The cloud communications vendor revealed that it had taken significant measures to strengthen its service governance. 

This strategy will allow the company to expand its range of security and compliance frameworks, establishing itself as a trustworthy provider for customer enterprises. 

The implementation, better known as ISO/IEC 27018, is a well-established privacy standard used by enterprises worldwide to protect customer data in public cloud environments. 

And with security concerns now at an all-time high, vendors will need to consider how best to protect their customers’ data. 

Darren Remblence, Chief Information Security Officer at 8×8, highlighted how customer demand for security around data management is a bare minimum requirement. 

“Customers should never have to trade speed or innovation for security,” he explained.

“ISO/IEC 27018 gives organizations even stronger guarantees that their data is handled responsibly and transparently.  

“It means they can move faster, meet compliance requirements with confidence, and trust that privacy is built into every part of their communications experience.”

This privacy standard is a code of practice that protects personal data from public cloud providers and shields any private or personally identifiable information (PII) from falling into the hands of third parties. 

It contains core regulations for enterprises that choose to adopt this standard, such as data processing with customer consent, supporting customer data handling, transparency with data protection approaches, and implement strong security measures, including restrictions and encryption methods. 

This standard also includes controls for handling data access, use, transparency, and dealing with incident response. 

This assures customers that 8×8 is meeting the higher standards required for durable data handling. 

What This Means For 8×8 Customers

This implementation into 8×8’s security management system enhances privacy and security for 8×8 Platform for CX, a unified CX communications platform that includes multiple capabilities for customer-facing teams and customer interaction management. 

Customer enterprises can enhance their vendor onboarding routines with faster security evaluation, reduced data exposure risk, and transparency with data handling. 

It also enables 8×8 customers to feel secure in where they place their data, with constant review and improvement from the vendor’s security and compliance team to ensure these standards are kept, including privacy practices, data handling, and cloud architecture. 

And with the customer playing a significant role in its activity, data processing can only happen under customer instruction and is kept informed consistently about its storage whereabouts and who can access it. 

This highlights 8×8’s commitment to its customers’ privacy and security, assuring that data handling is less likely to be compromised or misused. 

Growing 8×8’s Security Portfolio

The privacy standard also allows 8×8 the chance to build up its security and compliance portfolio to meet the growing demands from customer expectations. 

This portfolio has also included similar frameworks, including ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27017, SOC 2, and HIPAA mapping, which involve building and assuring security controls and management within a system, as well as several other regulatory standards to assure 8×8’s commitment to security requirements. 

This decision also comes during a time when customer expectations have risen significantly in the last year, after a wave of cyberattacks that profoundly impacted the customer experience sector, including CX giants such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and Google. 

This places risk on data handling processes such as migration and storage methods, forcing vendors like 8×8 to stay ahead of cyberattack activities. 

This feature is designed to further the Amazon Connect Email platform, utilizing built-in capabilities that enable agents to deliver quicker response times. 

The workflow tool is the latest addition to AWS’s email and contact center capabilities. 

Released in November 2024, Amazon Connect Email is an omnichannel support feature that enables customer service agents to respond to and divert customer emails all within the same system as voice and chat, allowing agents to handle customer queries in a single space. 

The AI-enhanced email workflow tool enhances Amazon Connect Email by allowing service agents to expedite email customer service through automation capabilities. 

By utilizing large language models (LLMs), these AI-powered workflows can allow Amazon Connect to analyze emails, detect customer intentions, assess potential risks or complexity from the interaction, and evaluate next steps. 

After analyzing the email, the tool will provide a summary of the customer’s profile and any previous activity with the enterprise, the determined query category, and a brief rundown of the email to help tailor the response accurately. 

This tool also grades the received email based on how confidently it understands the message with Amazon Bedrock API and Claude AI, factoring in clarity, tone, topics, risk assessment, and time sensitivity, while also considering whether the customer is part of any premium packages by retrieving the user’s profile. 

This profile retrieval will include the customer’s current credit score, service level, and contact history to help the tool further evaluate the email score. 

After this, the tool implements a two-step process, where the LLM produces binary outputs for each negative factor it recognizes, using an embedded mathematical function to ensure the calculations align with the scoring evaluation. 

Enterprises can also personalize the scoring framework to fit their needs and determine the number of emails routed to an agent. 

