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As analysts, we’re always asked for our year-end predictions, so I thought I would turn the tables around and ask the vendors for their predictions. Here are some of the key trends and predictions for 2026 from various business communication vendors.     8x8 – The platform becomes the value According to 8x8 CEO Sam Wilson, “The market finally stops treating business communications as a smorgasbord of disconnected products. UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS served their purpose as labels, but customers are no longer interested in buying a category. They are buying platforms that unify the communication journey. The platform becomes the value. Applications become interchangeable.”   Cisco – Connected Intelligence is how things get done Cisco notes that perhaps the most overarching workplace trend in 2026 will be around what Cisco calls Connected Intelligence . It's a new model of collaboration that connects people to people, people to AI, and, increasingly, AI to AI. Aruna Ravichandran, SVP & CMO for AI, networking, and collaboration, notes: “By 2026, the workplace won't evolve through more apps or digital assistants, but through Connected Intelligence — where people, data, and digital workers [AI agents] work together side by side.Connected Intelligence removes the limits of geography and individual capacity. Knowledge and expertise move instantly to where they're needed. Digital workers surface insights in context, automate workflows quietly, and keep work moving forward — without interrupting human creativity or decision making.” According to Vinod Muthukrishnan, VP & GM of Webex customer experience, "In 2026, the rapid evolution of AI multi-agent collaboration and orchestration will enable a new level of automation and the creation of brand concierge agents. Agentic AI will make it possible for workforces to be reimagined for a new era where these AI agents work side by side with human agents to deliver true connected intelligence and elevated customer experiences." He predicts that by 2026, these technological advancements will significantly transform the role of human agents, leading organizations to adopt new staffing models."AI-powered workforce engagement tools will be utilized, such as quality management and AI routing, and innovations in areas such as real-time speech-to-speech translation. These innovations will enable organizations to fundamentally transform how they manage and optimize hybrid teams of AI and human agents, allowing them to work together seamlessly and deliver true connected intelligence."   Dialpad – Agentic AI multiples, not replaces Brian Peterson, CTO & Co-Founder, states, "I know this is a somewhat controversial take, but Agentic AI isn’t going to replace most of what businesses use. 90%+ of companies aren’t tech companies — they rely on their SaaS stack, and that stack is just going to get faster, easier, and more productive. AI doesn’t replace the tools or the expertise behind them; it multiplies both, which is why you’ll keep investing in the products you already run your business on."   Five9 – Battles and Consolidation Matt McGinnis, VP of Product, Industry, and Solutions Marketing  shares his 2026 predictions: 1.    AI Agents begin scaled deployments and start to show large ROI. 2.    Data becomes a big story to support hyper-personalization. 3.    Agentic managerial tools will begin significant trials and find impactful use cases. 4.    Battle between CX/CCaaS and CRM will heat up 5.    Industry consolidation and PE activity will increase involving startup AI entrants, CCaaS platforms, CRM platforms, Workforce services, and UCaaS   Mitel - Control and trust will redefine the user experience Eric Hanson, CMO predicts that the year 2026 will usher in a new era where users and organizations prioritize factors such as control, privacy, and security, while relegating convenience and user experience (UX) to the backseat. The age of AI and the increased threat surface of cybersecurity will require the introduction of a new UX frontier, one that requires greater safety, resiliency, and flexibility to meet the evolving global dynamics and the increased needs for multi cloud technology solutions and hybrid communications.  This shift will be felt at both the individual and organizational levels. As a new generation enters the workforce, we’ll see enterprises moving even further away from the “always on” mobile culture to champion more intentional, balanced connectivity. We can anticipate that this progression will reshape how people connect through technology, placing authenticity, trust, the protection of identity and intellectual property, and user choice at the center of preferred experiences. In response, enterprises will rethink how their technology ecosystems support connection, accelerating demand for delivering private-cloud and edge-based solutions across financial systems, communications, and AI. In 2026, success in enterprise communications will hinge on the ability to always being connected, safely, selectively, and with purpose.   And according to CTO Luiz Domingos, Chief Technology Officers will also become Chief Trust Officers. As AI becomes embedded in every process, product, and decision across the enterprise, trust is emerging as the defining measure of success. Simply building reliable systems is no longer enough; organizations must also earn confidence in how data is handled, automated decisions are made, and how technology aligns with shared values. The next generation of CTOs will act as Chief Trust Officers, striking a balance between innovation and integrity. They will champion transparency in AI models, establish clear governance frameworks, and ensure that ethical considerations guide every stage of design, deployment, and oversight. In an environment where AI adoption still faces a significant trust gap, confidence will become as important as delivering new capabilities.  