NiCE’s $955 million acquisition of Cognigy is turning Enlighten Autopilot into a unified orchestration engine for AI-driven customer journeys.  Salesforce’s takeover of Bluebirds accelerates the “agentification” of enterprise apps, bringing low-code orchestration into the CRM core.

Thoma Bravo’s bid for Verint – a $2B+ portfolio expansion into WEM, voice-of-customer, and AI analytics- is another consolidation signal.

This is more than just M&A headline fodder; it’s reshaping what “AI consolidated” means to enterprise buyers and how they hold choice, pricing, and integration risk in the same tight grasp.

In the broader SaaS universe, this trend is already underway. A recent survey reports that 52% of SaaS companies now integrate AI, and by the end of 2025, 95% of organizations will use AI-powered SaaS solutions, yet, contradictorily, the number of apps per organization has actually shrunk by 18% between 2022–2024.

The Benefits of AI Consolidated with CX

For all the concern about tighter stacks and reduced vendor choice, AI adoption and SaaS consolidation bring clear benefits that can’t be ignored. Buyers are seeing more cohesive platforms, faster time to value, and fewer integration headaches.

Unified stacks, fewer silos

One of the clearest benefits of AI consolidated platforms is a reduction in complexity. Building an intelligent contact center meant buying orchestration from one vendor, analytics from another, and automation from a third. Then enterprises would pay systems integrators to stitch it all together. Every new layer introduced more risk, more time, and more cost.

Now, deals like NICE’s acquisition of Cognigy change the equation. By embedding Cognigy’s orchestration capabilities directly into Enlighten Autopilot, NICE can offer an end-to-end solution where customer intent detection, conversation design, and resolution tracking are all managed in the same stack. For buyers, that means fewer moving parts and less reliance on fragile connectors or middleware. Salesforce’s Bluebirds acquisition points in the same direction, baking low-code orchestration straight into CRM workflows.

When data, automation, and orchestration live in one place, outcomes become easier to measure, and upgrades roll out faster across the entire platform.

Improved AI maturity and adoption

Most organizations are still immature in their AI usage. McKinsey research finds that only around 1% think they’ve reached AI maturity, meaning they can deploy AI at scale with governance and accountability.

Consolidated platforms can close that gap by providing a packaged approach where compliance, observability, and orchestration are part of the core product. That matters because AI adoption has historically stalled when governance frameworks lag behind deployment goals.

With AI adoption and SaaS consolidation, CX leaders get predictable guardrails: dashboards for monitoring, pre-built integrations for data governance, and policy frameworks aligned to regulations like the EU AI Act.

For buyers under pressure from boards to accelerate rollout, this kind of ready-made governance can make the difference between a controlled expansion and an uncontrolled experiment.

Potential for Lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)

Running several vendors side by side is rarely efficient. Each one comes with its own license fees, connectors, and support contracts. In many projects, integration alone can eat up 25-35% of the total cost of AI, often costing more than the software itself. A consolidated platform trims that overhead by rolling functions into one package and cutting down on duplication.

Vendors are also experimenting with new pricing models. NICE, Genesys, and others are shifting from per-seat models toward usage- or outcome-based pricing, where companies only pay when an issue is successfully resolved. This approach mirrors trends in automation, where providers like Ada promote “resolution-based” economics. For CFOs, the promise is a clearer ROI story: predictable costs, lower integration fees, and pricing that aligns with actual business outcomes.

Scale and innovation at speed

Consolidated AI platforms can also drive scale. Big vendors often have larger research budgets, wider datasets to train on, and shorter development cycles. For buyers looking to move AI from pilot projects into live production, that muscle makes a difference.

The NICE–Cognigy deal shows how this plays out. Cognigy’s orchestration tools already had traction with global enterprises. Folded into NICE’s Enlighten AI, they become part of a wider platform that blends automation with analytics. That scale gives big vendors an edge in areas such as observability, compliance, and vertical add-ons.

A hospital can benefit from pre-built frameworks that support regulation, while a retailer might get plug-and-play modules for returns or warranty claims. In practice, these unified stacks act like AI factories, shipping features at a pace smaller vendors would struggle to match.

The Challenges of AI Consolidation

Consolidation makes life easier in some ways, but it also creates new problems that enterprise buyers can’t ignore. The same moves that simplify stacks can limit choice, raise costs, and expose organizations to bigger risks.

Fewer options, greater lock-in

Consolidation narrows the field. Vendors like NICE, Salesforce, and Microsoft are pulling automation, orchestration, and analytics into the same platforms. Once a company’s data and processes are tied in, breaking free is costly and disruptive. Smaller vendors, like Rasa, Kore.ai, and others, may still offer strong products, but it gets harder to justify the integration effort when the big players are bundling everything by default.

The pricing squeeze

At first, unified stacks often look cheaper. One bill, one vendor, fewer integration costs. But consolidation shifts leverage to suppliers, not customers. Once locked in, enterprises are at the mercy of new bundles, higher license tiers, and usage-based pricing that can quickly outpace forecasts. Some vendors are moving toward “resolution-based” pricing, where costs depend on outcomes, not licenses. That sounds attractive, but it shifts financial risk onto the buyer if volumes or recontacts rise.

