiring an understanding of the true cost and true value of AI deployments. Along those lines, expect to see lots of ROI studies and tools that help demonstrate the value and ROI of AI to identify the true value provided. I expect to see companies like WiserOwl that provide CX decision intelligence identify how cost-effective AI agents really are and the true value provided. The Year of Agentic AI: 2024 was the year of AI, but 2025 will be the year of Agentic AI and AI Agents. “Have your agent call my agent” will take on a whole new meaning with agentic AI. These AI agents can perform tasks autonomously on behalf of humans without specific instructions. We’ll eventually all have our own agents that will do things proactively, and we may not even know these tasks have been done. But – there will be a tsunami of AI agents, creating “agent sprawl.” Hopefully we’ll see orchestration tools that will manage all the various agents to help them work together without creating too much chaos. The Increasing Role of Data and Knowledge: As businesses recognize the importance of data and knowledge for AI deployments, they’ll spend a lot of time and effort getting their data in order. One of the biggest challenges I hear from customers is that their data is in many different places and not optimized for AI use. As I noted in last year’s predictions article, the role of knowledge and knowledge management platforms will greatly increase, as knowledge is an essential part of an AI solution. Contact center AI applications such as customer self-service, agent assistance, chatbots, and virtual agents, depend on having and extracting the right knowledge. Knowledge systems form the basis for both agent assist and customer self service applications, and will continue to gain importance. Proactive outreach and engagement will start to see increased usage. Using AI-based analytics to identify and anticipate customer needs, businesses can send proactive notifications, and in some cases solve an issue before the customer knows there’s a problem. Several CCaaS/CX vendors, including NICE and Five9, made strategic acquisitions in 2024, setting the stage for businesses to deploy proactive capabilities. Lots of lawsuits! As I predicted last year, there were several high-profile lawsuits related to AI and data privacy in 2024, and I expect to see many more in 2025. There were lawsuits against AI providers related to data privacy, customer consent, the use of end-user data for training the AI models, proper use of user and customer data, and unexpected or harmful outcomes based on AI recommendations. Several lawsuits were related to companies listening to, recording, collecting, and analyzing customer communications without explicit consent. This is leading to the next prediction… Changes to Terms of Use: Businesses are recognizing the role of customer consent when it comes to listening to, recording, and analyzing customer communications for AI purposes, such as training vendors’ AI models. Some businesses are changing their consent policies and terms of use. For example, this notification appeared on a recent chat interaction: As more businesses recognize the legal implications of how they use and collect customer information for AI purposes, they will be more forthcoming in their customer communications and terms of use notifications. AI Impact on the Workforce: Despite all the vendors constantly claiming that AI will augment and not replace human workers, we’ll start seeing some jobs disappearing. Most businesses note that attrition is taking place naturally and rather than laying off workers, companies instead are simply not replacing some workers when they leave. However, in order to gain the financial benefits of AI, companies will ultimately end up laying off workers in areas where AI can do their functions more cost effectively. We’ll see this initially in the contact center, as agents, supervisors, business analysts, and others will slowly be replaced by AI, and other job functions throughout organizations will follow. As Bill Gates noted , out of countless professions, only three will truly withstand the AI revolution. And for a couple non-AI predictions: The continued integration of unified communications and collaboration platforms with contact center/CCaaS. This has been taking place for several years, leading to: CX for Everyone (or CX Everywhere): As I’ve predicted year after year, businesses will recognize that CX is the responsibility of everyone – not just contact center agents. We’ll see more examples of customer service and support responsibilities expanding beyond the formal contact center to what I call “Experience Workers.” With integrated UC/contact center platforms and offerings, non-contact center workers will get the interaction tools they need to help provide a better customer experience. This ties in with the ability for contact center agents to collaborate with subject matter experts (SMEs) to create what I call the Collaborative Contact Center. AI is transforming everything we do in our business and personal lives. 2025 will be a pivotal year as we move from experimentation to real solutions and applications with real business value. There will be some hits and misses, along with some success stories. Let’s hope there are more success stories!