Trust will become both a leadership mandate and a market differentiator. Organizations that succeed will treat responsible innovation not as a limitation but as a strategic advantage, proving that in the AI era, trust is the true currency of transformation. Bill Dunnion, CISO, predicts that offensive security becomes the standard for defense, as traditional defensive postures—firewalls, monitoring, and compliance checklists—are no longer sufficient against threats that move faster and learn continuously. Offensive security practices such as red teaming, threat hunting, and penetration testing will evolve from optional exercises to essential functions of risk management. Mature organizations will integrate continuous testing into their operations, utilizing real-world attack simulations to enhance defenses and quantify risk in business terms.    Nextiva – AI agent collaboration will usher in a new era of CX We predict that in 2026, AI-powered agents will be the force that finally collapses the traditional silos between the back office and the front office for businesses of all sizes. AI agents are quickly evolving from simple, customer-facing chatbots to embedded workers operating throughout the entire company, from finance and inventory to HR and service delivery. This ubiquitous presence means a customer-facing AI agent will be able to check an order status, initiate a refund, and adjust a delivery schedule in a single, seamless interaction, because the underlying AI has direct, real-time access to the back-office systems.   This widespread "AI agent collaboration" will lead to a new era of harmonious customer experiences. The customer will no longer feel the friction of a company's internal structure; they will simply experience the speed and satisfaction of a unified, intelligent organization.   NiCE - AI becomes the operating fabric of the experience, not an add-on or afterthought Scott Russell, CEO, notes that “AI-first is the defining shift of our time. Traditional operations cannot keep pace with the exponential consumer. The future belongs to enterprises that embrace a unified AI platform, one that learns, adapts, and compounds value with every interaction.” 2026 trends include: ·      AI-first becomes the dominant model for customer engagement ·      Human-centric AI redefines how brands earn trust at scale  ·      Agentic AI and LAMs displace the traditional agent desktop ·      End-to-end orchestration emerges as the core CX capability ·      Workflows become the new applications ·      AI agents collapse silos between front and back office ·      Systems of engagement replace systems of record ·      Connected intelligence fuels real-time insights for agentic systems ·      Experience memory compounds AI value across customer journeys ·      AI observability becomes mandatory for C-suite buy-in   RingCentral – Shift will come from making AI truly operational Kira Makagon, President and Chief Operating Officer, notes that “AI is everywhere, yet nowhere. In 2026, the real shift will come from making AI truly operational. That means integrated systems, governed data, and intelligence that can understand human context at scale.” Additional RingCentral predictions for how AI (and the organizations deploying it) will evolve in 2026:  Agentic AI becomes the new architecture of work. We’re entering a moment when autonomous, context-carrying agents (and Agentic Voice AI) become the connective tissue of modern business operations. AI strategy management shifts from scattered to truly governed. Companies are realizing that AI cannot be confined to a single department and must operate with clear, organization-wide rules. Human-AI teams become the new productivity engine CX becomes the proving ground for orchestrated AI agents. CX will be the proving ground for agentic AI because the stakes are high and the potential payoffs are tremendous: shorter wait times, fewer escalations, consistent responses, cleaner handoffs, and customer experiences that don’t differ by the channel used. When larger organizations adopt orchestrated systems (in which AI agents can pass context across workflows, applications, and teams), they’ll unlock efficiencies previously buried by their own complexity. 2026 is the year AI stops operating in silos. The advantage will shift to organizations that can effectively integrate AI as a cohesive system.   UJET – AI will prevent interactions from ever needing to happen Matt Clare, VP Product Marketing, states that, “As I think about what's next for CX, I can't help but think there's more in store for AI. We (the industry vendors) have spent almost a decade trying to solve for interaction optimization with AI - both with virtual agent and human-assist use cases. Now that customer adoption is skyrocketing, I can't help but think that there'll be a shift to optimizing for use cases outside of the interactions. For example, we've seen AI agent assist tools deliver great value, but then you go visit an enterprise contact center and customer service reps still have 10+ apps open on their desktop. And we're seeing all these great quality management and analytics capabilities powered by AI now, but contact center administrators are still manually building, testing, deploying, and optimizing their CX operations. The more I think about it, the more I feel like virtual agents, agent assist, and analytics are just the start for AI in the contact center. Lastly, I can't help but also be thinking that the industry has a lot more work to do preventing interactions from ever needing to happen, instead of optimizing for interactions. If I take off my technologist hat, my favorite companies are ALWAYS the ones I never have to talk to... so how do we use AI to drive more towards that as the new gold standard.”    