Customization takes a hit

Broad platforms often miss the mark for niche requirements. Sectors such as healthcare, finance, or government run on strict workflows and heavy regulation. Generic, one-size-fits-all automation can erode those differences. CX leaders are already calling out the risks of “off-the-shelf” AI that scales well but fails under the weight of sector-specific complexity.

Innovation slows at the edges

While consolidation can accelerate mainstream development, it often leaves less room for experimentation. Cavell analysts have argued that NICE’s move for Cognigy will strengthen its position but could also reduce variety in the CX technology ecosystem. Smaller players are usually the ones pushing boundaries, and acquisitions often fold them into slower, corporate release cycles.

Higher stakes when things break

When fewer companies carry more of the stack, the stakes rise. The 2024 CrowdStrike outage is a clear reminder: a single error grounded flights, froze banks, and halted hospitals worldwide. AI adoption and SaaS consolidation can create similar vulnerabilities. If a major vendor’s automation platform goes down, the impact could ripple through entire industries overnight.

Preparing for the AI Consolidation Era

Consolidated AI is a growing trend, and CX leaders don’t have the luxury of waiting it out. The smart move now is to prepare, both technically and culturally, for a market where fewer vendors control more of the stack:

• Rethink vendor strategy: Some enterprises will commit fully to one ecosystem, while others keep their options open. A blended model is gaining traction, keep the core on a major platform, but leave space to connect smaller, specialist tools. It’s less tidy than going all-in, but it reduces dependence.
• Fix the data problem: Consolidation doesn’t fix poor data hygiene. Fragmented or inconsistent records still derail AI. Companies that invest in reliable pipelines now will see stronger performance regardless of the stack.
• Ask for transparency: Fewer suppliers mean more vendor power. Buyers should ask for straightforward pricing, clear product roadmaps, and monitoring tools that show how the AI is performing.
• Prepare the workforce: Automation changes roles more than it cuts them. Cavell expects contact center roles to rise over the next three years, though the focus will shift. Agents will handle complex or emotional tasks while AI takes the routine. Training and reskilling should be part of the plan.
• Keep regulators in mind: Rules are tightening. The EU AI Act and ISO 42001 set high standards for auditability and control. Gartner expects most enterprise AI systems to face audits by 2026. Big vendors may bundle compliance frameworks into their platforms, but that doesn’t let enterprises off the hook. Independent checks are still essential.

What’s Next in AI Consolidation

More deals are coming. Analysts expect another wave of mergers as SaaS and CX vendors try to scale AI faster. Data providers, orchestration platforms, and automation specialists are the most likely targets.

Genesys is already leaning into orchestration. Microsoft is expanding its intent-based agent frameworks. Google is pushing Gemini deeper into contact center workflows. Each move shows the same pattern: vendors want to own the entire experience, not just a piece of it.

Another shift is the rise of AI factories – studios where enterprises can design, test, and deploy their own agents at scale. NICE, Genesys, and Five9 have all released versions of this. These tools speed up development, but they also pull buyers further into a single vendor’s ecosystem.

AI is now built into almost every CX system. The critical question is who runs it and how it’s delivered. In an era of AI consolidated stacks, the firms that succeed will be the ones that prepare early and keep flexibility in reserve.

The communications platform disclosed its Q3 earnings on Monday, highlighting a strong growth from its customer experience portfolio. 

Zoom has also revealed its plans to grow product revenue further by enhancing its existing products with additional AI capabilities to drive AI-first customer experiences. 

During the earnings call, Zoom announced that the platform would be evolving from its traditional customer experience platform to an AI-focused one, aiming to drive productivity and relationships. 

Eric Yuan, CEO and Founder of Zoom, revealed that after its strong quarterly results, Zoom would be able to move forward with this vision. 

He said: “This performance reflects the durability of our business driven by the growing value we are delivering for customers as we evolve from a communications leader to an AI-first platform for work and customer experience. 

“Our vision is to be the AI-first work platform for human connection.” 

Zoom expects to accomplish this transformation by following its three strategic priorities: enhancing its existing products with AI, driving growth in AI products, and scaling AI-first customer experiences. 

Enhancing Existing Products 

During Zoomtopia 2025, the communications platform unveiled AI Companion 3.0, an updated version of AI Companion that utilizes agentic AI not only to respond, but also to act, advising on tasks such as meeting preparations, freeing up time, and call follow-ups. 

Zoom has embedded various AI capabilities and tools, including AI Companion, across its platform foundation, including: 

• Zoom Meetings: Zoom’s AI Companion, a proactive AI assistant tool, offers meeting summaries, follow-ups for next steps, and drives work forward. 
• Team Chat: Rising by 20% in active monthly users year over year, AI Companion supports the messaging product by providing customers with chat summaries, composition tools, and simplified search options for higher productivity. 
• Zoom Phone: This tool now offers Voice Intelligence for call transcription, summaries, noise cancellation, call routing, and analytics and insights for customer data collection, with over 10 million users now paying for Zoom Phone as of early Q3. 
• Zoom Contact Center: Working as Zoom’s cloud-based contact center solution, this platform has adopted AI tools such as Virtual Agent, an agentic AI chatbot offering complex tasks and responses for customers, and AI Expert Assist, allowing agents to utilize AI support in real-time with summaries and translations and offer possible agent responses during customer interactions. 

