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As a passionate advocate for innovation in customer experience, I was thrilled to join Charles Studt, CMO at Sendbird, for an enlightening discussion on the transformative power of AI agents in retail. Our webinar, "Retail Reinvented: The Rise of AI Agents in Customer Experience," delved into the pressing challenges retailers face today and the unprecedented opportunities AI presents to enhance customer interactions. During the session, we explored how AI agents can bridge the expectation gap by delivering personalized, empathetic, and proactive service. We shared insights on starting small with AI implementation, the importance of structured data, and the need for continuous refinement of AI systems. Our conversation also highlighted the significant ROI that AI can bring to retail, driving customer loyalty and increasing sales. If you missed the live event, I invite you to watch the recording and discover how AI can revolutionize your customer experience strategy. Visit https://sendbird.com/resources/the-rise-of-ai-agents-in-customer-experience  to access the webinar and learn more about leveraging AI to stay ahead in the competitive retail landscape.

In this podcast, BCStrategies Experts Kevin Kieller, David Danto, Tom Brannen, and David Maldow review and recap the WebexOne 2025 conference held in San Diego. They comment on the venue and then analyze some of the key announcements, including ... Five new AI agents: Notetaker, Task Agent, Polling Agent, Meeting Scheduler, Receptionist The AI Quality Management dashboard that consolidates ratings for both human and digital agents RoomOS 26 Copilot integration Native Zoom meetings on Cisco devices Director - providing AI-powered cinematics during a meeting and more ...

Experts Blair Pleasant and Jon Arnold provide their analysis and insights related to the Sprinklr CXUnifiers 25. Sprinklr is a social media listening platform and has expanded into providing a unified CX platform with numerous AI features.

The Sprinklr Analyst Summit was held alongside the company’s CXUnifiers customer conference in Nashville, TN. The event highlighted Sprinklr’s core product areas: Sprinklr Social, Sprinklr Marketing, Sprinklr Insights (Voice of the Customer), and Sprinklr Service. While best known for social media management, Sprinklr has steadily expanded—first into marketing workflows and digital customer service, then CCaaS—and now delivers a full Unified Customer Experience Management (CXM) platform. Its goal: give brands a holistic view of the customer and connect them seamlessly through one unified system. A key benefit of the joint analyst and customer format was access to Sprinklr’s impressive customer base. With 79 of the world’s top 100 most valuable brands as customers, the event featured several of these global leaders sharing how they leverage Sprinklr technology in real-world scenarios. To set the stage, I spoke with CEO Rory Read. In our conversation, Read emphasized how Sprinklr’s unified AI platform integrates multiple engagement elements to amplify the voice of the customer. He views AI as both transformational and foundational—driving an initial surge of acceleration followed by sustained growth. Sprinklr’s AI, he explained, enables new use cases and workflows that foster intelligent customer collaboration. Everything is built on Sprinklr’s AI Studio for creating bi-directional learning between humans and AI to become a flywheel of exponential acceleration of AI impact.   Key Announcements Sprinklr introduced several new AI-driven capabilities at CXUnifiers, including: AI Agent Builder  – to configure and deploy autonomous AI agents at scale Workforce Management - helps workforce management (WFM) planners and contact center supervisors forecast case volumes, plan for staffing needs, and schedule staff to bring maximum efficiency and productivity to contact center operations VoiceConnect  – Sprinklr’s native telephony solution Sprinklr Copilot  – an always-on AI companion offering real-time conversational assistance across the platform Sprinklr AI Agents  – purpose-built autonomous agents Customer Feedback Management  – modernizing and simplifying Voice of the Customer feedback with a no-code, AI-native solution CMO Arun Pattabhiraman expanded on these announcements, highlighting Sprinklr’s differentiation in unifying data, teams, and channels across its platform. Sprinklr’s AI Framework Sprinklr has been building AI into its products for more than a decade, and positions its AI in four key categories: ·      Embedded AI Capabilities, with 100+ built-in capabilities throughout the product suite, such as spellcheck and grammar correction ·      Standalone AI Products: Sprinklr offers seven standalone AI products, such as Conversational AI, Agent Assist, Automated Quality Management, Product Insights, and more ·      Persona-specific AI Copilots for Customer Support Agents, Contact Center Supervisors, Social Media Analysts, Research Analysts, and Ads & Marketing Analysts ·      Specialized AI Agents: autonomous AI agents for specific vertical capabilities. Sprinklr