New channels, new AI tools, new cloud platforms, each promising a faster route to smarter service.  

Yet when you look behind the success stories, you’ll find that most transformation journeys don’t start with a giant leap, but with a well-considered step.  

This more measured approach is beginning to gain traction across the enterprise landscape.   

Rather than ripping out legacy systems all at once, many CX leaders are taking a phased approach to modernization: layering AI, analytics, and cloud capabilities on top of proven infrastructure.  

The goal isn’t simply to “get to cloud,” it’s to evolve in a way that protects what already works while unlocking what’s next.  

“It’s not always realistic to move everything you’ve built over many years,” says Miguel Angel Marcos, Vice President of Operations at Enghouse Interactive.  

“Helping organizations move at their own pace – maybe migrating some agents or campaigns first – makes the whole process smoother and less disruptive.” 

That mindset is driving what Marcos calls flexible modernization, a model that allows enterprises to innovate without compromising operations, compliance, or financial stability.  

From Analytics to Agility  

Before the journey to modernization even begins, it’s essential to make sure that you have the necessary tools and equipment to complete said journey.   

You can’t just run out the door, Bilbo Baggins style, without walking shoes, a map, and plenty of water.   

The enterprise equivalent of this is data and analytics.   

Indeed, Marcos recalls one large contact center that started its transformation not by migrating infrastructure, but by introducing AI-driven analytics to its existing on-premises setup.  

“They had hundreds of agents,” he explains. “Supervisors were listening manually to hours of recordings to understand performance. AI gave them a consolidated view of every interaction, not just a few.”  

That change, he says, brought immediate value, as it allowed them to identify areas that needed improvement and act fast.  

“It’s an easy first step toward modernization – and it delivers quick wins without having to move the entire platform,” Marcos says.   

For some organizations, those early AI integrations – including quality management, speech analytics, and sentiment tracking – act as a bridge between the old world and the new.  

Once the data foundation is in place, they can decide which workloads make sense to run in the cloud and which to keep in-house.  

Cloud, But on Your Terms  

Like many organizations, Enghouse Interactive’s customers take a variety of routes 

Some organizations move directly to CCaaS solutions, such as the company’s CxEngage platform, which offers the pay-as-you-go flexibility of OPEX models.  

Others keep their core systems on-premises while spinning up cloud-based campaigns that demand speed and scalability.  

“We see customers who want to launch temporary or seasonal projects quickly,” Marcos explains.  

“Instead of waiting months to deploy on-prem, they run that campaign in the cloud where agents can switch between environments with no issues.”

This hybrid approach enables enterprises to balance CAPEX and OPEX models and mitigate the “big bang” risk that often derails large-scale migrations.  

It also helps teams adapt operationally, allowing them to retrain supervisors, fine-tune integrations, and adjust processes at a manageable pace, as Marcos details:  

“When companies move more deliberately, they don’t break their workflows. They can adapt integrations, protect previous investments, and keep business running while they modernize.”  

The Quiet Advantage of Going Slow  

In a market obsessed with velocity, taking time can actually be a competitive advantage.  

If only there were a famed fable to better illustrate this point.   

Marcos points out that slowing the pace of change – perhaps to the speed of say a tortoise – often protects both financial and human capital.  

“You might have systems still under support, or contracts that run another year,” he says.  

“Why waste that investment? Move when it makes sense, not just when a vendor says you should.” 

He also notes that gradual change helps organizations avoid the fatigue that comes with sweeping IT overhauls.  

“Big transitions affect not only IT, but operations. Giving teams the time they need to adapt means better adoption and fewer surprises.”  

A Future Defined by Flexibility  

Looking ahead, Marcos believes that flexibility – in deployment, in finance, and in technology – will remain the defining characteristic of successful CX organizations.  

He observes that political and regulatory factors are shaping how companies approach cloud, pointing to the fact that in some European markets, governments are more cautious about moving everything to public clouds due to data sovereignty concerns.  

“That’s why it’s important to offer options,” he argues.   

At the same time, the democratization of AI is reshaping who can compete on experience.  

“A few years ago, advanced analytics were only for big call centers with large budgets,” Marcos says.  

“Now, even operations with five or ten agents are asking for AI. It’s becoming a must-have.”  

The combination of scalable cloud technology and more modular architectures also gives decision-makers unprecedented freedom.  

Whereas previously, once a company invested in a solution, it was tied to it for years, today, it’s much easier to switch if something isn’t delivering.

This shift has placed the power firmly back in the hands of operations leaders.  

Modernization That Fits the Business  

Ultimately, modernizing a contact center isn’t about chasing the latest platform; it’s about creating a technology path that fits your business reality.  

Whether that means starting with AI analytics, moving certain functions to the cloud, or running hybrid environments indefinitely, the key is to build momentum without losing control.  