Once a score has been determined, the email will receive either a generated response (if the score is 80 or higher) or be routed to an agent’s inbox for a personalized response (if the score is lower than 80), whilst also providing an explanation detailing how the tool determined the score. 

To simplify future interactions, the tool can automatically generate a case detailing the email and information previously gathered, allowing agents to view conversation history from a single place where email handling has occurred with generative AI.  

Agents can also personalize AI-generated responses to keep human intelligence in the loop and can add AI-powered workflows to Amazon Connect Email via Amazon Bedrock. 

What This Tool Means For Customer Experience 

The Amazon Connect AI-enhanced email workflows allow enterprises to bridge the gap between customer demand and agent availability through automating repetitive email tasks and filtering complex queries to agents, providing customers with human responses and agents with enhanced productivity where needed. 

These AI-powered workflows outrun traditional automation systems by understanding context clues behind interactions, including emotion and characteristic human responses by analyzing a customer’s profile. 

This avoids agents from partaking in repetitive research tasks and instead solving complex, human-based problems to deliver solutions that an LLM cannot solve, resulting in higher levels of meaningful work for the agent. 

This also resolves issues with email backlogs, customer survey responses, and agent exhaustion, driving improvements in customer service. 

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 

This comes after its annual report revealed that AI implementation had increased by 282% since 2024. 

These tools enable enterprises to deploy AI agents without worrying about the reliability and safety of their performance within a system. 

Salesforce’s observability tools provide AI agents with the capabilities to analyze performance, optimize interactions, and monetize stability. 

Agent Analytics

This capability allows enterprises to view how well an AI agent is operating through monitoring its movements, how it’s improving/declining, and where these pain points are coming from. 

This can be turned into performance data, trends, and insights to understand how efficiently these agents are performing and take actionable steps to improve their usage. 

This can also be done across all implemented agents, allowing enterprises to view their agents’ overall effectiveness on customer interaction and support their continuous improvement. 

Agent Optimization

As a key observable capability, Optimization offers customer enterprises full transparency with each agent interaction. 

Customers can uncover how agents make decisions and what led them to make those choices, highlighting performance gaps and session flows to diagnose any issues and deduce the steps needed to improve its performance. 

This can include prompt, rule, or data source adjustments to solve misinterpreted information, inconsistent results or agent hesitation. 

Salesforce provides access to end-to-end visibility for customers to view each agent’s response and action, even with larger, complicated action chains. 

For less varied issues, similar requests can be accumulated to uncover larger problems in patterns or trends. 

Customers can also identify an agent’s configuration issues to pinpoint how an agent’s behaviour is affecting its operation and uncover which areas need to be retrained or personalized further for improved performance. 

Agent Health Monitoring 

This capability can monitor an AI agent’s reliability and safety level to ensure that it is running as expected. 

It provides almost real-time visibility and alerts when the agent is performing unpredictably, notifying the company before any significant damage takes hold. 

It measures an agent’s ability to handle requests, time taken to respond, and tracks incidents such as failures, breaks in activity, or invalid responses. 

By leveraging the capability, teams can speedily detect and resolve issues to minimize agent downtime and continue productivity. 

This tool is formed by two of Agentforce’s components, acting as the foundation for the observability tool by supplying the data and governance structure needed to monitor agents: 

• Session Tracing Data Model: By logging every agent interaction, the data model can store all its data in Data 360 and provide the observability tool the means to generate reliable analytics, error identifiers, and support optimization for unified visibility.
• MuleSoft Agent Fabric: This enables enterprises to control, register, and review agents to justify how they function and interact. 

AI Implementation Report 

In a report published in November, Salesforce announced that AI implementations had increased to 282% since last year. 

This data reveals that companies are now at a far better position to deploy pilot projects at scale rather than risk the threat of experimentation. 

Despite this, data governance, security, and trust remain high priorities, requiring risk management across workflows. 

This means that more companies are going to require higher visibility and control across large-scale AI deployments, which is where Salesforce’s observability tools come in. 

By supporting enterprises with agent interactions, Salesforce’s observability tools can decrease operational risk by allowing teams to keep up to date with agent visibility and analytics to keep agent deployments stable. 

Reddit, a customer of Salesforce, highlighted how Salesforce has allowed the customer enterprise to scale agents securely through consistent visibility. 