is building specialized prebuilt autonomous AI agents for specific verticals and with specialized capabilities, such as Telecom Support Agents, Telecom Sales Agent, Technology Support Agent, Travel Support Agent, and more. Sprinklr’s AI Studio is a hub for building agents and copilots, applying guardrails and governance, managing models, and enabling prompt engineering. Sprinklr envisions a hybrid workforce where humans collaborate with AI agents, providing feedback, coaching, and oversight. The company also partners with multiple LLM providers, including OpenAI and Anthropic. To get more insights into Sprinklr’s AI vision, I spoke with Sprinklr CTO, Amitabh Misra. Misra drilled down into Sprinklr’s approach to AI, and discussed how the AI agents are continuously learning and working with humans based on a hybrid AI and human workforce. I also spoke with Mathan Jain, Senior Product Manager - AI Agent, who discussed how copilots work as assistants for human agents. He also noted that general-purpose AI agents have limits, and Sprinklr is addressing this by developing vertical-specific specialized agents that are fine-tuned for those verticals, along with the right guardrails. Closing Thoughts The central theme of unification and unifying CX on a single platform was clear .  Sprinklr has evolved from social monitoring into a comprehensive CXM provider with CCaaS, marketing, and Voice of the Customer—all on an AI-native foundation. The company has earned the trust of iconic brands that view Sprinklr as a true business partner, rather than just a technology provider. The combination of social media listening and monitoring, combined with customer service and CCaaS capabilities – all on an AI-native platform, helps companies better engage with customers, understanding their history, pain points, sentiment, and more. By combining AI-powered listening, customer service, and engagement across channels, Sprinklr helps organizations understand customer history, sentiment, and pain points in context. Its focus on hybrid AI-human collaboration acknowledges both the power and the current limits of AI. Perhaps most compelling were the customer stories, which showcased tangible business outcomes and ROI achieved for various use cases. While Sprinklr still has operational areas to address, the company has a strong vision. With its AI agents and AI framework focusing on domain- and vertical-specific AI to augment humans, the company is well positioned to continue its success in Unified CXM.

Five9 hosted its annual analyst summit at the stunning Montage Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The theme, “Putting the New CX into Action,”  reflected the company’s focus on moving beyond vision to execution and results. Laura Mackey, Global Head of Analyst and Influencer Relations, opened the event with three key takeaways she wanted attendees to leave with: ·      Five9 understands we’re in an evolving market driven by AI transformation ·      Five9 will capitalize on that change and is evolving to meet the market demands ·      Partners and customers will validate that Five9 is their trusted CX partner of choice I spoke with Matt McGinnis, VP of Product Marketing, about the event, the customer and partner panels, and the major themes. CEO and Chairman Mike Burkland emphasized that Five9’s vision is to “bring joy to CX” — delivering better customer experiences while also creating tangible business impact for brands and employees. He highlighted how AI disruption is reshaping the customer service landscape and explained that Five9 is transitioning from a cloud-native company to an AI-native one. To achieve this, Five9 is taking deliberate steps to win through: Organizational and leadership evolution Go-to-market strategy evolution Financial and operational excellence Product innovation “Our DNA is about delivering value to customers,” Burkland explained. “The New CX is about AI agents and human agents working hand-in-hand to provide better experiences at lower cost and with greater efficiency.” Importantly, Five9 is not focused on replacing humans with AI, but on enabling humans and AI to work together. Differentiation is increasingly difficult as every CCaaS and CX vendor positions itself as AI-first. One of Five9’s strengths is its customer obsession. The company is recognized for white-glove service, strong professional services, and post-deployment support. On a customer panel, all three participants highlighted Five9’s reliability, stability, and integration capabilities. One BPO customer supporting thousands of agents even described Five9’s customer service team as the best in the industry. I also spoke with Five9 President Andy Dignan, (who was previously the Chief Customer Officer and deserves much of the credit for the company’s services business and customer success delivery excellence) about Five9’s go-to-market approach and how the company helps customers achieve measurable AI outcomes. He explained how Five9 is combining its core CX strengths with AI innovation while also pursuing standalone AI capabilities. He also spoke about how Five9 