Verint: Human and machine collaboration Jaime Meritt, Chief Product Officer at Verint, predicts three key industry-shaping trends: the evolution of contact centers into data hubs, better collaboration between humans and machines, and matured AI technologies. Contact Centers Evolve into Data Hubs : Forward-thinking organizations are treating contact centers as sources of customer insights that drive tangible business outcomes. By 2026, the strategic value of contact centers will be unmistakable. They will be data hubs that collect and organize information, then distribute it throughout the organization for better decision-making. Improved Human-Machine Collaboration : In 2026, the most successful contact centers will facilitate seamless transitions between bots and live agents. In such scenarios, customer interactions flow from a bot to a human and back again – with full context, without requiring repeated information. Agents will also utilize bots for mundane tasks, quicker information retrieval and even answering questions in an agentic manner.  This human-machine synergy will blend self-service with human-assisted workflows. This means automating routine requests and extending agent capacity to focus on complex issues that require emotional intelligence, creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking. Matured AI Models : By 2026, contact center AI will move beyond the experimental phase into a more mature, value-oriented approach. Brands today don’t need more tools; they need more results: measurable, reliable outcomes and high ROI from their technology investment. Technology vendors will be under increased pressure to deliver measurable results faster and with clear ways to track performance, value and business impact. Enterprises are also setting policies, guidelines and quality controls to ensure that AI solutions are not just effective, but also secure and compliant. As contact centers handle more sensitive information, enterprise-grade data security and access controls will be even more important to ensure compliance with stringent regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and more. As a result, expect to see more advanced systems with granular access control and better integration between AI platforms and existing enterprise infrastructure. Wildix – Voice is back, but so are security concerns In 2026, voice returns not as nostalgia but as infrastructure. As voice reclaims its place at the center of service delivery, deepfake impersonation and synthetic voice fraud are systemic and no longer edge risks. In response, security will evolve from a feature into a philosophy. Trust evolves from compliance into competitive advantage. Wildix CEO Steve Osler provided several predictions and insights: AI Adoption Becomes a Competitive Requirement: AI will no longer be judged on conceptual brilliance or experimental promise but on what it delivers to the business. Businesses must begin planning AI adoption inside communications, not around it. For those not adopting AI, there is the risk of becoming less competitive than a direct competitor. Security Becomes a Board-Level Priority in Communications: AI-powered impersonation, voice spoofing, and the rise in real-time communication threats accompany the rise of voice AI. Companies will need to take better security measures given the new ways of using AI to impersonate users. Communication-Enabled Business Processes Surge: In 2026, the biggest shift will be automating the communication steps inside business processes, not just phone calls or chats. AI Will Replace Tasks, Not Entire Workforces: AI takes over repetitive, high-volume tasks but enhances human roles. Pricing Models Will Shift Toward Usage: Agentic AI consumes significant computing resources, requiring a model change. Steve predicts user licenses will eventually become free. Wildix Chief Commercial Officer Jason Uslan added several channel-related predictions: Managed Service providers (MSPs) will lead the redesign of communication experiences across the business. Successful MSPs will transform into consultants and understand their customers, their workflows, their employees. MSPs will need to verify where money is spent, what ROI is achieved, and whether workflows improve. Workflow expertise becomes the new differentiator, and partners that can map workflows, identify friction, and implement targeted automation will win. Channel ecosystems shift into consultative intelligence layers, helping businesses understand not just what to adopt, but why, where and how to use it responsibly and profitably. 2026 – Going from Hype to Business Outcomes COMMfusion expects that 2026 will be all about data, workflows, and orchestration, with a focus on managing the combined human and AI agent workforce. We’ll see an increasing number of Agentic AI trials and deployments, with many successful outcomes, but also many public failures, as some companies rush to deploy agentic AI without proper testing. Expect to see several high-profile security breaches that will make some companies hesitant to deploy agentic AI, as vendors rush to highlight their security capabilities. Real-world deployments will lag behind vendor hype, but businesses across multiple verticals will quickly move to take advantage of the potential cost savings and productivity enhancements that generative and agentic AI provides. The companies that deploy AI for the right use cases (particularly for specific vertical markets), while providing the necessary training and user adoption strategies, along with proper guardrails, security, and governance, will transform their operations with positive outcomes for both employees and customers. There will be ups and downs along the way, but make no mistake – 2026 sets the stage for when agentic AI changes everything.