In fact, AI Companion usage has grown four times year-on-year, revealing that these AI features are seeing value from user activity, resulting in rapid adoption. 

By adding AI to these already-established products, customers are more likely to accept these capabilities once they’ve been integrated into the software. 

Driving Growth in AI Products 

By moving beyond its core communication tools and investing in greater agentic abilities, Zoom offers its customers further access to its AI tools to personalize them to their needs. 

This allows Zoom the chance to drive AI product revenue with product monetization, generating financial growth rather than just adding tools to products. 

In fact, 90% of Zoom’s top CX deals involve paid AI features to contribute to product revenue, offering both subscription and consumption models to suit the customer. 

This includes the development of AI tools such as Custom AI Companion, a paid version of the standard AI Companion model targeted towards enterprise-tier customers, allowing businesses to customize the tool to meet specific demands and policies. 

This also includes similar products such as Virtual Agent and AI Expert Assist, as well as Zoom’s recent acquisition of BrightHire. 

Scaling AI-First Customer Experiences 

Through utilizing tools such as Virtual Agent and AI Expert Assist, Zoom is using AI to transform interactions between customers and enterprises by expanding these products across the platform for automated workflows. 

These tools will involve automating routine requests and advise agents during workflow automation, voice, chat, and video calls for faster results. 

Zoom has also implemented a feature that allows enterprises to install either Zoom’s or a third-party’s AI tool, encouraging them to become familiar with AI usage while tailoring it to their needs. 

This strategy will also involve Zoom working with its largest customers to move AI agents into deployment; however, this may prove difficult. 

During the earnings call, Zoom noted that despite this upsurge in AI tool adoption, its net dollar expansion rate stayed at 98%, 2% lower than expected, likely suggesting that large customers had not been spending as much as hoped on Zoom’s products, with renewals on larger accounts proving difficult to resume. 

Zoom Key Earnings Results 

Zoom’s earnings results showed some strong areas of performance across enterprise and cashflow revenue results 

• Zoom’s total revenue reached $1.23BN, up 4.4% year-on-year 

• Its enterprise revenue grew 6.1%, totalling 60% of Zoom’s total revenue 

• Average monthly churn increased by 2.7%, similar to Q3 2024 

• Its operating cash flow increased to $629MN, up 30% year-on-year 

First reported back in May, the purchase has now officially been confirmed for approximately $8BN.

The deal will see Salesforce leverage Informatica’s AI-powered cloud data management capabilities to improve its agentic AI offerings – most notably, the Agentforce platform.

Alongside the data catalog, Salesforce will also gain access to Informatica’s integration, governance, quality and privacy, metadata management, and Master Data Management (MDM) services.

The end goal is to use these capabilities to build a unified data foundation for agentic AI, enabling safe, responsible, and scalable AI agents across the enterprise.

Indeed, in discussing the news, Salesforce Chair and CEO Marc Benioff described data and context as the “true fuel of Agentforce.”

“And without clean, connected, trusted data there is no intelligence – only hallucination. Informatica is the trusted platform that turns fragmented enterprise data into context, so every agent can reason, act, and deliver outcomes with precision.

“When companies get their data right, they get their AI right, and Agentforce becomes unstoppable.”

In terms of the specifics, Salesforce also detailed how Informatica’s capabilities will sharpen its Data 360 feature by delivering cleaner, more reliable data across the business, while its integration strengths pair with MuleSoft to create a more complete, enterprise-wide connectivity layer.

That stronger foundation directly benefits Agentforce, giving autonomous agents the trusted data they need to act with confidence.

Tableau also gains from the deal, with clearer, richer context feeding into analytics and lifting the quality of insights across the board.

Making Agentforce “Unstoppable”

Benioff’s remarks around the Informatica deal helping to make Agentforce “unstoppable,” might sound like the usual vendor bravado, but they do speak to a genuine Agentforce concern: so far, the platform has been fairly stoppable.

While Agentforce has turned plenty of heads, its early momentum hasn’t quite matched the noise surrounding it.

Salesforce’s own fanfare helped create expectations that were always going to be difficult to meet, and many customers arrived at pilot projects only to realize they weren’t fully prepared for what the technology demands.

Some of that stems from implementation readiness. Consultancies and end users alike have found themselves wrestling with half-built agents, legacy processes, and a level of technical debt that makes it hard to get consistent outcomes.

The common thread is data. Agentforce can only be as sharp as the information it draws on, and too many organizations are discovering that their underlying data simply isn’t mature enough to support reliable agentic behavior.

Salesforce has offered guidance on best practices, but many customers underestimated just how much groundwork is required before Agentforce can deliver at scale.

When the data feeding the system is inconsistent or siloed, results can feel underwhelming.

Add to that a pricing model that initially confused buyers – particularly around how “conversations” were counted – and it’s clear why enthusiasm occasionally softened once projects moved from demos to delivery.