As Marcos puts it:  

“Every customer is different. Our job is to adjust to what they’re asking for and what they need – to help them evolve at their own pace.”

Because in CX, progress isn’t defined by how fast you move, but by how well every step brings you closer to the customer.  

You can discover more about Enghouse Interactive’s approach to modernization by checking out this article. 

You can also view the company’s full suite of solutions and services by visiting the website today.   

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).

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.

Unsurprisingly, despite the industry hype, modernization has proved to be far trickier than many anticipated.  

The contact center, in particular, has become a battleground of cloud-first messaging, aggressive vendor roadmaps, and ambitious AI promises.  

However, while the pandemic accelerated adoption and innovation, it also underscored a harsh reality: modernization doesn’t have to mean moving at someone else’s pace.  

As Miguel Angel Marcos, VP of Operations at Enghouse Interactive, puts it:  

“During the pandemic, organizations learned very quickly that agility was critical. But perhaps more slowly, they are learning that control and compliance are non-negotiable.”  

That sentiment reflects a growing reality in the enterprise CX space. While many organizations rushed to the cloud over the last few years, the dust is now settling, and so too is a more measured, pragmatic approach.  

According to Marcos, recent research shows that after the initial surge of migration, nearly 50% of organizations remain cautious about moving fully to the cloud:  

“The truth is that many businesses want to modernize and improve customer experience, but not all of them want to do it at the same pace or in the same way.”

The Pace of Change and the Power of Choice  

It’s nice to have choices.   

You wouldn’t want to turn up at a restaurant and find there’s only one thing on the menu. Equally, it wouldn’t be much fun if you rocked up to your local cinema only to discover that they’re showing the same film all day, every day.   

The same thing is true for enterprises. Legacy investments, regulatory requirements, and internal workflows often mean a one-size-fits-all approach simply isn’t viable.  

Instead, they need a wider array of deployment choices from CX vendors so they can choose their own path and control their own journey to modernization rather than being stampeded. 

Marcos explains that for some customers, “going fully CCaaS is completely fine, we offer that.” Others, however, “can’t or don’t want to move everything to the cloud.  

“For them, modernization can still happen on-premises, with full AI and CX functionality.”  

He highlights that hybrid models are increasingly becoming the bridge between traditional infrastructure and the cloud, with more and more customers layering in AI capabilities in the cloud, while keeping their core systems on-premises.  

“It’s the best of both worlds; enabling innovation without disrupting business continuity,” he explains.   

For example, a government contact center may retain on-premises systems for data sovereignty reasons but integrate AI-driven quality management and analytics from the cloud.  

Others are running specific campaigns or BPO operations on cloud platforms while maintaining in-house control over core technologies.  

Marcos stresses:  

“The important thing is that customers can modernize at their own pace, in their own way, without compromise.”

Flexibility First  

The principle of flexibility and “modernizing on your terms” is at the heart of Enghouse Interactive’s approach.  

Marcos is clear that the company’s technology strategy is built around interoperability, not rigid migration paths.  

“Choosing shouldn’t mean losing,” he says. “Framing everything as ‘cloud or nothing’ oversimplifies the message and forces compromises.  

Whether you’re on-premises, private cloud, hybrid, or full CCaaS, you can get the same robust CX capabilities: AI, analytics, omnichannel, and so on.”  

Enghouse Interactive’s mindset aligns with a broader industry shift.  

Enterprises are increasingly wary of vendor lock-in and are prioritizing open architectures that let them evolve as their business needs change.  

The future, Marcos suggests, lies in giving organizations the freedom to adapt, not forcing them into a predefined roadmap.  

Modernization That Starts Where You Are  

So, what practical steps can enterprises take to begin this kind of modernization journey?  

For Marcos, it starts with incremental innovation rather than wholesale change.  

With AI available across cloud, hybrid, and/or on-premises environments, Marcos suggests that  many companies could begin by leveraging their existing on-premises setup to start experimenting with AI integrations.  

In doing so, they will gain a sense of what the tech can and can’t deliver for them, without having to make a significant decision that could be difficult to reverse.  

He points to Enghouse Interactive’s AI-driven quality management tools as an example of “hugely practical” modernization.  

These solutions offer voice-of-the-customer analytics and agent interaction insights, which are designed to help contact center leaders better understand service quality and customer sentiment.  

“That’s the kind of innovation that drives value right away,” Marcos says. “It helps you improve customer experience today, without committing to a full-scale migration.”  

Beyond Cloud Hype  

While the market narrative often positions cloud as the only path forward, Marcos cautions that this can create unnecessary friction for many enterprises.  

“True modernization should be about balancing innovation with business continuity,” he says.  