As we wrap up the year, I thought it would be fun to hand out my own set of industry awards. Take these with a grain of salt—many are just for entertainment. Most reflect my experiences and insights from various analyst events and countless vendor interactions throughout the year. If you want to nominate a vendor for a category, drop it in the comments or send me a message.   Best Marketing Ingenuity – 8x8 CMO Bruno Bertini delivered a bold rebrand that literally breaks out of the box. The latest marketing campaign - “The Power of You”—complete with cinematic visuals and generative AI production—puts customers at center stage and highlights their achievements in a fresh, engaging way. Best Persistence – Avaya Despite skepticism from naysayers, Avaya continues to innovate. Its Infinity Platform provides a practical evolution path for existing customers, and the company added agentic AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) support—proof that Avaya isn’t fading away anytime soon. Best Catch Up (or Most Improved Player) – Cisco Cisco is back in the CCaaS spotlight. After trailing the pack for a while, Cisco now offers a much more complete portfolio—agentic AI, new AI-powered quality management, industry-specific integrations, and a compelling “connected intelligence” vision where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly. And the results have been impressive – incredibly strong cloud contact center product orders highlighting the growth and momentum.. Best “We’re Back!” Reinvigorated Marketing (and AR) – Tie: Dialpad and UJET Dialpad  has reemerged after a relatively quiet period, refreshing its marketing and analyst relations and launching new agentic AI capabilities aimed at shaking up the market. Expect to see and hear a lot more from Dialpad in the coming months as the company sets its sights on leading customers to agentic AI. UJET  let Google take the sales and marketing reins early in their partnership, but is now back on the scene with renewed channel engagement and an energized sales organization. Best Hope for Humans and AI Working Together – Five9 Five9 flipped the script: instead of AI augmenting humans, it’s humans augmenting AI. By keeping people in the loop, Five9 envisions human and AI agents working hand in hand—not replacement, but enhancement. Best Dressed CEO – Five9 CEO Mike Burkland stole the show at the CX Summit in full Nashville cowboy style. 'Nuff said. Best Views of NYC at an Analyst Event – Global Relay Global Relay’s New York HQ wowed analysts with incredible views, as well as in-depth and interesting sessions on digital communications governance, archiving, compliance, and communications surveillance for collaborative messaging applications and front-office workers. Best Display of AI at the Sphere – Google Google opened Cloud Next 2025 with an AI-powered sneak peek of an enhanced “Wizard of Oz” at the Las Vegas Sphere. Using DeepMind’s capabilities and its latest LLMs, Google used AI-driven "outpainting" to extend scenes, enrich environments, and reimagine the film for the Sphere’s curved, immersive display. Best Ability to Say “I Told You So” – Mitel While the industry raced toward multitenant public cloud, Mitel held its ground, insisting that public cloud isn’t the answer for everyone. Many organizations continue to prefer hybrid, private cloud, or on-prem solutions—vindicating Mitel’s commitment to customer choice. Best “Come Together” Moment – NiCE NiCE’s acquisition of Cognigy was a masterstroke. Pair the leading CCaaS vendor with the leading conversational AI provider, and you get an impressive, forward-looking Customer Engagement Platform. The deal positions NiCE to innovate faster and gain momentum in the CX AI market. Best Job Filling Really Big Shoes – Scott Russell, CEO, NiCE Scott has a strong vision for the company, along with contagious energy. His focus on partnerships and openness should help NiCE expand to other areas beyond the contact center and continue strong growth and leadership.   Best at Minding the Gap – RingCentral RingCentral filled a valuable market gap with its Customer Engagement (CE) Bundle—combining calling, collaboration, and light contact center features. It’s ideal for the underserved market of companies that can’t afford to miss customer interactions but don’t need the complexity of a full contact center solution. Best “We’re Listening – and Then Some” – Sprinklr Sprinklr evolved from social listening origins into a full Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM) provider. Its AI-native platform spans Service, Social, Marketing, and Insights—and uniquely leverages social listening to enhance CX intelligence. Best Way to Stand Out in a Crowd – Talkdesk Talkdesk keeps doubling down on its vertical expertise, taking specialization a level deeper with sub-verticals (think healthcare providers vs. payers). This isn’t lip service—they’re restructuring go-to-market and sales around these industries and going genuinely deep. Best “We’re Still a UCaaS and CCaaS Player” – Vonage After being acquired by Ericsson, Vonage was primarily focused on its Network APIs and CPaaS business, making some people wonder about the future of its UCaaS and CCaaS offerings. Vonage put those doubts to rest, introducing new Voice AI Agents, expanding partnerships with Salesforce and ServiceNow, enhancing its VCC Intelligent Workspace with AI, and more, to engage customers and employees across all channels from anywhere with context.   