John Thompson, VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Reddit, stated: “By observing every Agentforce interaction, we can understand exactly how our AI navigates advertisers through even the most complex tools.  

“This insight helps us understand not just whether issues are resolved, but how decisions are made along the way. 

“Observability gives us the confidence to scale these agents, continuously monitor performance, and make improvements as we learn from their interactions.”

Will Salesforce’s Informatica Acquisition Make Agentforce Unstoppable?

Salesforce has announced the acquisition of Informatica.

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.”

“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… (Read more).

Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Major Platforms, Payments, and Black Friday Plans

It’s becoming a familiar story: A technical glitch at Cloudflare, one of the biggest internet infrastructure providers, knocked a number of websites and services offline for a few hours on November 18, disrupting customer access and merchant payments.

X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Spotify and payment giant Square were among those caught up in the fallout.

The trouble began just before 11:48 GMT, when Cloudflare posted that it was dealing with an “internal service degradation” causing intermittent outages across its service network. Users saw error pages, stalled logins, broken APIs, and sites claiming connections were blocked. There were a few conflicting signals about the restoration progress, as at one stage the company reported that services were beginning to recover, but then around 15 minutes later reverted to “continuing to investigate this issue.”

By 13:04 GMT, Cloudflare admitted that one of its fixes involved disabling WARP access in London entirely, temporarily cutting off users from its WARP performance-boosting and VPN service that helps secure and accelerate internet connections:

“During our attempts to remediate, we have disabled WARP access in London. Users in London trying to access the Internet via WARP will see a failure to connect.”

Cloudflare announced a fix five minutes later, but continued to receive “reports of intermittent errors” until close to 17:00 GMT… (Read more).

Five9 Targets CX Inefficiencies with New Genius AI Upgrades

Five9 has introduced a fresh wave of Genius AI updates designed to push the company’s “Agentic CX” vision further into the contact center core.

Announced at the company’s CX Summit in Nashville, the new capabilities span routing, quality management, analytics, and digital engagement, tying them more closely together to help organizations extract greater value from AI at scale.

As many enterprises attempt to take AI from pilot projects into day-to-day operations, fragmentation continues to slow progress.

Disconnected data, inconsistent reporting, and standalone AI experiments often make it difficult to achieve the continuous improvement leaders expect.

Five9’s latest releases aim to combat these challenges by treating AI not as an add-on but as the connective layer running across the environment.

Five9 Chief Product Officer Ajay Awatramani framed the shift as a more fundamental rethinking of how AI should function inside the contact center:

“Our Agentic CX vision is about creating systems that don’t just respond but also help teams better understand and anticipate customer needs.”

So, let’s take a closer look at Five9’s newest features… (Read more).

UJET Acquires Spiral to Address Customer Data Analysis Roadblocks

UJET has announced its acquisition of Spiral to bolster its AI capabilities.

The AI startup will allow UJET to continue its AI roadmap for enhanced customer service solutions.

This partnership will also address customer data analysis issues for UJET’s enterprise customers.

This acquisition is set to further UJET’s AI roadmap vision by bolstering the company’s AI capabilities and addressing customer experience concerns.

By highlighting these issues of visibility between customer and leader, organizations will be able to improve their customer issues before they reach escalation.

In fact, UJET has reported that organizations that are unaware of these individual customer problems are losing approximately $5MN-$30MN in customer churn revenue.

This can be linked to ignored or forgotten negative customer experience complaints, with organizations reportedly gathering only five percent of reported customer issues.

According to UJET CEO, Vasili Triant, customer churn remains a blind spot for many enterprises, arguing that customer interaction analysis is not done effectively… (Read more).

Why This Year Is Different

Forget everything you know about chatbots and IVRs. Agentic AI represents autonomous agents that reason, make decisions, and take action independently—while seamlessly collaborating with human agents. The proof? Companies like Zepz are deflecting 30% of contacts while processing $16 billion in transactions. TUI Group migrated 10,000 agents across 12 European markets and cut operating costs by 10%. UC San Diego Health integrated Epic EHR for self-service patient authentication. These are full production deployments, and they are already delivering measurable ROI.