“It’s not all cloud or nothing. It’s about interoperability, flexibility, and avoiding vendor lock-in, enabling organizations to evolve on their own terms.” 

That idea resonates strongly across the enterprise CX landscape. As digital ecosystems grow more complex, the winners will likely be those who blend agility with stability — modernizing intelligently, not reactively.  

In other words, the future of CX isn’t just about how fast you move. It’s about moving smart — and making sure that when you do, you’re the one setting the pace.  

You can hear more insights from Miguel by checking out this exclusive interview with CX Today.

You can also pick up more tips on how to spot AI that actually delivers by checking out this buyer’s guide. 

The cloud-based software company announced its third-quarter earnings report on Monday, revealing strong results across the board. 

This has led to ongoing investments into current and future AI products and initiatives. 

“We remain on track to exceed the $100MN in ARR from new products by the end of 2025,” said RingCentral CEO, Vladimir Shmunis, adding:

“Adoption of our new AI-led products is broad-based across various customer cohorts, from small businesses to large enterprises.

“Our GSP partners are also beginning to sell these new offerings, expanding our reach and accelerating adoption.” 

This expansion has led the company to roll out multiple AI product releases this week, increasing its customer base by branching out into emerging AI trends. The launches are aimed at enhancing communication experiences for both customers and agents.

This has resulted from an R&D spend of $125MN into its new AI portfolio. The company is already seeing consistent profitable growth, in the hopes of exceeding the year-end ARR target. 

RingWEM Adds AI Workforce Tools to Cloud Contact Center

On Monday, RingCentral released its latest AI product, RingWEM, an AI-powered workforce engagement management suite designed to enhance its native cloud contact center, RingCX. 

The suite offers four capabilities to strengthen customer experience across agent performance, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiencies by using AI-powered insights: 

AI Quality Management: Designed to give human agents the skills to improve their overall performance, the quality management tool will use personalized customer quality criteria to evaluate and provide extensive insight and feedback on customer calls. 

The tool is used to analyze and observe full customer interactions and agent workflows, delivering focused guidance for reskilling. 

Furthermore, the tool offers AI-based coaching recommendations to improve agent expertise, allowing enterprises to improve their workforce by viewing their agents’ performance analytics, common communication themes and advise them on next steps using the provided data-driven advice. 

AI Workforce Management: Used to improve quality in customer service, planning for potential challenges, and overall efficiency, this tool combines precise data forecasting and resourceful scheduling to align staff with probable tasks to tackle targeted demand. 

By using precise data forecasting, the AI workforce management tool can use algorithms to analyze past and current data trends and business drivers to predict the likelihood of contact quantities, allowing time for agents to tackle abnormal spikes before they occur. 

With intelligent scheduling, the workforce tool can generate actionable schedules for agents to follow that include agent preferences, adjustable service level actions, and business requirements to keep agents on track with tasks. 

These can be modified to fit irregular changes in working conditions to ensure that service levels stay the same to avoid customer friction. 

Additionally, customer agent supervisors can run probable scenarios to analyze the effectiveness of staff models and company changes before they are implemented. 

AI Interaction Analytics: This tool provides enterprises with high-level insights into customer satisfaction with interactions, compiling data taken from surveys and summaries from the interactions themselves to address negative customer experiences. 

AI Interaction Analytics can dissect customer conversations through voice tone, language preferences, and patterns in speech to assess satisfaction. 

The tool can use this and other conversations to further analyze key customer trends and issues as a whole, allowing businesses to proactively address these concerns before escalation. 

Screen Recording: Similar to the AI Quality Management capability, this tool allows supervisors to evaluate customer-agent interactions by collectively linking calls and screen recordings for a wider range of information into quality of conversation and workflow efficiency. 

These tools can be utilized to address underlying issues with agent performance and customer satisfaction and elevate operations in contact centers to deliver smarter service. 

RingCentral Debuts Agentic Voice AI Suite

RingCentral has also released its agentic voice AI communications suite, encompassing three tools that enhance communication experiences across the lifespan of each customer interaction. 

AI Receptionist (AIR): Before a conversation begins, this tool ensures that calls are not left unanswered. 

Using the voice AI ability to interact with customers, this AI agent can comprehend a customer’s reason for calling, answer questions, hand off real-time interactions to agents with summarized caller context, and identify and log potential opportunities that may require a human agent to follow up. These can help to avoid customer friction and repeated information. 

For scheduling interactions, AIR provides multi-calendar support across a company to integrate employee schedules and harmonize teams. 

Sales opportunities are collected and stored for future use in Salesforce, HubSpot, or with AIR’s own database. 

AIR can also be used on any SIP-based phone, allowing AI customer handling to be dealt with across the cloud, any premises, or hybrid setups. 