Cutest Bots – Verint Verint’s ever-expanding bot family continues to grow—forecasting bots, wrap-up bots, knowledge bots, and many more. These automation tools streamline workflows and consistently deliver measurable results: lower labor costs, improved CX and EX, and higher revenues. Best Kept Secret (For Now) – Wildix Wildix is a well-established European vendor quietly gaining traction in North America. At its first analyst event, the company unveiled a strategic vision rooted in European values and a purpose-built, partner-led approach for SMB and mid-market customers. The secret is definitely getting out… Best Longest List of Applications – Zoho Zoho wins this by a landslide: 88 products (and counting), with more than 50 tightly integrated applications and the Zoho One bundle offering 45+ apps. They may have added another one while you were reading this. Best Pivot – Zoom Zoom pulled off a highly successful transformation from a video/meetings company to an AI-first platform for employee and customer experience. Zoom CX is growing at high double digits year over year, as customer counts are up 60%; while the number of Workvivo customers rose 70% in Q3. “And the Emmy Goes To” - Zoom Zoom earned an Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Award for “Zoom for Broadcast,” used widely by broadcasters to streamline high-quality video and audio integrations. If you’d like to add new categories, suggest nominations, or disagree with any of these—let me know!

At its Analyst Summit in Savannah, GA, Talkdesk highlighted its new platform—and the market category it hopes to define: Customer Experience Automation (CXA). As organizations look to automate the entire customer journey, not just customer service interactions, Talkdesk sees CXA as the platform to orchestrate and optimize CX end-to-end, both before and after live interactions. Talkdesk positions CXA both as a new market category and as its multi-agent automation platform, designed to automate and scale service, sales, and support processes across the full customer lifecycle. CXA: The Evolution of AI Noting that we’re in the era of orchestrated automated CX, CEO & Founder Tiago Paiva explained that Talkdesk is positioning CXA as the next evolution of enterprise AI, enabling multi-agent orchestration. He explained that while CCaaS remains valuable, CXA is increasingly what resonates with customers. CXA brings together intelligent, autonomous AI agents—each with a defined role and shared context—to solve complex CX challenges across front- and back-office operations. Although the platform is entirely new, it supports the AI applications already offered on Talkdesk’s CCaaS platform. Importantly, customers don’t buy CXA as a product. They consume AI capabilities on a usage basis—paying only for what they use across Autopilot, Navigator, Agentic Workflows, and other AI-powered experiences built on the platform. CXA is the underlying engine; customers simply tap into it as they deploy and scale AI across their customer journeys. Talkdesk describes CXA as an automation platform built to learn, adapt, and improve through a continuous loop of discovery, build, orchestration, and measurement. At the core is the Talkdesk Data Cloud, which unifies and structures all customer interaction data and enterprise knowledge. This foundation enables accurate retrieval, reasoning, and decision-making for every AI agent. CXA combines this data layer with multi-agent orchestration—specialized autonomous agents working together with shared context—to automate complex workflows across front- and back-office operations. The orchestrator coordinates these agents, dynamically routing tasks, resolving dependencies, and ensuring accuracy through continuous access to real-time data and knowledge. This combination of high-quality, unified data and multi-agent intelligence is the primary source of CXA’s differentiation. It underpins applications such as Navigator, Copilot, Autopilot, and QM Assist, and brings intelligent, end-to-end workflows to industries including healthcare, financial services, retail, travel, and the public sector. As CTO Munil Shah explained, “We look at CXA as an automation platform—not just infusing the contact center with AI, but providing AI automation, integrations, triggers, workflows, and orchestration in one platform that’s purpose-built for CX and industry verticals.” CXA supports complex use cases that go beyond traditional CCaaS, such as automated scheduling, shopping cart recovery, hospital post-discharge workflows, outage management, and more. A major differentiator is CXA’s ability to run on top of Talkdesk CCaaS or as a standalone platform, working with third-party CCaaS, and even on-prem environments from Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys. A Deep Dive Into CXA To better understand CXA, I spoke with Pedro Andrade, VP of AI, who walked through how agentic AI powers the platform. He noted that these AI agents can reason, think, and act autonomously, and