Zoho’s analyst event in Austin, TX showcased Zoho’s efforts to become more of an enterprise platform player, going beyond its small- and mid-sized business (SMB) roots. As you might have noticed from my previous articles about Zoho (and this one ), they’re a unique company that is “Privately Held, Publicly Responsible.” Zoho’s core values are: Financial prudence Customer focus Social conscience This is clear in everything that Zoho does – they don’t just talk the talk, but Zoho walks the walk, as they say. AI in the After DeepSeek Era Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu kicked off the event focusing on AI, which of course was discussed throughout the event. Vembu recently stepped down as company CEO to become Zoho’s Chief Scientist, allowing him to focus focus full time on R&D initiatives, as well as his personal passion for rural development. In his keynote, Vembu discussed “Hallucinations of 2024 vs. Reality of 2025, as we move from the BC era (Big Capex) to the AD era (After DeepSeek). He explained that AI features are mere table stakes, and that companies’ specific business data and context, combined with commodity reasoning engines, is what delivers business value. Vembu noted that the new source of value in enterprise software is privacy, trust, and compliance, based on the three stages of AI: 1. Enhancing user experience with AI using contextual business data 2. AI enabled verifiable actions (agents) 3. Massive programmer productivity And of course Zoho’s big announcement was around AI, with an expansion of Zoho’s AI platform, Zia. Zoho introduced the new Zia Agent, Agent Studio, and Agent Marketplace, which enabling enterprises to build, deploy, and access autonomous digital agents across their organizations. Zoho released several pre-built Zia Agents, including an Account Manager Agent, SDR Agent, HR Agent, Customer Support Agent, IT Help Desk Agent, and a Sales Coach Agent, with more on the way. With pre-built agents, customers can get up and running more quickly, making it easier to deploy AI for various workflows and processes. Customers and partners that want to create their own customized agents can use the no-code and low-code Zia Agent Studio. These agents can be published in the Agent Marketplace, where customers can access and deploy other pre-built agents. Zoho also enhanced Ask Zia, a conversational assistant for employees (basically Zoho’s version of a copilot) that will be contextually embedded across all Zoho applications. To enable integration with various public and self-hosted LLMs, Zoho AI Bridge makes it easy to connect to third-party LLMs such as Meta, DeepSeek, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Google, etc. From Apps to Platform Mani Vembu, Zoho’s new Chief Executive Officer, gave an insightful presentation on Zoho’s vision to evolve beyond being a product company to becoming the preferred platform vendor as a foundation for innovation, collaboration, and transformation. Vembu explained the value of being a domain-specific app platform, which is the balance between too much abstraction in all-in-one platform and fully out-of-the-box point products. By combining the power of domain-specific features with low-code tools and contextual coding to extend the platform, and leveraging its composable architecture, Zoho can create business impact with shorter implementation cycles with quicker change management capabilities for enterprises. Zoho now has several domain specific app platforms, including: Customer experience platform Collaboration platform Employee experience platform Finance platform IoT platform ITSM platform Zoho’s apps and app platforms all run on the same infrastructure and leverage Zoho’s unified data platform. CX, Collaboration, and More… It was great hearing about Zoho’s vision, differentiation, AI strategy, and more, but I wanted to hear about what they’re doing in collaboration and CX. In this video interview Rakeeb Rafeeque discusses two of my favorite Zoho products - Zoho Voice and Zoho Cliq. Rafeeque provides insights into new capabilities, as well as how these products are being enhanced for enterprise customers. I also spoke with Aarthie Elizabeth, Senior Marketing Manager, about what Zoho is doing in the collaboration space. The good news is that there’ll be a big announcement in March – but the bad news is that it’s confidential for now. In this video interview, Elizabeth discusses Zoho Project Management, with a peak into what’s to come. Hearing From Customers As always, we heard from many Zoho customers, and I had a chance to speak with several of them during the event, including Nuvia Smiles “Chief Nerd,” Parl Johnson. In this video interview. Aarthie Elizabeth discusses what’s new with Zoho Workdrive, while Shanthana Lakshmi, Senior Product Marketing Analyst, gives an update on Zoho Cliq, and Nuvia Smiles’ Johnson discusses how the dental implant company uses these products. Conclusion As noted, Zoho isn’t your typical business communications vendor – and that’s a good thing. The company’s focus on giving back to the community, providing value to customers, and continual innovation helps separate them from the pack. It will be interesting to see how well Zoho succeeds moving up the enterprise stack, as this entails various challenges along the way. Based on what I know about the company, Zoho is ready to face these challenges and thrive.