Salesforce has already taken steps to address some of those sticking points, including replacing the old per-conversation model with the more transparent Flex Credits approach.

Yet the larger barrier remains the data plumbing underneath the platform. And this is where the Informatica acquisition becomes far more than a simple expansion of Salesforce’s portfolio.

Informatica gives Salesforce a proven set of tools for tackling the data preparation issues that have slowed Agentforce deployments.

Its integration fabric, data governance controls, and MDM capabilities reach well beyond the front office, allowing organizations to clean, connect, and align information across the entire enterprise – not just whatever happens to sit inside Salesforce already.

That wider foundation is exactly what agentic systems need if they’re going to reason properly and take reliable action.

By bringing Informatica into the fold, Salesforce can help customers close the readiness gap that has held Agentforce back.

Cleaner inputs mean stronger outputs. Stronger outputs mean more trust in AI-driven automation. And with that trust, the platform finally has the conditions it needs to gain the momentum the early hype promised.

Amazon Sues Perplexity for Allegedly Misusing Its AI Shopping Tool

Amazon has threatened Perplexity with legal action after its shopping tool was accused of computer fraud.

On Tuesday, the startup’s Comet AI was accused of violating Amazon’s ban on robot and data gathering.

Amazon has previously warned Perplexity about the use of the tool on its shopping site.

In the claim, Amazon accused Perplexity of misconduct against its company’s terms of service, claiming that its agentic browser, Comet AI, was being used to access customer accounts and make automated purchases on behalf of a customer, without Amazon’s knowledge.

The accusation also claims that perplexity has damaged Amazon’s customer experience by pretending to be a human consumer and accessing restricted sections of its website, threatening the trust and privacy of customers.

In a statement on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Amazon addressed the claims made against Perplexity.

They said:

“We’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.”

Read on to find out more.

Zoom Eyes the Small Business CX Market with Bonsai Buy

Zoom has signed an agreement for the acquisition of Bonsai, an all-in-one client engagement and business management platform designed for solopreneurs and small businesses.

The deal underscores Zoom’s commitment to providing customer service features to businesses of all shapes and sizes, from enterprises to small-scale organizations.

In a nutshell, Bonsai’s solutions are built to support service professionals like designers, consultants, and architects by equipping them with an easy-to-use, unified workspace.

In doing so, it provides an accessible and affordable way for small businesses and soloprenuers to deliver a superior level of customer experience and improve customer loyalty.

In a blog discussing the acquisition, Vi Chau, General Manager of Online Business at Zoom, wrote that Bonsai “stands out in a market underserved by complex, enterprise-focused tools.

“At Zoom, we see an opportunity to simplify this effort by empowering solopreneurs to focus on growth, not administrative work.”

In practice, this means integrating Bonsai’s tools with Zoom Workplace, including products such as Meetings, Webinars, Team Chat, Zoom AI Companion, and Docs (Read more…).

Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center (CEC) 2025: The Rundown

Like almost every facet of the customer experience and service tech stack in recent times, the CRM Customer Engagement Center (CEC) landscape is in the midst of an AI-powered rethink.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center (CEC) 2025 underscores how swiftly the market has shifted from digital engagement to intelligent orchestration, with AI agents, automation frameworks, and composable platforms defining the new service stack.

While last year’s report reflected stability, 2025 marks a decisive pivot.

A fresh evaluation model, new scoring criteria, and a heavier focus on agentic AI have redrawn the map.

However, despite the changes, Salesforce was still comfortably the top of the pack, with Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Zendesk some of the major names trying to chase it down.

Read on to find out which other vendors made the latest report and what most impressed Gartner.

Phishing Campaign Targets Cloudflare Pages and Zendesk to Mimic Support Portals

A new phishing campaign is targeting customer support channels by abusing Cloudflare Pages and Zendesk, showing that even well-protected platforms can be manipulated.

Arda Büyükkaya, Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at EclecticIQ, has warned that threat actors have registered more than 600 *.pages[.]dev domains, using typosquatting to mimic legitimate customer support portals for popular brands.

Typosquatting is a technique in which attackers deliberately register domain names that are slight misspellings or variations of legitimate company web addresses, to trick users into thinking they are visiting the correct site. For example, a domain like zendeskcupport.pages[.]dev could be used to impersonate Zendesk’s official support portal while relying on users to overlook the subtle typo.

The phishing pages are “very likely AI generated and include an embedded live chat interface, staffed by an human operator who asks victims [their] phone number and email address under the pretext of providing technical assistance,” Büyükkaya explained in the post on X (formerly Twitter).

“The attacker then instructs victims to install a legitimate remote monitoring tool (Rescue), which grants them full remote access to the device.”

The goal appears to be stealing sensitive information and taking over accounts for financial gain (Read more…).

The deal underscores Zoom’s commitment to providing customer service features to businesses of all shapes and sizes, from enterprises to small-scale organizations.

In a nutshell, Bonsai’s solutions are built to support service professionals like designers, consultants, and architects by equipping them with an easy-to-use, unified workspace.

In doing so, it provides an accessible and affordable way for small businesses and soloprenuers to deliver a superior level of customer experience and improve customer loyalty.