described the virtuous lifecycle at the heart of CXA: Discovery: Mining and understanding customer data; identifying what should be automated. Build: Using low-code/no-code tools to create workflows and test automations and agents. Orchestration: Deploying agents throughout the customer journey with multi-agent coordination. Measure: Evaluating automation performance and the impact of AI agents. This cycle repeats for every use case. Pedro also detailed how CXA applications attach AI agents to workflows so they can take action when needed. Industry Specialization Industry specialization remains one of Talkdesk’s strongest differentiators. The company focuses deeply on vertical and sub-vertical needs—such as healthcare payers and providers, credit unions, and casualty insurance—and delivers tight integrations with leading industry applications. I spoke with Rohit Madhavarapu, VP of Product Management for Industries, about Talkdesk’s approach, which centers on: Purpose-built vertical products Verticalized teams with real expertise Business process transformation aligned to industry needs Rohit emphasized that Talkdesk’s goal is to remove friction and create better experiences. Talkdesk also hires industry specialists (for example, Rohit came from Epic) to provide specific vertical expertise. He also explained how CXA enhances their industry strategy and helps customers apply automation effectively across their businesses. Go-To-Market Evolution As Talkdesk expands from CCaaS into CXA, the shift requires a different sales and GTM strategy. In my conversation with Jen McDonald, SVP of Americas, she explained how Talkdesk reshaped its sales team to ensure deep vertical and use case knowledge—especially as the company targets larger enterprises. Rather than selling features, the team now collaborates with customers to ideate on impactful workflows. She also highlighted the role of channel partners in identifying use cases and deploying multi-agent workflows in a matter of weeks. Key Messages From Talkdesk To discuss the key messages from the event, I spoke with CMO Neville Letzerich, who highlighted three key themes: CXA as both a new category and a core product Talkdesk’s industry specialization Enterprise scalability and reliability Neville emphasized that while Talkdesk is moving upmarket, CCaaS continues to play a foundational role by supporting human agents, while CXA powers the AI workforce. He also stressed that customers should begin with a few vertical use cases, realize value quickly, and expand from there.   Closing Thoughts Talkdesk clearly recognizes that CCaaS is becoming commoditized as Agentic AI takes over many functions traditionally handled by human agents. Rather than wait to be disrupted, the company is intentionally repositioning itself as a CX automation vendor. As Munil noted, “We saw AI as being transformative and wanted a separate product category that takes us beyond CCaaS.” Still, Talkdesk continues to invest in CCaaS—enhancing WFM, the agent desktop, routing, integrations, and more. The company made it clear that CCaaS is for human agents; CXA is for AI agents . Talkdesk’s deep industry focus strengthens its differentiation, influencing how it sells, who it targets, and how it delivers ROI. But the shift from CCaaS to CXA won’t be without challenges: repositioning takes time, some channel partners may resist change, and selling automation outcomes requires new motions and new buyers. Whether CXA becomes a widely recognized market category remains to be seen. Other companies—like Verint, Sierra, and NiCE—may join Talkdesk in defining the category, potentially leaving traditional CCaaS vendors behind if they don’t evolve. What stood out most at the summit was Talkdesk’s honesty about learning as they go. The CX AI landscape is still the Wild West—uncertain, fast-moving, and competitive. But based on what I saw and heard, Talkdesk is positioning itself to break free from its CCaaS roots and emerge as a major force in the new era of Customer Experience Automation.

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Latest Events BC Strategies Expert analysis, insights, and opinions Recent Events Inside Enterprise Connect 2025: Conversations, Insights, and Industry Trends A Farewell to the Gaylord Palms In this article, BCStrategy Expert Blair Pleasant covers key announcements and news, and offering valuable insights through informative vendor interviews she conducted at Enterprise Connect 2025. Read More A Congregation of Thoughts Read BCStrategy Expert Kevin Kieller's high-level impressions and takeways from Enterprise Connect 2025. Read More Key Takeaways - Part 1 Join BCStrategies Experts Kevin Kieller, David Danto, Thomas Brannen, Jon Arnold, Melissa Swartz, Robert Harris, and Steve Leaden as they share their key takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2025, highlighting the most surprising revelations, compelling insights, and overarching themes shaping the event. View Here Key Takeaways - Part 2 In this podcast, BCStrategies Experts Blair Pleasant , David Maldow , and Martha Buyer discuss their key takeaways and insights from Enterprise Connect 2025, offering thoughtful observations on the event's most impactful moments. View Here