The Stakes: Early adopters are gaining significant competitive advantages. By the time you read about their success in case studies, they’ll be two years ahead. Re:Invent 2025 is your chance to close that gap.

Your Three-Track Amazon Connect Focused Strategy

Here are our recommended sessions across the five-day event, one things for sure, you need a plan. Choose your track:

Track 1 – Breakout Sessions led by Amazon Connect Customers and AWS Experts

Other sessions:

• BIZ211 | So Energy streamlines customer service with AI-powered automation
• BIZ212 | Anthology boosts contact center efficiency with AI
• BIZ213 | Petco unlocks agentic AI-powered customer service with Amazon Connect
• BIZ214 | Traeger accelerates contact center agent productivity with agentic AI
• BIZ215 | Cochlear enhances contact center observability with Amazon Connect
• BIZ216 | Redefining service excellence: Canada Life’s AI-powered contact center
• BIZ217 | Global tourism brand transforms customer service with Amazon Connect
• BIZ218 | UC San Diego Health modernizes patient engagement with Amazon Connect
• BIZ219 | Personalize Customer Experiences at scale with AI-powered Amazon Connect
• BIZ220 | Transforming contact centers in financial services with Amazon Connect

Outcome: Business case validation, ROI metrics, peer testimonials, strategic roadmap.

Track 2 – Business applications technical sessions Led by Amazon Connect Experts

Must-attend sessions include:

• BIZ302 | Create advanced self-service experiences with Amazon Connect
• BIZ308 | Modernize your contact center agent workspace with Amazon Connect
• BIZ310 | Optimize contact center staffing using AI-powered assistants
• BIZ311 | Optimize customer conversations in your IVR with Amazon Connect
• BIZ316 | Streamline Amazon Connect management with agentic AI-powered controls
• BIZ318 | Transform data into insights with AI-powered Amazon Connect
• BIZ320 | Unlock intelligent generative AI-powered email with Amazon Connect

Outcome: Production-ready skills, architectural patterns, implementation blueprints.

Track 3 – CX Leaders Take Note: Three Keynotes You Cannot Miss

Your Day-by-Day Navigation Plan

Monday

Arrive early, get your badge, attend foundational sessions.

PQ sessions:

• Biz 221 | Agentic AI advancements in customer experience with Amazon Connect 10:00-11:00am, Las Vegas | Wynn | Latour 2
• INV203 | Innovation Talk | The agent-enabled workplace: Transforming businesses 12:00pm-1:00pm Venetian | Level 5 | Palazzo Ballroom B

Other sessions:

• BIZ215 | Breakout session | Cochlear enhances contact center observability with Amazon Connect 11:30 AM-12:30 PM, Las Vegas | Wynn | [Silent Session] Lafite 7 (Pink Theater)
• BIZ211 | Breakout session | So Energy streamlines customer service with AI-powered automation 1:00pm-2:00pm Las Vegas | MGM | Grand 123
• BIZ214 | Breakout session | Traeger accelerates contact center agent productivity with agentic AI 2:30-3:30, Las Vegas | Venetian | Lido 3106

Hit the Welcome Reception (4:00-7:00 PM) to orient yourself and network.

Tuesday

Matt Garman’s keynote at 8:00 AM-10:30AM sets the agenda.

• BIZ213 | Breakout session | Petco unlocks agentic AI-powered customer service with Amazon Connect 1:00-2:00pm, Las Vegas | Venetian | Lido 3106
• BIZ219 | Breakout session | Personalize customer experiences at scale with AI-powered Amazon Connect 4:00-5:00pm Las Vegas | Wynn | [Silent Session] Lafit 7 (Turquoise Theater)

Connect Customer Event 6:00pm-8:00pm at the Cromwell. Customers are encouraged to attend!

Attend post-keynote sessions on new announcements. Explore the Expo (10:00 AM-6:00 PM). Evening networking receptions (6:00-8:00 PM).

Wednesday (Busiest Day)

Agentic AI keynote (8:30 AM), hands-on workshops midday, Partnership keynote (3:00 PM), Expo Happy Hour (4:30 PM), networking receptions (6:00 PM).