The key to a good customer experience is actually pretty simple – provide customers with the information they need and answer their questions. But what are consumers really looking for, and how can businesses best meet their needs when it comes to customer service and customer experience? I got early access to the Five9 2025 Customer Experience Report, which takes a deep dive into these questions. To better understand consumer behavior, customer experience preferences, and the impact of customer service on purchasing decisions, Five9 and Zogby Analytics surveyed over 1,000 consumers across a range of age groups in the US, Canada, and the UK. By understanding consumer preferences and expectations, businesses can use current technologies to better serve customers and stay ahead of changing expectations. Five9 and Zogby surveyed consumers across all age groups to explore their views about a range of customer experience factors. While some of the results were expected, others were surprising—for example, there is less of a generational divide when it comes to using technology, with 72% of respondents expressing willingness to use AI agents.  Key Survey Findings Most generations, from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, are on the same page when it comes to customer experience. Both groups prefer phone support from a live agent yet show a strong interest in using AI agents and chatbots – especially if it means shorter wait times and faster answers.  When asked which factors are most important to creating a positive customer service experience, the number one response was “getting the right answer from a representative, even if it takes more time.”  Alternatively, the main factors driving bad customer experiences are having to wait too long to reach a representative, being forced to use non-voice channels without the ability to speak with a live agent, and getting bounced between people (or machines) before an issue is resolved. The phone remains the most preferred interaction channel across a variety of situations, followed by email and web chat. Consumers prefer phone calls for the human connection – knowing the agent understands them and is actively listening to their concerns. In fact, over a third of respondents noted that empathy and human connection with an agent are more important than a quick response.  Increased Appreciation of Self-Service and AI  Most respondents value the convenience of self-service primarily for the convenience and speed. While they agree that self-service for customer support has positively impacted their customer service experience, consumers still prefer assisted service from an agent over the phone rather than self-service. Millennials are the most open to digital self-service, while Baby Boomers are more reserved.  Consumers are becoming more comfortable using AI tools such as virtual agents/chatbots and AI agents. While there is still some hesitancy when it comes to using these technologies, 59% of respondents are willing to interact with a chatbot rather than a live agent if it means getting the information quicker. However, 30% still doubt the accuracy of chatbot responses, highlighting the need for AI that delivers both speed and reliability. This balance between efficiency and trust is driving interest in more advanced AI solutions. All in all, consumers are optimistic about Generative AI, with over half of the respondents expecting GenAI technologies to help companies better serve them and provide improved customer experiences.  Other key findings include: The largest portion of respondents would use virtual agents/chatbots, particularly if they know they can transfer to a live agent if needed. Consumers are comfortable with companies using past purchase history if doing so ensures a better customer experience. Consumers would like the brands they do business with to anticipate their needs and offer proactive service, but they don’t expect it. Most customers attempt to resolve issues on their own before reaching out to customer support. I’ll be discussing key survey findings in a webinar on March 13 with Matt McGinnis, Five9 VP of Product, Industry, and Solutions Marketing, as we dive into the latest survey insights shaping the future of CX in 2025. We’ll cover: Turnoffs that drive your customers away The growing comfort with AI-powered service and what’s needed to build trust in chatbots and AI agents How seamless CX is key to customer loyalty and retention Why customers expect brands to be proactive and empathetic – and how to make that a reality for your business And most importantly, ways you can take action to improve and enhance the customer experience.  Understanding consumer preferences, as well as industry best practices, will help you guide customer support business decisions – leading to loyal customers and lasting relationships.