enables its partners to differentiate themselves in the market. The event itself was heavily AI-focused, with demonstrations of Five9’s AI agents and emerging agentic AI capabilities. Most of these details remain under NDA until the Five9 CX Summit in November, so stay tuned. Ajay Awatramani, Chief Product Officer, described how Five9 is “Driving AI Transformation,” noting that the company is “playing a new game” in today’s market. Five9 is developing what it calls Agentic CX — a model where AI takes the lead, with humans stepping in when needed. This flips the current paradigm from “AI augmenting humans” to “humans augmenting AI.” According to Awatramani, agentic AI will become the new frontline of CX, driving operational excellence that is: Memorable and personalized Consistent in brand voice Outcome-focused Tailored for specific industries Five9 plans to introduce new products and solutions in this area, many of which will be formally unveiled at the November CX Summit. At his first analyst summit since becoming Chief Revenue Officer, Matt Tuckness discussed the need to retool to focus on outcomes rather than migration, to drive efficiency and a better CX, while bringing joy to customers. Five9 is changing how it provides support and works with partners, with a new go-to-market model, as well as a new pricing model. In this video, Tuckness discusses what makes Five9 special (hint: it’s the people), and its opportunity to help customers in this new AI world. He also discusses the company’s services and support teams and how the company guides customers to their desired outcomes. Tuckness notes that Five9’s differentiation is about its people, providing the care and trust customers are looking for. Closing Thoughts Five9 made clear that it has both a vision for the next stage of CX and a growing team of AI experts to execute it. Through demos, the company showed how new AI capabilities can transform customer journeys, improve agent performance, and enhance management insights. While some innovations are more mature than others, the company has a clear roadmap for where it’s headed. The company remains singularly focused on ensuring customer success, and customers validated Five9’s strong focus on success, while  partners reinforced their trust in the company.   AI transformation continues to create challenges – and opportunities – for CCaaS/CX players in the rush to evolve to keep up with rapid technological changes. In addition to the mega-trends impacting all vendors, Five9 will be undergoing leadership changes as it searches for a new CEO. If the company continues on its current path, it may truly deliver on its promise to “bring joy to CX.”

The focus at this year’s Verint Engage conference in Orlando was clear: driving customer business outcomes through Verint AI and CX Automation. While last year’s theme—AI Business Outcomes, Now—carried over, this year put the spotlight on customers telling their stories and proving business value. As Jasen Williams, Sr. VP of Corporate Marketing, reminded the audience, Verint introduced its bots (including the “bot factory” and “bot gym”) two years ago, alongside the concept of CX Automation. At last year’s Engage, customers were just getting started with Verint bots. This year, the bots were out in full force, with numerous customers sharing their successes and demonstrating the tangible business value achieved. Stronger, Faster, Measurable Outcomes Engage 2025 centered on “Stronger, faster, measurable outcomes,” with customers highlighting how they’ve boosted agent and manager capacity, improved CX, and increased revenue. Dan Bodner, CEO and Chairman, emphasized Verint’s unique approach: “Many vendors are trying to automate CX workflows, but Verint stands out with our differentiated approach delivering stronger, faster, measurable AI outcomes.” He reinforced Verint’s commitment to category leadership through its open CX Automation platform, built on data and AI. As he explained, the difference between weak and strong AI outcomes can be tens of millions of dollars—where strong outcomes elevate customer experience, increase revenue, and reduce costs. According to Chief Product Officer Jaime Meritt, most AI initiatives fail because they lack measurable business impact. “They’re doing cool stuff in the lab, but not delivering the underlying value that’s important to the business. Verint delivers stronger, faster, measurable outcomes through our unique approach to CX Automation.” Meritt described Verint’s platform strategy: each bot automates a part of the workflow, is continuously trained in the “bot gym,” and integrates seamlessly with existing customer processes—making adoption straightforward. Verint’s differentiated bot strategy encourages customers to start small, deploying one or two bots in targeted workflows, proving value within 30–60 days, and then scaling gradually. Instead of the “move fast and break things” mantra, Verint’s approach is “start small, prove value, and scale.” Many customers begin with quick wins, such as the summarization or Wrap-Up Bot, which deliver immediate value. To reinforce measurable