• Swami Sivasubramanian Keynote 8:30am-10:30am Venetian
• BIZ220 | Breakout session | Transforming contact centers in financial services with Amazon Connect 10:00-11:00am Las Vegas | MGM | Grand 123
• BIZ217 | Breakout session | Global tourism brand transforms customer service with Amazon Connect 12:00pm-1:00 Las Vegas | MGM | Grand 119
• BIZ212 | Breakout session | Anthology boosts contact center efficiency with AI 4:30pm-5:30pm, Las Vegas | Wynn | [Silent Session] Lafite 7 (Orange Theater)

Thursday

Infrastructure keynote (9:00 AM), choose between ACQUIRED event or sessions (11:00 AM), Werner Vogels closing keynote (3:30 PM), re:Play party (7:30 PM).

• BIZ216 | Breakout session | Redefining service excellence: Canada Life’s AI-powered contact center 12:30-1:30pm Las Vegas | Wynn | Latour 2
• BIZ218 | Breakout session | UC San Diego Health modernizes patient engagement with Amazon Connect 3:30pm-4:30pm Las Vegas | Wynn | [Silent Session] Lafite 7 (Pink Theater)

Friday

Final sessions wrap at 12:30 PM. Plan departures accordingly.

Insider Tips for Maximum ROI

1. Book Repeat Sessions Strategically Popular workshops like BIZ302 (self-service AI) and BIZ312 (AI agents) have repeat offerings marked “-R” or “-R1”. If your first choice is full, grab the repeat. Some sessions, like BIZ221 and BIZ219 will be Simulcast into a content hub. If you can’t get into a room, check out a content hub!
2. Leverage the Guided Expo Tours AWS experts lead 60-minute tours at specific times (Tuesday-Thursday at 11 AM and 3 PM). First-come, first-served but invaluable for navigating 400+ sponsors.
3. Download Session Content Early Presentations and code samples often appear in the mobile app during or immediately after sessions. Download before WiFi gets congested.
4. Use Multi-Venue Travel Time Wisely Allow 20-30 minutes between The Venetian, Caesars Forum, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, and Wynn. Use this time for informal networking or catching up on notes.
5. Attend Chalk Talks for Peer Learning Unlike lectures, chalk talks are interactive discussions where you can ask specific questions and whiteboard solutions with AWS experts and peers.
6. Visit the Certification Lounge Open Monday-Thursday (7:30 AM-5:00 PM) at The Venetian. Get certified, verify existing certifications, or access study materials. Sponsored by Accenture.
7. Balance Keynotes with Hands-On Time Don’t just collect slide decks. Workshops provide production-ready skills you can implement within 30 days of returning.

What to Bring

• Laptop (essential for workshops)
• Comfortable shoes (10,000+ steps daily)
• Business cards (old school, still effective)
• External battery (charging stations get crowded)
• Light jacket (venues vary in temperature)

The Bottom Line

AWS re:Invent 2025 isn’t just announcing the future of customer experience—it’s demonstrating it with production deployments, real ROI metrics, and hands-on workshops that give you the skills to implement immediately.

The companies presenting their success stories aren’t waiting for AI to mature. They’re already deflecting 30% of contacts, reducing costs by 10%, and serving customers across 130+ countries with AI agents that reason, decide, and act autonomously.

Your competition is in those sessions. The question is: will you be there too?

At the Call and Contact Centre Expo 2025, the primary focus of many sessions was centered around AI, trends, and how to join the never-ending CX competition.

Fola Olafare, Senior Contact Center Delivery Manager at Transport for London, highlighted TFL’s approach to differentiate from the mainstream AI-focused contact space toward a more customer-centric one.

The event, ‘Mind The Gap: How TFL’s CX Strategy is Transforming Customer Experience’, emphasized how organizations can still function in the modern day meaningfully without turning straight to AI for results.

Olafare highlighted what he sees as the current CX trend issue:

“You’ll just see AI laced everywhere – it’s getting to the point of bringing AI for the sake of bringing AI.”

Less AI, More Human

However, with customer loyalty being a valuable currency in the CX space, the customer-centric trend has allowed TFL to thrive, having simplified their customer service approach drastically in the last decade.

By focusing less on AI integration, customer service can continue the traditional approach to drive meaningful human experiences to each individual customer.

He highlighted TFL’s current “Core ethos about listening to our customers and demonstrating that we care.”

Previously, TFL saw frequent barriers between company and customer.

“From a customer point of view it wasn’t great, we had 15 different phone numbers and 35 different emails.