In a blog discussing the acquisition, Vi Chau, General Manager of Online Business at Zoom, wrote that Bonsai “stands out in a market underserved by complex, enterprise-focused tools.

“Running a small business today means juggling client work, communication, and finances across multiple tools.

“At Zoom, we see an opportunity to simplify this effort by empowering solopreneurs to focus on growth, not administrative work.”

In practice, this means integrating Bonsai’s tools with Zoom Workplace, including products such as Meetings, Webinars, Team Chat, Zoom AI Companion, and Docs.

For example, integrating Bonsai with Zoom AI Companion could automate repetitive administrative work – from scheduling follow-ups to generating proposals – while maintaining a consistent tone of voice with clients.

Bonsai CEO Redon Gjika highlighted this potential in a post on LinkedIn, noting that Bonsai’s future will be “augmented by Zoom’s AI-first Workplace products.”

The move mirrors how other major vendors, including Microsoft and Salesforce, are weaving AI into both collaboration and customer engagement layers.

For small firms, this could mean delivering the kind of friction-free, personalized experiences once reserved for enterprise-grade platforms, without the complexity or cost that often comes with them.

Zoom’s CX Ambition

The acquisition reflects a growing industry trend: the convergence of collaboration, productivity, and customer experience tools.

By incorporating Bonsai’s client-management features, Zoom moves closer to offering a unified environment that helps small businesses handle both internal communication and external client interactions.

Indeed, Chau wrote that “Zoom and Bonsai will support small business owners and solopreneurs from the first client contact to final payment.”

That first-to-final phrasing speaks to an expanded customer experience scope.

Zoom is aiming to support relationship management, service delivery, and payment – effectively covering the full client lifecycle.

A Milestone for Bonsai

Founded in 2015, Bonsai has carved out a loyal following among independent professionals and service-based microbusinesses.

In discussing the agreement, Gjika described the deal as the culmination of a decade-long mission:

“This moment marks a major milestone in a journey that began 10 years ago with a clear mission: empowering solopreneurs and small businesses to run and grow their businesses with confidence.”

He added: “Joining Zoom allows us to expand what’s possible for our users, combining Bonsai’s deep focus on client and business management with Zoom’s resources, technology and AI leadership.”

Gjika confirmed that Bonsai will “continue to operate as a standalone platform under its own brand,” with its capabilities gradually integrated into Zoom’s AI-first ecosystem.

The CX View

For CX professionals, the significance of this deal lies less in the transaction itself and more in what it represents: the steady blurring of boundaries between collaboration and customer experience technology.

Zoom’s acquisition of Bonsai highlights how the next generation of CX enablement will be native to the tools businesses already use every day.

As the transaction is expected to close by the end of 2025, it will be interesting to see how Zoom can translate Bonsai’s small-business focus into measurable CX value.

If successful, the move could allow Zoom to dominate the small business and solopreneur market.

More News From Zoom

Last month, Zoom confirmed that Oracle will adopt its contact center solution to support global customer service operations.

The 15,000-seat CCaaS agreement marks Zoom’s largest contact center deployment to date, bringing Zoom CX to Oracle’s worldwide service teams.

First hinted at in February as a record-breaking deal with an unnamed Fortune 100 company, the partnership has now been officially identified as Oracle.

The announcement also extends the collaboration between the two firms, with Zoom CX now available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Elsewhere, back in August, Zoom revealed the enhancement of Zoom Phone by integrating its Virtual Agent, enabling businesses to route callers directly to the right department without manual transfers.

This new “24/7 AI receptionist” can interact with customers, understand their intent, process inputs, and intelligently direct them to the appropriate team, reducing the need for agent intervention and streamlining the customer journey.

Press Ganey Forsta, often referred to as “PG Forsta”, is a rising force in the voice of the customer (VoC) space, rivaling Qualtrics.

Indeed, it recently placed as a Leader in the market’s latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for VoC.

In doing so, PG Forsta ranked alongside InMoment, which it later rolled up in May.

As such, this latest acquisition brings together three of the VoC space’s biggest brands.

Yet, Qualtrics is one of the market’s two most prominent names, with Medallia the other.

The acquisition will extend its market leadership and help consolidate the space.

Nevertheless, it will also boost Qualtrics’ industry-specific offerings, with PG Forsta widely deployed in the healthcare space and other highly-regulated sectors.

Across these industries, it offers advanced journey visualizations and templates, simplifying feature adoption.

PG Forsta is also well-known for its strong support services and differentiated AI solutions for front-line, customer-facing employees.

As such, it can offer many more bows to Qualtrics’ quiver, with the deal marking the VoC giant’s largest investment since it was taken private by Silver Lake in 2023.

“Bringing Qualtrics and Press Ganey Forsta together will accelerate the adoption of AI and create the most comprehensive platform for improving the human experience,” said Zig Serafin, CEO of Qualtrics.

Combining Qualtrics’ AI platform with Press Ganey Forsta’s trusted analytics and deep expertise creates an opportunity to deliver exceptional value and measurable outcomes for our customers.

The combined companies are expected to generate nearly $3BN in annual revenue. The cash and stock transaction is expected to close in the coming months, and the two companies will continue to operate independently in the meantime.