Brian Tucker, Chief Digital Officer at Televero Health, is a customer of RingCentral’s AIR tool. 

He said, “Using RingCentral’s AI Receptionist, the results are undeniable. We saw our monthly appointments increase 14 percent in the first four months, an increase in monthly revenue of over $200,000. 

“That kind of growth and return on investment is exactly what we need.”

AI Virtual Assistant (AVA): During a conversation, AVA can provide an agent with real-time assistance across customer interactions by implementing four key capabilities: 

• Real-Time Calls and Meeting Summaries: Identify the relevant information, questions, and actionable tasks during the span of a call or meeting, generating summaries and highlight reels to allow agents to keep track of the interaction’s objective during the call. 
• AI Writer to Create and Translate Communications: This capability can draft, edit, and translate conversations in multiple languages, allowing for seamless and customer-focused messaging. 
• Multi-Use Assistance Across Workflows: By adapting to a user’s communication method, via phone, text, or chat, this tool can provide intelligent prompts and relevant actions for each task. 
• Product Adoption and Feature Discovery: AVA can advise discovery and management methods to improve RingCentral’s overall customer enterprise experience. 

Kira Makagon, President & COO, RingCentral, explained the value of AVA in an enterprise workflow: “By putting trusted voice intelligence at employees’ fingertips, AVA makes work more productive and empowering,

“AVA is your personal virtual assistant that enables you to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.”

AI Conversation Expert (ACE): After a conversation, ACE steps in to offer evaluated business insights from these interactions and adds it into one analytics and insights layer for a simplified outlook. 

It provides real-time insight into current customer satisfaction, trends in revenue, and overall agent team performance, giving context to performance data to allow leaders to act quickly. 

When requested, ACE can turn compound data into written summaries, recommend actions and examples of improvement, and be used an interactive interface to allow leaders to inquire related queries with instant results. 

Zach Jecklin, Chief Information Officer at Echo Global Logistics, and customer of ACE, uses the tool for improving company knowledge on customer calls and data trends. 

“AI Conversation Expert provides us with the detailed coaching for individual calls, and the dashboard connects the dots by rolling up all that data into a clear, concise view of the major trends impacting the entire business,” Jecklin said.  

“We used to have call data. Now, we have business intelligence. It’s that simple.”

RingCentral Pairs New AI Tools with Solid Growth

RingCentral has launched the new AI tools in conjunction with the announcement of its strong third earnings quarter. 

During its earnings call, the company reported a total revenue result of $639MN, seeing a growth of 5 percent from the previous year. 

Subscription revenue also increased, rising by 6 percent to $616MN, with a 23 percent rise of $130MN in free cash flow, which it intends to increase during the rest of the year.

The updates include new agents for sales, service, finance, and supply chain management, each designed to automate key tasks and provide real-time insights across business functions.

The latest release includes the Quality Evaluation Agent in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center, which will become available beginning October 24 and which gives supervisors a real-time view of service performance across both human and AI-led interactions. Rather than sampling a handful of cases, it uses AI to review the majority of cases and conversations, flag anomalies, and trigger corrective action for faster and more consistent quality management.

Also moving to general availability on October 24 are the Case Management Agent in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and the Customer Knowledge Management Agent and Customer Intent Agent in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Contact Center. These are all designed to simplify case routing, knowledge sharing, and customer understanding.

In Dynamics 365 Field Service, the Scheduling Operations Agent, which will be available in public preview, is designed to keep schedules agile and service running smoothly.

These tools are part of Microsoft’s ongoing push to embed intelligence across its business applications, to help enterprises move from reactive service to proactive engagement.

Copilot Studio as the AI Interface for Enterprise

At Microsoft’s recent AI Day, Rob Smithson, UK AI Business Processes Lead at the tech giant, described Copilot as the UI for AI. Within the enterprise, teams will increasingly interact with tools like Dynamics 365, ERP, and CRM systems through Copilot interfaces in the future—either via chat, in-app prompts, or embedded automation. Copilot can manage the background tasks, drafting case summaries, suggesting actions, or analyzing conversation tone, so that employees can focus on creative problem-solving and relationship-building.

“Those different programs provide data back to the interface so users can ask questions or take actions in the flow of work.”

To support customization Copilot Studio extends this further, acting as what Microsoft calls the “extensibility layer.” It lets organizations design and customize their own agents for their specific systems and needs, connecting securely to enterprise data without extensive coding or reliance on third-party systems.

Dynamics 365 seamlessly connects with Power Platform and Copilot Studio. The result is a unified ecosystem where apps, workflows, and data connect through Microsoft’s AI foundation.