“Maybe 1o, 12 years ago we didn’t have that influence.”

Today, customer’s transportation experiences are leaps and bounds ahead.

He said, “From a contact center point of view, we’ve come a long way representationally,”

“We have a really nuanced support for our visitors – allowing us to provide a dedicated care service for all our customers,

“Telephone is a great starting ground for us – now we have one phone number for customers.”

Customer’s can go to customer support to receive advice on travel planning, how to handle complaints, and discuss transportation issues within their area.

This has also included showing support for customers after negative or traumatizing transportation experiences.

“The aftercare support to the victims of life changing incidents that happen on our networks – providing them that support for a good duration.”

This approach has shown in its results, with 2024 seeing 30 million daily journeys, 9,000 buses, and over 1,400 e bikes around the city, whilst also managing 25% of London’s roads, improving overall transportation for residents and visitors.

In fact, this has prompted the London mayor to set a goal to see more people using public transport, hoping that “by 2041, 80% of customer journeys are being taken by customer transport.”

Automation is Still Key

Despite the focus on human experiences, automation continues to play a role in TFL’s customer experience, utilizing that tool through analyzing real customer experiences to provide its customer’s with a system they actually need.

He said, “We do some much from an automation point of view – we have a lot of strong algorithms working in the background to work out different anomalies.

“We’ve now ensured that intention is available for customers from a journey point of view by enhancing them with our alternative journey messages.” 

And whilst TFL does implement automation in the organization, it recognizes that setbacks will occur with this tool.

“For every automated journey we have, we acknowledge it may not work as well.”

However, in return, “You can have really great conversations for resolving that issue in a really caring way.”

Despite this approach, TFL are conscious about keeping up with customer demands and circumstances.

“We also want to make sure we’re adapting to customer circumstances, to have a really good strong set of customer values – we want to be open and transparent about what we’re doing.

“From a TFL point of view, what excited me is there is so much opportunity to make a lot of people’s lives better in an integrated way.”

At London’s annual Call and Contact Centre Expo, the telecommunications company revealed how its customer-centric approach to limit consumer frustration has improved its overall loyalty.  

This solution is aligned with Vodafone’s strategy to transform customer experience. 

Customer experience results have been improved since the strategy launch in July 2025, with 9 out of 15 of its markets leading with this new strategy, resulting in a six percent reduction in company detraction after the first few months. 

When first researching customer experience strategies, Vodafone discovered that seamless interactions were a high priority for customers, with frequent causes of company detraction relating to negative customer experiences. 

These incidences included: holding for additional agents, transferring calls, repeated conversations, and a company’s failure to keep promises. 

In fact, they had discovered that customers who had experienced at least one bad experience from customer service were 4 times more likely to abandon the company. 

Melda Sofuoglu, Global Senior CX and Service Excellence Senior Manager at Vodafone, explained how the customer expectations have grown since the rise of AI in the CX space:

“We are operating in a rapidly changing industry – expectations have grown to 24/7 service.” 

However, research revealed that as long as customer interactions remained seamless, then customers would be more likely to remain with a company that avoided friction. 

And when companies failed to deliver on results, 46% of customers would research Google to find answers to their issues, driving enterprise intensity to produce better results as customers discover what sets the bar in the CX space. 

Just Ask Once

Vodafone has since researched some of the leading customer services spaces online, including Google and Octopus, to take elements and utilize the most productive strategy for resolving customer complaints. 

The strategy, known as ‘Just Ask Once’, began in 2024 to target pain points in the company’s Albania market, with the aim of resolving a customer issue after just one interaction. 

This strategy utilized generative AI omnichannel service to avoid customers re-explaining issues and call waiting times to resolve queries, whilst also keeping customers in the loop if issues cannot be solved immediately to avoid confusion or miscommunication via text. 

This is also done by deploying Vodafone’s suite of capabilities, such as Super-TOBi, a generative AI assistant that handles complex conversations and queries in comparison to the standatd TOBi chat bot. 

This strategy, however, is not designed to elminate human agents from the mix, but rather to place them at the center of this strategy with chat bots as a second option during traffic spikes, with many of these queries being completed through human agents rather than bots to avoid frustration. 