But beyond size, Patrick T. Ryan, Chairman and CEO of Press Ganey Forsta, stressed that the real differentiator is the ability to turn massive data into smarter, faster decisions powered by AI.

“AI is rapidly transforming every industry, and organizations need proven, innovative solutions grounded in deep expertise to move from insight to impact faster,” he said. This investment ignites our ability to deliver.”

Qualtrics has already been making strides in AI with tools like Conversational Feedback, Qualtrics Assist, synthetic research platform Edge Audiences, and Experience Agents. According to the company, more than one-third of customers have adopted these AI features, and 90 percent of their top 50 enterprise clients are already using them.

Now, with Press Ganey Forsta’s benchmarking data and advisory services in the mix, Qualtrics aims to help clients move from insights to impact faster.

As Bill Staikos, Founder and Managing Partner of Be Customer Led, put it in a LinkedIn post:

In the quickly consolidating CXM space, this is the loudest signal yet that ‘experience’ is more and more about data fidelity and industry depth. PG’s healthcare footprint is enormous, and the combined company also recently picked up InMoment. So this is data scale + vertical credibility + AI (and AI training) in one package.

That massive healthcare footprint sees Press Ganey Forsta work with 41,000 providers across 30 countries. As it does so, Press Ganey Forsta’s Human Experience (HX) Platform brings together customer experience, employee experience, patient experience, and market research. Yet, its influence is expanding.

Jim Davies, Co-Founder and Executive Partner at Actionary, summarized the move by telling CX Today:

The PG Forsta acquisition strengthens Qualtrics’ healthcare and VoC capabilities, expanding its portfolio and reinforcing its market leadership in experience management. The next frontier will be proactively embedding insights directly into operational workflows to shape customer experiences in real time.

What Does the Deal Mean for Qualtrics’ Rivals?

“The combo locks up healthcare for Qualtrics, as they’ll now have a massive inventory of longitudinal patient and clinician signals, wrapped in compliance workflows and integrations, that most horizontal platforms simply don’t have,” according to Staikos.

For Medallia, it brings both real pressure and hidden opportunity. The pressure is clear, as the narrative is shifting hard toward platforms that offer high-signal, trusted, industry-specific data and the ability to drive meaningful action within existing systems. But the opportunity lies in leaning into its strengths: blue-chip clients, strong service delivery, and a foothold in industries like financial services, travel, and telco, Staikos wrote.

Yet, what about other market competitors Sprinklr and Verint?

“[T]his is a green light [for Sprinklr] to lean into their “unified front-office execution,” continued Staikos. “They already own care, social, and marketing workflows; the move now is to prove closed-loop activation with measurable cost-to-serve and revenue lift using the signals they already collect.”

For Verint, which will merge with its rival Calabrio after its recent acquisition by Thoma Bravo, “the path is ‘interaction + intent + outcome’. They can bind VoC to interaction analytics and WEM so leaders can remove failure demand, versus just putting it on a dashboard.

“In the end, if you’re not going to be the data-plus-vertical incumbent, you have to be the activation engine that lives natively in CRM, CCaaS, EHR, POS, and ERP. Vertical depth, packaged outcomes, first-party data leverage, and ruthless proof of value in quarters, not years, is the winning message.

The VoC market has been heating up with consolidations and AI innovation. All eyes will be on how quickly the combined company can integrate its capabilities and deliver on its promise to turn better data into better human experiences at scale.

The ISG Contact Center Buyers Guide 2025: 7 Top Takeaways 

The contact center technology market is crowded, with more players from a CRM, UCaaS, and even CPaaS heritage sensing an opportunity to win business in the space.  

Most, if not all, are banging the AI drum. In 2024, some thudded much harder than others. Yet, in 2025, AI integration is much deeper in the tech stack and more consistent across vendors.  

The use cases aren’t surprising, including self-service, AI assistance, conversational intelligence… these were all big last year too, but now are more embedded and refined. 

Still, some are ahead of others, but the gap in terms of capability is closing, and spotting what sets the vendors apart gets trickier.  

Against this backdrop and the explosion in contact center options, the ISG Buyers Guide goes deeper into the changing market and the vendors leading from the front (Read on…). 

Thoma Bravo to Snap Up PROS for $1.4BN, Follow Up Its Verint & Dayforce Acquisitions 

Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire PROS, a prominent AI-powered pricing and revenue management software provider. 

The all-cash deal is valued at approximately $1.4BN and is expected to close during the fourth quarter. 

It is Thoma Bravo’s third acquisition in just a matter of weeks, following the roll-ups of Dayforce and Verint in late August. 

Yet, PROS brings new capabilities to its portfolio, including CPQ (configure, price, quote), price optimization, and revenue intelligence solutions. 

In announcing the deal, Jeff Cotten, President and CEO of PROS, stated that as a private company, “PROS will be more agile and have greater flexibility to invest in innovation and expand our platform.” 

It will also gain the luxury of focusing on longer-term goals, like leading the emerging field of agentic intelligence and analytics, as it no longer has to manage for short-term quarterly results. 