The Dynamic 365 agents run on Microsoft Dataverse, giving teams a unified data foundation across sales, service, and finance. It’s the architecture powering use cases like Banco PAN, which is using Dataverse as a core part of its Dynamics 365 system to enable real-time integration.

“Our operators now have immediate access to the customer’s history and can resolve issues more quickly,” said Tulio Prado, Service Superintendent at Banco PAN.

To help customers evaluate agent performance, Microsoft has also introduced Sales Research Bench, a standardized framework that scores AI models across metrics such as accuracy, relevance, and clarity. Early results showed Microsoft’s own Sales Research Agent outperforming ChatGPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 in composite quality scores.

The new capabilities highlight Microsoft’s steady march toward what it calls an “agent-led, human-directed enterprise.”

Nonprofit organization yourtown (Kids Helpline) has found that Dynamics 365 agents are helping enhance its teams responses. Helen Vahdat, Chief Information Officer at yourtown said:

“By adopting agents in Dynamics 365 service solutions, we’re making every interaction faster and more empathetic. In a service where demand exceeds capacity, this can be a game changer.”

“In our fundraising unit, we’re also exploring how agents can manage inbound calls to reduce abandonment rates from 20 to 30% to under 5%—directly lifting revenue streams that fund vital services.”

Enticing Enterprise Experimentation

But despite the hype around AI agents, it’s becoming clear that achieving enterprise adoption at scale is a challenge for vendors. An indication of this is Zoho adding free agentic AI tools to its apps to encourage uptake. It’s one of several software vendors making agents free, or nearly free, to get customers experimenting.

Microsoft is also taking that step, “making it easier to get started with agents” by including 1,000 Copilot Credits per user, per month, pooled at the tenant level, for Dynamics 365 Premium products, beginning in late November. That includes Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium, Sales Premium, Supply Chain Management Premium, and Finance Premium.

Customers can use the credits to try out agents in scenarios relevant to their business. Customers can buy additional Copilot Credits as needed.

To increase transparency into AI performance, Microsoft is also launching standardized AI benchmarks—starting with the Sales Research Bench, which measures the performance of agents across metrics such as accuracy, relevance, and clarity.

“We also plan to publish agent performance regularly to reduce friction and help leaders make confident, data-driven decisions,” Bryan Goode, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Agents, wrote in a blog post.

Early testing found that the Sales Research Agent in Dynamics 365 outperformed OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 on composite quality scores, with plans to make the benchmark dataset public in the coming months.

As agentic capabilities expand across Microsoft’s business applications, the company’s AI strategy is coming into sharper focus: unify data, integrate automation, and bring AI into the flow of every customer interaction.

Like most analyst events, AWS used the forum to share its vision of the industry and provide attendees with a roadmap of what’s to come for its contact center solution.

While I can’t go into product-level information, as much of it was under NDA, there were several key takeaways from the event worth sharing.

Below are my top four takeaways from Amazon Connect Horizons:

1. AI Agents Will Work in Harmony with Humans

Regardless of which event I attend, I inevitably hear about the rise of agentic agents with contact centers being viewed as the ‘low hanging fruit,’ as every organization is looking to improve the way it interacts with customers.

This always raises the questions of whether AI agents will replace humans, and the answer is yes and no, with it really depending on the type of interaction.

If one plots all the possible interactions between customers and a brand on a 2×2 grid with the axes being frequency and complexity, anything high-frequency and low-complexity is ideally suited for an AI agent.

This includes password resets, account balances, shipping status, and other mundane things people don’t like doing.

The rest of the more complex interactions will be handled by human agents, but these conversations will still have some element of AI in them. The conversation may start with an AI agent or AI could advise the human agent on what to say.

Over time, an AI agent will be a standard part of a contact center agent’s toolkit and will work with the human to provide upleveled interactions.

While I can’t get into the specifics of the information shared at the event, I can say this topic of bringing people and AI together was a big focus for Amazon Connect Horizons.

During my time there, I had a chance to talk to Pasquale DeMaio, VP of Amazon Connect, to get his thoughts.

DeMaio said:

“We believe a full agentic solution on top of Connect is the key to the future of everything we will do in customer service.”

“That doesn’t mean every interaction will be fully agentic. In fact, we believe that a human-centric experience is absolutely essential, and customers need the ability to seamlessly move back and forth across human and AI agents.”

2. Amazon Connect Is Not Just for Builders

The biggest misconception regarding Amazon Connect is that it’s only for builders.

That was true when the company launched Amazon Connect, but that was many years ago.

As DeMaio put it, Amazon “has always had more UX than API,” but the company does offer a best-in-class developer experience, as one would expect with it being an AWS product.

One of the ironies of this point is that because of the pre-built integrations Amazon Connect has, there is often less developer time required with some of its competitors.