Held in the beautiful world-famous Napa Valley, RingCentral’s 2025 Analyst Summit provided insights on the company’s vision and priorities, product innovations, go to market, and more. No longer primarily a UCaaS vendor, RingCentral offers a multi-product portfolio, with AI embedded throughout.  In her new role as President & COO, Kira Makagon kicked off the event with a look back at RingCentral’s 25-year journey. From its roots as an early cloud PBX vendor, RingCentral’s “Intelligent, Connected, Effortless” Platform now supports four key product areas, with AI injected throughout the portfolio: RingEX – cloud business phone system with SMS and fax (yes, fax is still alive), team messaging, and the new AI Receptionist (AIR) and AI Assistant RingCX – an omnichannel CCaaS solution with AI Quality Management, Agent Assist/Supervisor Assist, Intelligent Virtual Agent, and Workforce Engagement Management  RingSense AI platform  Events and Video – Events, webinars, video meetings, and video/meeting rooms Makagon described the company’s 2025 strategic priorities: Build upon its leadership in business communications with AI across the entire portfolio Expand TAM through its multi-product portfolio, led by RingCX and AI  Drive profitable growth and improve customer engagement across the entire business.  Key to everything is the RingSense AI platform, which is infused throughout the company’s portfolio.  I had a chance to speak with Makagon about the key messages from the event. She noted that RingCentral’s AI differentiation is based on a “system of experiences” and that its AI is trusted, fit to purpose, orchestrated, and open and extensible via APIs. She discussed the company’s vision of providing an intelligent, connected, and effortless AI-powered platform to drive meaningful customer and employee experience.  AI and Systems of Experiences Not to be left behind the Agentic AI bandwagon, RingCentral introduced its first AI Agent for a specific workflow –AI Receptionist (AIR). AIR is a digital employee that acts as an always-reliable front desk receptionist. The virtual receptionist can answer questions about company hours, locations, services, etc. and direct callers to the right department or person. RingCentral’s goal is to make AIR very easy to adopt and set up with human-like conversation. I was totally impressed when watching a demonstration of how easy it is to set up the virtual receptionist. In this video, Solutions Engineer Matt LaHatt walks through creating an AI receptionist in just a few steps, including: Selecting the tone and personality of the receptionist from one of the eight prebuilt personas Providing a company description Entering the company location and business hours Creating a welcome greeting Enabling the AI receptionist to transfer calls to a live agent  Drilling down a bit more into RingCentral’s AI strategy, I spoke with the new Chief AI Officer, Antonio Nucci. In his presentation to the analysts, he explained that RingCentral will harness the power of AI with a specialized digital workforce of AI agents to: Personalize engagement with human-like interaction Unlock new levels of human productivity Drive automation and self-service for employees (EX), customers (CX), and service agents (CCX) Nucci discussed how “Systes of experiences,” powered by conversational and specialized AI agents are the new frontier.  Drilling down a bit more into RingCentral’s AI strategy, I spoke with Nucci about RingCentral’s AI approach, including the ability to build customizable AI agents. CX Becomes More Prominent As expected, we heard a lot about RingCX, which now supports over 700 customers. RingCentral tries to differentiate by making RingCX easy to deploy and simple to use, while providing rich omnichannel (20+ channels), with disruptive pricing ($65/seat). RingCentral emphasizes that it still sells RingCentral Contact Center and supports its partnership with NICE, offering additional capabilities and integrations than RingCX for more sophisticated contact center needs. In this video interview, John Finch, Global VP Product Marketing, discusses RingCX and RingCentral’s contact center offerings. Vertical Approach One of the things that most impressed me was RingCentral’s vertical focus. While most vendors target certain verticals, RingCentral goes a step further, working with subverticals within the various verticals, including financial services, healthcare, retail, and public sector. For example, rather than simply focusing on the healthcare vertical, RingCentral looks at the different needs of large hospitals, large clinics and practices, small medical clinics, dental service organizations, etc.  RingCentral’s approach is to offer a full communication platform for these verticals’ communication needs built on a flexible and extendable integration layer. Beyond offering hundreds of APIs, connectors, and integrations, RingCentral experts can speak in the language of customers in verticals, rather than simply providing generic solutions. Final Thoughts RingCentral and other business communication vendors are facing many challenges, including an uncertain economic future, the continued dominance of Microsoft Teams, the quickly evolving and changing AI landscape, and more.  RingCentral is trying to stand out in a very crowded business communications space in several ways:  Focusing on its multi-product portfolio approach (EX, CX, events, and AI). This becomes increasingly important as more and more customers look for a single vendor. Key to this is RingCX, which continues to gain customers across customer segments. Recognizing that voice (and the phone) is still essential, leveraging its strength with the RingEX business phone system to quickly expand to other areas, while infusing AI across its product offerings. Continued innovation in AI, building on its RingSense AI offerings. The company recently introduced AI Quality Management, and at the event previewed AI Interaction Analytics to capture true AI CSAT in real time. While everyone is talking about AI agents or agentic AI, RingCentral introduced AI Receptionist, with other AI agent offerings to come.  A vertical approach that goes beyond simply having customers in certain segments. A new go-to-market model that engages with customers through the customer lifecycle. Expanding its distribution through its Global Service Provider partners. The company now has 10 GSP partners, with the goal to reach 100. In addition to adding new partners, many of the partners are expanding their offerings, such as adding RingCX to their portfolios. During a Q&A with the executives, I asked when and if the company expects to lead with its CX offerings rather than its Employee Experience (EX) offerings. Makagon responded, "We have the strongest EX product in the market. We lead from our strengths and see a lot of opportunity in RingCX. We’d like to be viewed as a company that has both – not leading with one or the other. Customers want to buy both." Staying innovative and flexible, while being customer focused is key to success in this market. RingCentral continues to build on its strengths while expanding its portfolio and go-to-market to take on today’s new challenges.