outcomes, Verint built value dashboards directly into its platform. These track metrics like workforce capacity, revenue per agent, and customer satisfaction. Verint also offers a 90-day risk-free program, allowing customers to trial a workflow in production. If value isn’t realized, customers can opt out or switch workflows. To date, every customer has achieved results—none have opted out. Another differentiator is Verint’s open, hybrid approach. Its cloud-based AI can overlay both on-premises and cloud environments, eliminating the need for costly rip-and-replace deployments. In this interview, Jasen Williams discusses how customers are achieving measurable business outcomes now, the value measurement dashboards, Verint’s risk-free program, and more. Innovations and New Bots As expected, Verint unveiled several new bots and innovations to existing bots: Exact Forecasting Bot – Generates accurate forecasts with adjustments for weekends, holidays, campaigns, weather, and more. Intraday Spike Bot – Detects spikes, identifies root causes, and suggests remedies. Exact Transcription Bot – Improves accuracy of transcriptions. Verint IVA – Leverages agentic AI to automate key agent tasks and handle complex questions. The Verint IVA demonstration created the most excitement. Using IVA Studio, a no-code interface, customers can easily design, test, update, and deploy AI agents. Steps include: Choose a channel Select the IVA personality Pick from a library of AI agents Connect to knowledge bases Add integrations (CRM, billing, Verint Data Hub, etc.) Review and edit the flow Test and deploy IVA Studio also includes pre-built collections for vertical applications (insurance, travel, healthcare, retail), making it easy to set up quickly.   In this video, Jaime Meritt describes Verint’s new offerings, as well as Verint IVA Studio. He also discusses how Verint views agentic AI, which gives autonomy to AI agents that let them understand the customer’s problem and the best path to solve the customer problem.       In this video, Dave Singer, Global VP, Go to Market Strategy, drills down into the Exact Forecasting Bot, as well as how Verint da Vinci infuses AI into performance management, including the Verint Data Insights bot and Coaching Bot to provide a holistic picture of agent performance with AI explainability.     Even with the best forecasting, contact centers may be hit by unexpected spikes. In this video, Daniel Ziv, Global VP, Go to Market Strategy, discusses the new Intraday Spike Bot, which identifies the spike automatically, the root cause driving a specific spike, and suggests remedies and ways to fix the problem. Ziv also talks about Genie Bot, as well as his perspective on agentic AI.     A Few Takeaways Verint has hit its stride. Two years ago, the bot story was intriguing but immature. Last year, the focus on outcomes strengthened the message. This year, customer proof points validated the business value. The “start small and scale” strategy works. Initially, it seemed counterintuitive not to package multiple bots together. But customers confirmed that starting with one bot builds confidence, reduces risk, and encourages expansion. The majority of customers I spoke with at the event are using the Wrap Up Bot, as well as the Quality Bot for Automated Quality Assurance. Private equity acquisition adds uncertainty. With Thoma Bravo acquiring Verint, additional capital will fuel innovation, but integration with Calabrio remains unclear. The deal hasn’t closed so Verint wasn’t able to discuss the acquisition or Calabrio, but we can assume that, like any merger, there will be integration challenges. Customers will have to be patient and wait and see what changes will be in store. Redefining the brand. As more and more CCaaS vendors develop (or acquire) their own WEM capabilities, Verint needed to redefine itself. The company is evolving beyond WEM by focusing on CX Automation and expanding into areas like IVA. Traditional products remain core. Even though there was very little discussion about WEM/WFM/WFO and Verint’s traditional product offerings, these products are still core to most Verint customers. Every customer I spoke to during the event was using Verint’s Quality Assurance and/or Forecasting/Scheduling tools. IVA stole the show. The demonstration that got the most excitement from the audience and customers I spoke with was Verint IVA. While the demo was impressive (as most demos are), and it seems pretty easy to get started for specific workflows, real-world results remain to be seen. Final Thoughts Verint is taking a pragmatic, systematic approach to AI—a rarity in today’s hype-driven market. By focusing on measurable business outcomes, Verint avoids chasing “firsts” and “bests.” Instead, it leverages years of expertise, makes AI adoption easy, and supports diverse customer ecosystems. With its open platform, “bring your own model” flexibility, and emphasis on quick wins, Verint is enabling customers to deploy AI where and how it makes sense for their specific needs, while ensuring quick wins and low risk – and of course, measurable business outcomes.