One of the system integrators I talked with at the event told me that when going from Genesys on-prem to a cloud solution, the migration path to Amazon Connect is easier than with Genesys Cloud, because so much of it is integrated.

I asked DeMaio about developer-led customers versus out-of-the-box customers, and he explained that “the broad majority of our customers are not doing any or minimal development.”

He added, “I don’t want to dissuade customers from developing, but for almost everything we do, we have low-code and no-code interfaces making customization easy.”

This is consistent with the experiences of the customers I have talked to, as almost all of them have set up Amazon Connect with just a few mouse clicks.

3. Utilization Pricing Will Be the Norm in the Norm AI Era

One of the unique aspects of Amazon Connect is that it uses utilization-based pricing.

The majority of other CCaaS providers, by contrast, offer plans priced on a per-seat per-month basis, regardless of whether the seat is used or not.

Most customers will estimate the number of seats they need during peak periods, which creates a massive overpayment, as many of these seats will be unused most of the year.

Consider a retailer whose call volume skyrockets between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No retail organization wants its customers to have to wait too long in a queue, so they will staff up during these times.

With Amazon Connect, companies can provision as many seats as they want but only pay for the minutes used.

The criticism of this is that spend won’t be consistent month over month, which is true, but I have yet to talk to a customer that isn’t spending significantly less with utilization-based pricing.

Generally speaking, there are a handful of customers, such as government organizations, who prefer a consistent month over month cost, even if that means overspending, but that is no more than about 5% of companies.

With AI, vendors have been experimenting with different pricing models including per seat and outcome-based pricing, but the only one that will scale over time is utilization.

The concept of a “seat” doesn’t make sense with AI agents, as they are just machines, and a single agent can handle thousands of calls.

Since AI spins CPU/GPU cycles, it’s the easiest and fairest way to price and, over time, will become the norm.

4. A Fully Integrated CX Platform Will Create Differentiation in the AI Era

As an industry we talk about “CCaaS” as its own market but in reality, there is no such thing.

What customers really want is a CX solution that is comprised of CCaaS plus a bunch of other products such as quality management, WEF, WEM, and other functions.

Most of the traditional CCaaS providers have chosen partners for many of those functions, creating integration challenges and silos of data. With AI, silos of data lead to fragmented insights.

Looking ahead, vendors need to bring these capabilities together under a single platform to deliver AI that spans the entire customer journey.

AWS designed Amazon Connect to be a single platform to simplify deployments. In my conversation with DeMaio, he mentioned that when Amazon wins a customer, they often replace over 30 vendors, which greatly simplifies deployments.

In the AI era, a single platform is necessary to unify the data and provide meaningful CX insights.

Although Amazon Connect came to market prior to the AI boom, it was developed with this vision.

DeMaio has told me on several occasions that the mission of Amazon Connect is to create the most advanced CX AI solution that requires a single platform.

This is why the company chose to build its own adjacencies rather than trying to shortcut it with acquisitions. This will serve it well as AI capabilities become the criteria for vendor selection.

Summary

When Amazon Connect first came to market, I was skeptical as to whether a late entrant could create enough differentiation to usurp the established vendors.

AWS has certainly done that, as in just a few years it has gone from new vendor to Gartner MQ leader.

Connect initially targeted organizations looking to transform itheir customer experiences, but that’s all companies today.

Moving forward, AWS’ single platform, which encompasses CCaaS plus many of the adjacencies required to run a contact center, should serve it well as the AI transition moves from vision to reality.

Yet in many enterprises, the tools remain underutilized.  

With many WEM capabilities bundled into larger CCaaS deployments, they often sit idle, reduced to basic scheduling and adherence reporting.  

This ‘switch-on-and-forget’ approach means that despite investing in powerful platforms, leaders rarely unlock their full potential.  

The result is a workforce managed by numbers, not supported by people.  

As Jim Fleming, WFM Solutions Consultant at Sabio, warns:  

“Although many organizations have feature-rich WEM platforms, they’re only scratching the surface of their capabilities, often driven by outdated or redundant processes.” 

The ripple effects are clear: agents get locked into rigid shifts, coaching sessions slip through the cracks, feedback loops stall, and KPIs from another era still define performance.  

In too many operations, contact centers are stuck firefighting, not optimizing.  

WEM Needs a Rethink  

WEM can often be viewed as a cost center, instead of a value driver. 

However, when done right, WEM creates a dynamic, agent-centric environment where scheduling, coaching, quality, and analytics all work together, driving improved CX. 

The tool’s real value lies in creating a dynamic, agent-centered environment where scheduling, coaching, and quality all feed into one another.  

Unfortunately, many enterprises never manage to make that leap.  

“Organizations go through rigorous processes to ensure they invest in the right tools, yet they don’t invest in appropriate support to fully leverage the solutions,” Fleming explains.  