The messages at the 8x8 Analyst Summit in Southampton, U.K. were almost as loud as the Southampton Football Club fans when the Saints scored a goal. During the summit, analysts heard from 8x8 execs and product leaders about the company’s vision, strategy, and product updates, and were also treated to a Premier League football (soccer) game at the event venue, St. Mary’s Stadium, the home of 8x8 customer, the Southampton Football Club.   We heard several key messages, including: 8x8 is on the offense, focusing on continued innovation and next steps. With the Fuze acquisition and customer migration in the rear-view mirror, 8x8 is now in a position where it can be more aggressive. 8x8 is delivering AI-powered CX. As part of its recent rebranding and repositioning, the company moved away from the XCaaS brand and is leading with AI-powered CX and its 8x8 Platform for CX.  Customer success and customer retention are key priorities. 8x8 made it clear that the company puts customers at the center of everything it does, while focusing on customer retention and helping its customers retain their customers. It’s all about outcomes, not features. 8x8 CEO Sam Wilson noted that software companies like 8x8 can’t win based on features, and 8x8 is focused on selling business outcomes (more on this below). 8x8’s primary differentiation is based on its single platform for UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS. Leverage technology partnerships where it makes sense, rather then inventing everything in-house. Wilson explained that while the AI world is changing with lightning speed, those who invested early in developing certain tools or supporting one specific LLM are now falling behind as newer, faster, and better AI tools and models are developed (re: The Innovator’s Dilemma ). As Chief Product Officer Hunter Middleton explained, “We’re not hiring 500 data scientists, and we don’t need to be first to market with AI capabilities. Instead, we want to make sure our customers are successful.” To that end, the company is partnering with best-of-breed AI vendors such as Cognigy, Balto, Cresta, and others. 8x8’s partner ecosystem includes vendor offerings for Agentic AI, WFM, Security, Compliance, CRM, Payments, Social listening, and more. Interaction Data is key. 8x8’s Communications Intelligence provides AI-driven communication insights, based on the 8x8 Customer Interaction Data Platform (CIDP). CIDP provides a unified company-wide interaction repository with common processing and open access. Transparency – while this wasn’t called out, most analysts agreed that Wilson, along with CMO Bruno Bertini, were extremely open and transparent, sharing both the good and the bad, and acknowledging what could be better. Good Momentum 8x8 has seen significant growth in the past few years, especially for its AI and CPaaS offerings. Wilson provided some data points to back up his claims about the company’s growth and acceleration, noting 84% AI-powered CX growth and 160% Voice AI interaction growth. New Announcements 8x8 made several announcements at the event, including:   Expanded availability of digital channels for 8×8 Engage. 8x8 Engage now supports video and SMS interactions, with support for Viber, WhatsApp, email, and RCS Business Messaging coming shortly. This lets customer-facing employees outside the contact center deliver personalized interactions in the customer’s preferred channel. 8×8 JourneyIQ, enabling businesses to seamlessly track, predict, and optimize the customer journey across all channels, departments, and touchpoints. JourneyIQ is powered by 8x8’s Customer Interaction Data Initiative, delivering real-time AI-powered customer journey intelligence. RCS (Rich Communication Services) Business Messaging support for 8×8 Contact Center lets organizations leverage two-way omnichannel engagement. Using RCS, organizations can provide customers with engaging, dynamic content through shared texts, images, videos, carousels, and CTAs 8×8 AI Orchestrator, allowing organizations to create seamless decision flows and orchestration across multiple bots and vendor solutions to better manage AI capabilities across multiple vendors and allow for seamless transitions between bots and humans. In this video, Dhwani Soni (GVP, Product Management and Design) discusses the new announcements, as well as some use cases for 8x8 Engage and various personas that can use Engage.   