Nevertheless, what most excites Martin Schneider, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, is how PROs fits into the broader Thoma Bravo portfolio. 

“Thoma Bravo continues to build out a sizable portfolio of applications providers outside of its previous concentration in cybersecurity,” he noted. “It will be interesting to see how well they can continue to drive momentum for PROS as a private equity-backed company.” (Read on…). 

Talkdesk Expands Vertical Focus with New CX Platform for Service-Based Industries 

Talkdesk has released a new customer experience automation (CXA) platform designed for service-based businesses, the company’s latest move in a broader strategy to deliver vertical-specific solutions. 

The Talkdesk Commercial & Residential Services Experience Cloud platform is aimed at home services, property management, logistics, and field service businesses. These face distinct customer service challenges, including a high volume of time-sensitive calls, dispatch coordination and appointment logistics. 

The platform uses agentic AI, intelligent automation, and proactive outreach capabilities to help customers around the clock through their preferred channel, whether through voice, chat, text message, or mobile app. 

The aim is for businesses to be able to use AI to manage routine scheduling, billing and updates, according to Rohit Madhavarapu, Vice President of Omnichannel and Industries at Talkdesk: 

In service industries, every minute counts and every interaction shapes trust… It’s about speed, confidence, and convenience at scale, giving customers instant answers and giving service companies the edge they need to grow. 

After all, customers don’t want to wait around for answers. Whether they’re checking on an appointment time, wondering where the technician is, or sorting out a billing issue, they expect quick, hassle-free responses (Read on…). 

Verint Unveils New Specialized Bots, Expands Its Contact Center Workforce Management Porfolio 

Verint has unveiled two new specialized bots: an Exact Forecasting Bot and an Intraday Spike Bot. 

Debuted at Verint Engage 2025, the bots aim to augment contact center workforce management (WFM) operations. 

That’s crucial, as the WFM space hasn’t enjoyed the same transformative innovation as other realms of the contact center. 

While generative AI may have moved the needle elsewhere, advanced WFM relies on more complex machine learning models and neural networks, especially in regards to forecasting. 

As such, many still view WFM technology as an enterprise luxury, while smaller contact centers stick with spreadsheets and Erlang Calculators. 

Yet, with hybrid human-AI teams, the already difficult job of a contact center resource planner is only becoming more so.

WFM teams need more accessible innovations to boost their toolkit. That’s what these two specialized bots aim to provide. (Read on…). 

The all-cash deal is valued at approximately $1.4BN and is expected to close during the fourth quarter.

It is Thoma Bravo’s third acquisition in just a matter of weeks, following the roll-ups of Dayforce and Verint in late August.

Yet, PROS brings new capabilities to its portfolio, including CPQ (configure, price, quote), price optimization, and revenue intelligence solutions.

In announcing the deal, Jeff Cotten, President and CEO of PROS, stated that as a private company, “PROS will be more agile and have greater flexibility to invest in innovation and expand our platform.”

It will also gain the luxury of focusing on longer-term goals, like leading the emerging field of agentic intelligence and analytics, as it no longer has to manage for short-term quarterly results.

Nevertheless, what most excites Martin Schneider, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, is how PROs fits into the broader Thoma Bravo portfolio.

“Thoma Bravo continues to build out a sizable portfolio of applications providers outside of its previous concentration in cybersecurity,” he noted. “It will be interesting to see how well they can continue to drive momentum for PROS as a private equity-backed company.

“PROS has been making significant inroads in the hospitality and airline industries, but its recent investments in AI have made its pricing and CPQ offerings for B2B very compelling,” continued Schneider.

When we look at Thoma Bravo’s portfolio, they have the makings of a CPQ and revenue operations powerhouse, considering they are also the majority owners in Coupa and Conga software. How much the company wants to “mix and match” among its portfolio to create new offerings remains to be seen, but they have assembled quite a list of solid SaaS solutions for key elements of the go-to-market tech stack.

To Schneider’s point, alongside its cybersecurity heritage, Thoma Bravo is building quite the portfolio, in revenue operations, as he mentions, but also in customer engagement. In these spaces, other firms in the space are struggling to stand out. As such, its acquisition streak opens the door to some creative combinations.

The Creative Combinations in Thoma Bravo’s Portfolio

Consider Verint. Upon completion of that deal, the analytics software provider will merge with Calabrio, its workforce engagement management (WEM) rival, which Thoma Bravo owns.

But Aisera and Medallia are other obvious connections in the Thoma Bravo stable, as they compete with Verint in the conversational AI and voice of the customer (VoC) markets, respectively.

Thoma Bravo could also mix and match Verint in more intriguing ways. Take UserTesting, for example. Imagine blending Verint’s analytics with UserTesting’s real-time customer feedback and voice-of-customer insights, providing users with a full picture of the numbers and the narrative behind customer experiences, flowing straight into the contact center. Schneider’s colleague, Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, touted this possibility during a recent episode of CX Today’s Big News Show. 

Now, layer in Hyland, another Thoma Bravo company, to bring enterprise content management, rich data capabilities, and digital asset management on tap. Nuxeo, Hyland’s content platform, adds commerce-enabled DAM (digital asset management), opening the way for personalized content and shoppable experiences in real time.