These bots simply allow agents to complete Vodafone’s vision for setting the new standard for customer experience centered around meaningful interactions and added loyalty, even when mistakes occur. 

This has involved significant investments in human agent training to keep them adapted and involved in the consistently changing state of customer experience, rather than eliminating their positions for AI-only service. 

However, Vodafone has experienced setbacks in this strategy amongst social media responses. 

Aimie Jago, Global Senior CX and Service Excellence Senior Manager at Vodafone, explained how the company are managing the influx from social media:

“In some markets we see some backlash on social media – its more about previous customer experience through chat bots.” 

Resolving past customer interactions remains challenging for Vodafone, arguing that to tackle this previous frustration into returned loyalty they need to experience this new transformation. 

This has affected the company’s ROI after significant investments; however, they are expecting to receive this once business case justification takes place. 

Furthermore, Vodafone’s continues to remain vulnerable, as this strategy depends primarily on technology, investment, and strong sponsorship, due to its small space within the CX space.  

Today, this strategy is being implemented by Vodafone’s global markets, aiming to champion the voice of the customer by creating a strong customer community, available to customers through the Vodafone app. 

At Microsoft Ignite 2025, the tech giant announced its plans to transform how it implements AI and how to improve general productivity. 

Microsoft has offered various AI agents for specific systems and companies for personalized success. 

Microsoft Copilot 365 

Within Office 365, Copilot acts as an assistant to support teams in preparing and managing their communications smoothly, working separately across each application to reduce overall preparation times. 

In Outlook, Copilot can organize a user’s inbox from high volumes of emails to summarized and highlighted information that needs immediate attention, as well as gather any information relevant to the user’s current task for quick response times and correct information gathered. 

In Word, customers can utilize Copilot’s assistance with drafting and refining content, providing summarized notes of material, and lengthening notes into documents, allowing teams to prepare for meetings and reports with limited information. 

In PowerPoint, users can create highly efficient presentations through Copilot’s capabilities to develop slides, draft content, and reposition information to fit their audience’s needs, allowing for clearer presentations with effective outcomes. 

In Excel, Copilot can break down data information through summaries and identify common trends within the spreadsheet, allowing for quick turnarounds in analysis explanations for other customers or employees. 

Copilot Studio

Within Copilot studio, teams can design personalized agents to fit their needs to work inside Microsoft 365. 

This tool can be used support connections between Microsoft’s own content as well as external systems through APIs, meaning customers can utilize the agent outside of Microsoft’s products for quicker results. 

It offers natural language when advising users on tasks, queries, or support with internal workflows and repeatable tasks, minimizing the need for human agent automation. 

For additional security, Copilot studio allows users to manage their custom agents to reassign roles to fit company policies, permissions, and security maintenance, obtaining an Entra Agent ID to verify an agent to operate under secure governance. 

Copilot Mode with Edge 

Copilot Mode can now be used on Microsoft Edge to analyze open tabs to summarize content and research within a browser. 

This reduces time spent tab switching and helps users stay on task by feeding them the relevant information. 

Information can be obtained from articles, texts, and videos, summarizing key points and explanations by interpreting knowledge from different sources at the same time, which can be useful for reviewing widespread customer experiences of products or services. 

Copilot Mode is only entitled to utilize information the user gives it access to, allowing the tool to work within company guidelines and provides the user with the relevant information it receives. 

Agent 365 – provides security and governance for copilot (link back to previous article) (100) 

Working as Copilot’s governance layer, Agent 365 provides organizations with the ability to control AI agents and how they interact within the business. 

Agent 365 utilizes Entra ID to identify each agent within an ecosystem and aligns it with company policies, allowing organizations to set limits and permissions when needed to stop agents from working outside company expectations. 

These tools also allow companies to track AI activity to apply compliance rules to avoid data loss on behalf of the agent, allowing organizations to maintain control while the AI agents continue to complete their tasks.  

Copilot Business 

Working as a slightly different version of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Business is designed to support small to mid-sized organizations using AI tools. 

Similarly to the 365 Copilot tool, this feature allows businesses to summarize their material, advise on email management, and create presentations using the provided Microsoft 365 apps to reduce time spent on administrative tasks. 

This tool, however, does not require a complex setup as the needs required for SMB don’t necessarily demand the amount of compliance and data needs to function. 