BCStrategies was well-represented at Verint’s Engage event in Orlando, and we’ve got our takeaways here in this video podcast. Three BCS Experts share our insights – Blair Pleasant, Nicolas De Kouchkovsky and myself. Tom Brannen was also there, but couldn’t make this recording. In lieu of that, you can check out his takeaways here on LinkedIn . We hope you watch our review of the event, and would welcome your questions or inquiries for how we’re looking at this market, as well as Verint’s prospects for success. During the podcast, we discussed some themes from a fireside chat that Nicolas did during the breakouts for partners, including “Jobs-to-be-Done”, a framework for identifying AI use cases in the contact center. For reference, below is a slide from his presentation.

According to several estimates, direct enterprise spending on knowledge worker AI software and platforms reached approximately   $18 billion to $22 billion   in 2024. This spending is on a trajectory to exceed   $45 billion   in 2025. And yet, especially for knowledge workers, many of the capabilities of these AI tools go unused.   Enter   The AI Chefs, providing AI tips for business , what we call "recipes".   David Maldow   and I put on our digital chef's hats to deliver tasty (fun and informative) tips to help you, as a knowledge worker or individual, get the most from the free and paid AI tools you are using on a weekly (or daily) basis. Whether you use   Microsoft Copilot ,   Zoom   AI Companion,   Webex   AI Assistant,   Google   Gemini,   OpenAI   ChatGPT   ,   Claude   from   Anthropic   , or another #AI tool, we serve up dishes that will help you be more effective. Recent Favorite Recipes Here are a few of my recent favorite tips and tricks for the AI kitchen. Bangers and mash is a traditional British dish that consists of sausages ("bangers") served with mashed potatoes ("mash") and onion gravy. It's a menu staple in pubs in the United Kingdom and Ireland.   Bangers and dopplegangers   is all about how to use the Zoom AI Companion add-on to create your own video avatar.   And here is an example of my avatar posting to LinkedIn in anticipation of the recent #ZoomPerspectives2025 analyst conference.   Next, I fire up Microsoft Copilot in Excel to create some   Lookup Lasagna , showing you how AI can help simplify creating complex XLookup functions. Chef David shares his   Roadmap Ravoli   recipe, demonstrating how you can use Zoom Docs and Zoom AI Companion to jump-start a detailed project plan. He also makes us both start craving some good Italian food! I'm back in the AI kitchen, powering up the Copilot Cooktop to share a recipe for   PowerPoint Punch  with Chef David. This tip is all about enhancing your PowerPoint presentations to make them more persuasive and engaging using Copilot. Lots more recipes to savor Our complete catalog of recipes (tips and tricks) can be found here   https://aichefsshow.com/ , and most Tuesdays at noon Eastern, we are LIVE discussing important AI news from the past week and answering any questions from the audience. The AI Chefs in Person For the first time, The AI Chefs will be serving up their saucy and mentally nourishing recipes in-person during the   CEDIA / Commercial Integrator Expo,   September 3 - 6, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. We will be easy to spot as Chef David and I will be wearing our AI Chef custom aprons and hats. Look for two goofy guys and come by to say hi.   We will be delivering 8 "cooking" sessions where we share AI tips and tricks focused on different topics. Think of it as learning from 8 different styles of "cookbooks". Have An AI Recipe You Want to Share? The AI Chefs are always looking for new tips and tricks to share. Have you done something super cool with AI? If so, please DM either me or Chef   David Maldow   to share. Alternatively, share your insights as a comment to this article. And if you love to "cook" up great business results with AI, we are looking for some guest chefs to invite to the AI kitchen, where they can share their recipes for enhanced productivity with AI.

Blair Pleasant and Jon Arnold discuss NiCE's $955M acquisition of conversational AI company Cognigy. Kevin Kieller moderates the discussion.