“They essentially turn the lights on with basic functionality rather than innovating through technology and processes to differentiate from competitors.”  

In a nutshell, WEM is not just about tools; it’s about design.  

Features like AI-driven scheduling or automated quality management can have a significant impact – but only when paired with processes that value agents as much as SLAs.  

Tackling Everyday Frustrations  

When organizations are able to shift their mindsets around the role of WEM, results often come quickly.  

Take one of the most common pain points in any contact center: booking time off.  

At Benenden Health, staff used to wait for manual approval of holiday requests. Now, thanks to a ‘Time Management’ app developed with Sabio inside Genesys WEM, they get instant decisions.  

“The automated decision-making means advisors receive instant decisions on their time-off requests, completely eliminating the need for human intervention,” Fleming explains. 

However, the effect stretched beyond efficiency. Transparency boosted morale, giving advisors confidence and control over their allowances.  

It’s a small change with a big impact, and proof that WEM isn’t just about operational gains.  

As Fleming puts it:  

“When properly implemented with agent-centric design, WEM tools don’t just improve operational metrics; they create happier, more empowered employees.”

Where WEM Trips Up in the Real World  

The insights from Benenden’s WEM implementation paint a picture of what it is like on the frontline of customer service and experience.   

This is an area that Sabio is particularly passionate about, as evidenced by its Community Days, where planners and CX leaders share stories of their individual experiences.  

One common frustration that seems to come up time and time again is the gap between expectation and execution.  

“There’s often a disconnect between what organizations think their WEM technology will do versus the processes needed to actually achieve those outcomes,” Fleming says.  

Leaders may think automated leave is already ‘live’ – only to realize the processes behind it were never built.  

Another blocker is trust. AI-driven forecasting and scheduling promise huge efficiency gains, but many planners remain hesitant, as Fleming explains:  

“There’s leadership pressure to embrace AI, but planners need to understand how systems arrive at their recommendations because they’ll inevitably be asked to explain the rationale.”  

Still, the sessions also reveal plenty of wins.  

For instance, one large retailer cut overstaffing by 12 percent after ditching static Excel models for dynamic scenario planning. SLA stability also improved.  

The message from these Community Days seems to be that when enterprises break out of firefighting mode, WEM starts delivering real results.  

Designing WEM Around People  

So, what does success for your WEM program actually look like?  

According to Fleming, it’s about making WEM a continuous process rather than a set of disconnected tools:  

“We integrate real-time adherence, agent self-service, learning nudges, AI-driven quality management, and analytics-driven insights into single, continuous processes.” 

That kind of design pays off across the board: businesses cut inefficiencies and protect SLAs; employees get fairer schedules, faster feedback, and better coaching; and customers enjoy quicker responses and higher first-call resolution.  

It also helps to shift the emphasis from compliance to empowerment.  

WEM stops being an admin system and becomes the connective tissue of the modern contact center.  

The Untapped Value of WEM  

For enterprise leaders, the lesson is clear: WEM isn’t about ticking boxes or measuring adherence; it’s about shaping the agent experience. And in shaping that experience, customer outcomes naturally improve.  

As Fleming concludes:  

“The goal is always to make agents’ working lives easier while delivering measurable business outcomes, because when you get that balance right, everyone benefits: agents, customers, and the business.”  

For those unsure if their WEM is pulling its weight, a fresh look at design and processes is the best starting point.  

You can learn more about Sabio’s WEM philosophy by visiting the website today.   

You can also gain insights into the company’s wider expertise and experience by checking out this exclusive interview with Sabio’s Chief Revenue Officer, Ioan MacRae. 

For CX leaders, that means a new generation of agentic AI—intelligent systems that don’t just assist employees but anticipate customer needs and take meaningful action. Welcome to the age of Connected Intelligence.

1) Webex AI Quality Management: One Console for Human and AI Performance

Cisco unveiled Webex AI Quality Management (QM), a supervisor tool that unifies coaching and improvement across both human agents and AI agents in a single platform. It combines AI-assisted scoring, real-time insights, and personalized coaching for humans with actionable recommendations and optimization for AI agents—all natively in Webex Contact Center. Planned GA: Q1 2026.

Why it matters: Moves beyond compliance checklists to continuous experience improvement and de-risks AI adoption with a single supervisory view.

Related coverage: Agentic AI in the Contact Center: How Cisco Is Redefining Service

2) Webex AI Agent & Cisco AI Assistant: From Assistive to Agentic

Webex AI Agent enables autonomous and guided self-service, tapping tools, systems, and experts as needed—created and tuned in the new AI Agent Studio. Cisco AI Assistant boosts live-agent productivity with suggested responses, real-time transcription, and summaries mid-call and at wrap-up. These are available for cloud and on-prem customers, with a beta for 50 + languages targeted for Q4 2025.