Copilot Business can but used to work at a basic level, whilst continuing to provide analysis and reports of data and communications to increase productivity within smaller businesses. 

Microsoft Ignite 2025 

Microsoft Ignite will run from Tuesday 18th November to Friday 21st November in San Francisco. 

The company has emphasized its commitment to agentic AI and is set to showcase this message throughout the conference, as well as further touch on issues such as Security and Governance, and Identity and Access. 

Announced at the company’s CX Summit in Nashville, the new capabilities span routing, quality management, analytics, and digital engagement, tying them more closely together to help organizations extract greater value from AI at scale.

As many enterprises attempt to take AI from pilot projects into day-to-day operations, fragmentation continues to slow progress.

Disconnected data, inconsistent reporting, and standalone AI experiments often make it difficult to achieve the continuous improvement leaders expect.

Five9’s latest releases aim to combat these challenges by treating AI not as an add-on but as the connective layer running across the environment.

Five9 Chief Product Officer Ajay Awatramani framed the shift as a more fundamental rethinking of how AI should function inside the contact center:

“Our Agentic CX vision is about creating systems that don’t just respond but also help teams better understand and anticipate customer needs.”

“With these innovations, AI moves from the periphery to the core of the contact center – linking data, people, and processes into a system more closely embedded with contact center operations in ways intended to support continuous learning, adaptation, and more efficient and meaningful customer experiences.”

So, let’s take a closer look at Five9’s newest features.

Four New Innovations in the Genius AI Suite

Agentic Quality Management (AQM)

Five9’s new quality management approach is designed to evaluate up to 100% of customer interactions.

The model focuses on generating insights that can inform routing decisions, coaching programs, and ongoing performance improvement.

Rather than operating as a separate analysis tool, AQM feeds data directly into other parts of the Genius AI ecosystem.

Genius Routing

This updated routing engine uses defined customer attributes, agent skills, and proficiency levels to determine the best match for each interaction

Because it can draw on real-time inputs from AI performance systems and self-service applications, it becomes easier for organizations to deliver faster resolutions and more personalized experiences.

OneVUE Analytics

OneVUE builds on Aceyus VUE technology but packages it in a more approachable, self-service analytics experience. Users can assemble custom dashboards with flexible metrics that cover both traditional CCaaS operations and multi-vendor environments.

It is built with AI-ready reporting in mind, giving teams a clearer view of the KPIs shaping customer interactions.

Adaptive Digital Engagement

The digital engagement update introduces a no-code Dynamic Web Messenger Configurator, allowing teams to launch or adjust webchat experiences instantly.

Five9 also revealed a new partnership with Meta, enabling native WhatsApp connectivity with template support, broadcasts, and AI Agents. The broader goal is to give organizations modular digital channels that plug easily into Five9’s AI layer.

Early Customer Feedback

Northwestern Mutual is among the customers already experimenting with the new capabilities.

Eric Schanno, the company’s Principal Solutions Engineer, explained how leveraging Five9 had allowed Northwestern Mutual to “move faster from insight to action.”

“We are very excited about the potential of Five9 AQM to help us elevate coaching across 100% of interactions. And OneVUE gives us a single source of truth for the metrics that matter.

“The combination is raising the bar on performance and helps deliver more consistent, high-quality experiences for our customers.”

A Step Toward Fully Agentic CX

Five9’s message seems to be that the next stage of CX transformation isn’t just about adopting AI tools, but weaving AI into the operational fabric of the contact center.

These Genius AI enhancements move the platform further in that direction, giving organizations a more unified foundation for delivering adaptive, insight-driven customer experiences.

More News from Five9

Afiniti has teamed up with Five9 to bring its AI Pairing technology into the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center, signalling a step forward for more sophisticated, behind-the-scenes AI in CX.

Rather than placing AI directly in front of customers, Afiniti analyses behavioural and contextual signals in the background to match each caller with the agent most likely to deliver a successful outcome. In effect, it acts as a matchmaking engine for the contact center.

IDC’s new MarketScape points to rapid momentum in Europe’s CCaaS sector, forecasting growth from $1.5BN in 2024 to $3.7BN by 2029 – a 20 percent CAGR.

Five9 is highlighted as a market leader, backed by its AI-driven platform, solid compliance credentials, and strategy tailored to European requirements.