By Blair Pleasant and Jon Arnold By now you’ve no doubt heard that NiCE is acquiring conversational AI leader Cognigy for a whopping $955M. There’s a lot to unpack here, and many reasons why this marriage makes perfect sense – so much sense, in fact, that my first reaction was “What took so long?” It’s no secret that AI, including conversational AI and agentic AI, is the future of CX, and all CX/CCaaS vendors are moving quickly to put a stake in the ground. Whether through homegrown solutions or integrations and partnerships, CX vendors are quickly moving to become AI-first providers. Consumers are looking for intuitive, responsive, and intelligent solutions that let them move seamlessly from self-service to agent assisted interactions. As the leader in conversational AI and agentic AI, Cognigy services 1,000 brands around the world, including well-known enterprises such as Lufthansa, Mercedes-Benz, and Nestlé. While customers haven’t been banging down the doors demanding AI-assisted, self-service, NiCE knows that this is the direction the industry is headed, and can now enhance its CXone Mpower platform with even more AI capabilities. This acquisition helps NiCE get to market faster with market-leading solutions, making it easier for customers to quickly adopt AI-first solutions. While best-of-breed solutions have their merits, the trend is to move away from point products and siloed solutions (what NiCE calls “frankenstacks”) to single platforms and technology stacks, reducing friction and providing simplicity. As a single platform, CXone Mpower provides an end-to-end solution with shared data, customer history, context, and insights that lets human agents and AI agents work together seamlessly. As NiCE CEO Scott Russell noted during the financial analyst call about the acquisition, generative AI needs to be purpose built specifically for CX. Combining Cognigy’s agentic AI with NiCE CXone Mpower platform - with its rich data and CX AI models - can bridge the self-service resolution gap. The combined solution will be able to orchestrate and automate the entire workflow, from front to back office, and from intent to fulfillment, extending CXone Mpower beyond the contact center. This acquisition comes as no surprise, as Russell made no secret of the fact that he wants NiCE to expand beyond providing customer service solutions to other CX areas. It is also no secret that NiCE has a great deal of cash, and AI acquisitions were at the top of the list. NiCE is the market leader, so it makes sense to acquire another market leader. Cognigy provides an AI agent orchestration platform that helps customers build, operate, and orchestrate CX AI agents at scale across every channel, delivering hyper-personalized service that feels human-like. The company was an early entrant with both conversational AI and AI agents. Before agentic AI and AI agents become all the rage, Cognigy CMO Alan Ranger introduced me to Cognigy’s Agentic AI capabilities at the Enterprise Connect AI (ECAI) show in October 2024. While AI agents and agentic AI are currently all the rage, Cognigy was early to the game and one of a handful of companies at ECAI talking about AI agents. Here are some key points about the acquisition: Cognigy is a German company that has been mainly successful in Europe, while trying to make more inroads into the North American market. This acquisition opens the door for NiCE to get a larger presence in the European market, while Cognigy can expand in North America. NiCE and Cognigy already work together and have integrated solutions, so they can hit the ground running without having to re-engineer anything. NiCE will be able to offer the Cognigy platform standalone right away and will eventually provide a fully integrated solution. According to Barry Cooper, president of NiCE’s CX Division, Cognigy already integrates with NiCE’s Agent Assist Hub and Virtual Agent Hub as part of the CXone Mpower platform. Cooper notes that full integration will be quick but won’t start until after receiving regulatory approval of the acquisition. The goal is to scale AI adoption by providing a single platform and single pane of glass with Cognigy embedded in CXone Mpower to provide a single customer experience. Cognigy’s AI agents will be orchestrated natively on the NiCE CXone Mpower platform, reasoning and responding in real time to make consumer experiences faster, more human, and personal. Cognigy becomes part of fully connected platform gaining access to richer data, shared knowledge and models. NiCE is gaining tremendous AI talent and expertise, adding Cognigy’s executive team, engineers, and others. Cognigy CEO Philipp Helteweg will become GM NiCE Cognigy. As part of the acquisition, an employee retention program is in place to retain Cognigy’s AI talent. Cognigy has strong talent and AI experts who’ve been innovating in this space who will join the NiCE team to help expand its AI expertise. The acquisition will have a big impact on Cognigy’s CCaaS/contact center partners, notably Genesys, Avaya, and 8x8. While Cognigy plans to continue supporting these partners and offer its platform both as a combined offering with CXone Mpower and as a