Piecing all that together under one brand name would take an enormous effort. Yet, Thoma Bravo is in a position to stitch together a unified customer engagement platform that bring together content, customer voice, video, AI, and live engagement all under one roof.

And with the recent PROS acquisition, Thoma Bravo adds pricing and sales optimization. That’s the kind of end-to-end ecosystem that could reshape how brands understand, engage, and sell to their customers.

In this episode of CX Today, host Kieran Devlin sits down with William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer at CallTower, and Joe Bigio, SVP of CCaaS, CX, and Conversational AI at Inoria, to explore how the strategic merger between the two companies is reshaping the CCaaS landscape.

With over 50 years of combined experience, Rubio and Bigio unpack the real-world challenges organisations face when deploying CCaaS and AI – and how their combined forces are making smarter, more integrated communications solutions a global reality.

With the acquisition of CX and AI specialist Inoria, CallTower is going beyond UCaaS – offering global, end-to-end CCaaS solutions designed for real business outcomes. In this insightful conversation, William Rubio and Joe Bigio reveal how their partnership is already delivering measurable value to IT and CX leaders overwhelmed by complexity, hype, and vendor sprawl.

Watch this video to learn:

• Why the Inoria acquisition fills a critical services and consulting gap in CallTower’s portfolio
• Where organisations continue to struggle with multichannel CX, CRM integration, and AI deployment
• How CallTower-Inoria helps decision-makers cut through the noise to make confident, strategic CCaaS choices
• What the next 12 months look like for the partnership — including a truly global, unified UC+CCaaS strategy

Next Steps:

Watch the full video to hear how CallTower and Inoria are guiding CX leaders toward clarity and success.

Visit CallTower’s website to access their conversational AI vendor matrix and explore global deployment options.

Reach out to the CallTower-Inoria team to discuss your organisation’s CCaaS and CX strategy.

The $60MN deal follows its $80MN acquisition of Amelia last year, as SoundHound grows its footprint across the contact center space.

Like Amelia, Interactions has a long history in the market, developing two decades’ worth of innovation and IP. It also offers a deep portfolio of enterprise integrations and large amounts of production data.

Additionally, given Interactions’ heritage, the acquisition offers an opportunity to expand SoundHound AI’s channel strategy, geographic presence, and support services.

Celebrating the roll up, Keyvan Mohajer, CEO & Co-Founder of SoundHound AI, said: “We’re rapidly moving towards a future of AI agents, where voice and conversational AI are absolutely integral to high-quality customer service. This has always been SoundHound’s vision, and we’re committed to working with the very best to get there.

Interactions is unquestionably a pioneer in the field, with a client roster with incredible breadth and depth. Bringing them on board makes SoundHound even stronger as we establish the company as a true leader for the new AI era.

As the AI era looms, Gartner has predicted that by year-end 2027, conversational AI applications will automate approximately 70 percent of customer support interactions.

That statistic underlines conversational AI as a growth market. Yet, it’s crowded. The likes of Microsoft, Google, AWS, Salesforce, and ServiceNow are all active in the space. Meanwhile, NiCE wrapped up a big acquisition of AI high-flyer Cognigy earlier this week.

SoundHound AI can compete, however, as evidenced by its Visionary placement in the latest Magic Quadrant report dissecting the conversational AI market.

The report underscores how it has leveraged its Amelia acquisition to develop a robust presence and expertise in the financial service contact center. Its broader portfolio of edge solutions can also enable differentiated AI experiences, like those that start on smart devices. That’s another key differentiator.

Its multimodal capabilities are also notable, with its recently launched Vision AI, enabling the development of AI that both sees and talks simultaneously. With this technology, SoundHound could help to set a new direction for the space.

However, SoundHound needed to expand its support capabilities and customer-service-specific knowledge to move from a visionary to a market leader. The Interactions roll-up will help the business do precisely that.

Excited to join the SoundHound adventure, Mike Iacobucci, CEO of Interactions, stated: “SoundHound has consistently set itself apart from the pack, with exceptional technology, a history of unparalleled innovation, and a deep understanding of what businesses need to uplevel their customer experience.

The union of our two companies will give the businesses we serve unrivalled choice, flexibility, and scale. And as the market shifts towards more agentic interactions, SoundHound can rise to meet that need.

As that market shifts, SoundHound’s moves to consolidate it are welcome, given the hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors selling AI to contact centers.

Those that stand out offer flexibility in how businesses build virtual agents, ensuring advanced and less-advanced functionality for various user types.

Additionally, they’ll go deep on trust and safety, sharing tools for simulation testing, inbound protection features (i.e., prompt injection detection), outbound monitoring, and more.

Leaders may also close the gap with broader contact center conversational intelligence tools and confidently communicate why their pricing model aligns with the individual customer’s needs.

Of course, a streak for innovation is important, and SoundHound will be thinking about how it can advance its AI agents to become self-reflective and change resolution flows based on brand goals. After all, as an Opus Research study recently isolated, that’s the future.

Nevertheless, the fundamentals are important, and, with this acquisition, SoundHound scoops up a vendor that does the fundamentals well.