In this video, Chrissy Calabrese, Director, Product Marketing and Lisa Orford (VP, Product Management) discuss key messages from the event and expand on these announcements. Orford also provides information on how Engage can be used to help organizations. Two things resonated the most with me at the event: 8x8 Engage, and the company’s focus on selling business outcomes.   8x8 Engage   At last year’s analyst event, 8x8 introduced 8x8 Engage, aimed at customer-facing employees outside of the contact center, offering features such as queuing, AI Bots, Quality Monitoring, and more , enabling non-agents to deliver exceptional CX. As mentioned, this year, 8x8 announced the addition of digital channels for Engage that are fully optimized for mobile devices  allowing for omnichannel support.   I’m particularly intrigued by 8x8 Engage and how 8x8 recognizes that customer experience is an organization-wide responsibility and is everyone’s job. I’ve been talking and writing about this for years, noting that workers in human resources, marketing, finance, and even engineering, as well as retail workers, nurses, and others, often engage with customers and need the right tools for routing, queueing, recording, reporting, analytics, quality management, and more. The challenge is helping customers identify the right use cases for Engage. 8x8 and its partners will need to help organizations recognize the various personas that can benefit from this solution and where this type of solution makes the most sense.     Outcome-Based Packages   8x8 created several outcome-based solutions that package together various products to provide specific outcomes, including: FastPay, which includes 8x8’s contact center   + SecurePay + Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA) + Proactive Outreach to automate payments, cutting collection costs Remote Fix, which includes UC + CC + Video Elevation/CPaaS to provide real-time expert support, reducing service delays Aftersale Assist, combining UC + CC + ICA for better post-sale engagement and retention Chief Product Officer Hunter Middleton claimed that they expect to have approximately 40 outcome-based packages, including more vertical packages.   I love this approach, as it highlights the benefit of 8x8’s single platform approach for UC, CC, and CPaaS, as well as making it easier for customers to purchase solutions rather than point products. It also makes it easier for salespeople and channel partners to sell solutions that solve customer pain points.    Closing Thoughts There aren’t many conferences where I walk away feeling, “Wow – this is a different company than in the past,” but that’s exactly what happened at the 8x8 Analyst Summit. 8x8 has repositioned and rebranded itself, added some new leadership including Joel Neeb as Chief Transformation and Business Operations Officer, and is being more aggressive than in the past. The company is now a CX company, leading with 8x8 Platform for CX and focused on customers’ business outcomes and success. Of course, we’ll have to see how the company executes and delivers on its promises. Wilson, alo Bertini, and others laid out a strong and clear message. Hopefully the company can keep up its momentum.

(Video length: 33:38) In this episode of the AI Show, Rob Scott and Kevin Kieller  delve into the latest developments in the AI industry. Joining them is Gurdeep Singh Pall, President of AI Strategy at Qualtrics , who brings a wealth of experience from over 30 years at Microsoft, where he spearheaded innovations in AI, networking, and communication. This episode uncovers how AI is rapidly evolving and what businesses need to do to stay ahead. This conversation explores: The impact of AI on business models, from customer interactions to productivity tools The rise of multimodal AI and what it means for enterprises adopting generative AI The “chip wars” driving the AI hardware market, including Cerebrus’ latest AI inference chip How businesses should approach AI integration now to stay competitive—and why waiting is not an option Next Steps Follow Rob Scott and Kevin Kieller for more expert interviews and AI insights. Explore how AI is reshaping industries by visiting AI Today. Learn more about AI strategy and implementation with Gurdeep Singpal’s work at Qualtrics.