standalone offering, we expect these companies – particularly Genesys – to look for a new partner and potential acquisitions. This should be welcome news to some of Cognigy’s conversational AI/AI agent competitors, as we’re likely to see more acquisitions in the next few months. This also opens the door for NiCE to have discussions with Cognigy customers currently on different contact center/CCaaS platforms who may be considering moving to NiCE. There aren’t very many downsides to this acquisition for NiCE or Cognigy. While some industry watchers claim that having its own technology stack rather than partnering with best-of-breed vendors is more limiting, as it reduces the likelihood of partnering with a vendor that may be more innovative, the benefits of owning your own technology outweighs those concerns. The CXone Mpower platform is open and can integrate with other vendors if a customer prefers that option. Conducting the Orchestra Our BCStrategies view would sum this up in a single word - orchestration. That has been a central theme at NiCE, initially envisioned by outgoing CEO Barak Eilam with CXone Mpower. Current CEO Scott Russell has enhanced that vision with orchestration capabilities that go beyond the contact center. CX orchestration is now the focus of most CCaaS providers, but as we saw at Interactions, NiCE is taking the orchestration concept to another level via big-time partnerships with ServiceNow and Snowflake. In parlance that Cognigy’s German roots will appreciate, NiCE has upleveled the game from a string quartet to an orchestra in terms of orchestrating workflows and outcomes across the entire enterprise, instead of just the contact center. The Cognigy acquisition is akin to adding another layer of instruments to make this a more complete symphony orchestra. No acquisition is ever neat-and-tidy, and Cognigy’s partner relationships will need to evolve, so for now, the conductor’s role will likely be shared by the CEOs - Scott Russell and Philipp Helteweg. Taking the orchestration motif one step further, as a company, NiCE is certainly orchestrating how the CX landscape needs to evolve in the age of AI. Adding Cognigy shows vision for how to separate from the pack, and this sets the bar ever-higher for competitors. NiCE now has the most complete CX platform out there, and it will no longer be enough for competitors to rely on partnerships to keep pace. Of course, all of this is moot if AI turns out to be hype, but given NiCE’s financial strength, they could weather this scenario better than just about anyone. Besides, we’ve been to events for both companies, and the proof points are there - each company has learned how to make AI real, and we no longer need to worry about what took so long.

(Podcast length 20:52) BCStrategies Expert Blair Pleasant hosts Experts Joseph Williams, Jon Arnold, Kevin Kieller, David Maldow and Nicolas de Kouchkovsky as they discuss key themes and announcements from the start of 2025: Blair - Non-traditional contact center agents with Webex, 8x8, TalkDesk, GoTo, RingCentral Joseph - Nest ending support for first-gen thermometers; theme platforms are not forever. Architect for agility and flexibility Jon - RCS and messaging, especially for outbound Kevin - Q1 as the start for "realistic AI" - people are starting to understand opportunities and risks better David - Microsoft, Cisco, Zoom, Google, and the term "Agentic AI" + Data from Star Trek Nicolas - Trends around "agent platform": Zendesk, ServiceNow. How to test, iterate, improve, and control.

BCStrategies.com Experts Kevin Kieller, Blair Pleasant, and Jon Arnold provide a quick recap of Zoom Perspectives 2025, highlighting their key takeaways, including: ➡️Creating a product that customers love is not just a cute saying; it is an imperative embedded in everything Zoom does ➡️ Zoom contact center, Zoom phone, Zoom Workplace, and Workvivo are all seeing strong growth ➡️Xuedong D. Huang and his team have exciting plans related to #AI that drives measurable business outcomes. Their key focus is enabling "conversations to completion" ➡️Nick Tidd has a detailed strategy to expand Zoom's channel contribution from 40% to 80% ➡️Kimberly Storin, as the new CMO, is gearing up to tell the Zoom story more broadly and more powerfully (with swagger) ➡️ Brendan Ittelson is fully committed to helping developers leverage and integrate the power of Zoom into their solutions ➡️The Workvivo by Zoom team brings passion, a great product, and new customers to Zoom. A strong complement to Zoom's frontline offering ➡️ Speaking of frontline, Zoom Workplace for Frontline is well-priced and well-aligned with the opportunity that more than 2 billion frontline workers represent ➡️ Zoom's vertical add-ons for healthcare and education are interesting and expanding (e.g., clinician and lecture transcript notes) ➡️ Zoom Workplace's powerful features, delivered without complexity, are ideally suited to the SMB market (especially for orgs with less than 50 people who typically have no IT staff) ➡️ If you are a Microsoft shop that also uses hashtag#Zoom (as many do), the Zoom Workplace integration with Outlook/ Exchange/ SharePoint is worth checking out