Starting in Q1 2026, Webex plans support for multi-agent collaboration via A2A and Model Context Protocol (MCP)—so Webex AI Agents can interoperate with third-party agents and external data sources under enterprise controls.

Why it matters: Faster, more accurate resolutions with AI that can act, not just advise—while preserving governance.

Related coverage: How Enterprises Are Using Webex AI to Drive Real CX Results

3) Salesforce: Orchestrating Journeys Inside Service Cloud

As part of Salesforce’s BYO CCaaS program, Webex Contact Center for Salesforce deepens the integration so organizations can orchestrate experiences using combined Webex and CRM data. Interactions can be managed inside Salesforce via Service Cloud Voice and Bring Your Own Channel, powered by Webex AI and Agentforce. Early access now; planned GA Q1 2026.

Why it matters: Reduces swivel-chair workflows and gives agents contextual, AI-enriched insights where they already work.

Watch: Webex and Salesforce Redefine CX Integration

4) AWS Lex: Smarter Virtual Agents, Available Now

Integration with Amazon Lex (the same tech behind Alexa) lets teams build natural voice and chat interfaces for Webex Contact Center and Contact Center Enterprise. Use cases include AI receptionist capabilities to deflect / route calls, improved intent recognition, and acceleration of live-agent resolutions. Available now.

Why it matters: Accelerates self-service design and improves containment while maintaining a natural customer experience.

See also: Cisco Expands AI Integrations with Amazon Lex and AWS

5) Epic: Connecting EHR Context to the Contact Center

Epic integration brings EHR context into customer interactions so care teams and agents can deliver tailored, compliant support inside Epic. Available now.

Why it matters: Reduces handoffs and rework in healthcare journeys where context, compliance, and empathy are critical.

Read: How Cisco and Epic Are Transforming Patient Engagement

6) Webex AI Quality Management in Context

For those tracking the broader AI strategy across Cisco’s collaboration and customer experience stack, UC Today’s coverage dives deeper into the company’s Connected Intelligence theme and agentic vision.

Read more: WebexOne 2025: Cisco Bets Big on Agentic Collaboration

7) Market Expansion: India and KSA on the Roadmap

Cisco plans to expand the Webex ecosystem with locally hosted solutions for performance and compliance. In Q2 2026, Cisco targets Webex Calling data centers in Mumbai and Chennai and the launch of Webex Contact Center services in India, with future expansion planned for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Why it matters: Local hosting improves latency, call quality, and regulatory alignment for global CX programs.

More coverage: WebexOne 2025: Connected Intelligence Takes Centre Stage

Leadership Perspective

“You win or lose your customers every single day through the quality of the experiences you deliver. AI is the key to delivering amazing customer experiences at scale.” — Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco

Bottom Line for CX Leaders

• Unify oversight: Manage human and AI performance in one supervisory plane with Webex AI QM.
• Operationalize agentic AI: Deploy AI Agent and AI Assistant to act, summarize, and follow up securely.
• Integrate the journey: Use Salesforce, AWS Lex, and Epic to collapse data silos and remove friction.
• Prove value fast: Target containment, cycle times, and CSAT with production-grade use cases.
• Plan for scale: Leverage multi-agent interoperability (A2A, MCP) and regional hosting to grow responsibly.

Today, companies aren’t just being measured on speed or resolution rates. They’re being measured on how it feels to do business with them.

That feeling, the tone of a conversation, the empathy in an answer, the confidence in a response; these usually comes down to one thing: how supported the agent on the other end actually feels.

Workforce engagement management is the connective tissue that keeps human-led customer experiences from falling apart under pressure.

Originally born from workforce optimization (WFO) – which focused on labor cost, scheduling, and productivity – workforce engagement management expands the scope. It adds intelligence, coaching, flexibility, and voice-of-the-employee feedback into the equation.

The business case is obvious: high agent churn is expensive. Disengaged teams drag down CSAT and NPS. Frontline burnout doesn’t just affect morale; it affects every metric a CEO cares about.

But the strategy isn’t just HR’s problem. WEM cuts across operations, IT, and customer leadership. In modern enterprises it’s becoming foundational to everything from digital transformation to AI-readiness.

VISIT THE WEM MARKETPLACE

What Is Workforce Engagement Management?

So, what is workforce engagement management?

WEM software is a suite of technologies designed to improve the day-to-day experience of employees and agents. It’s there for the people answering calls, handling chats, resolving issues, or keeping the service engine running behind the scenes.

WEM platforms bring together previously siloed functions like:

• Workforce forecasting and scheduling (WFM)
• Quality assurance and interaction scoring (QM)
• Learning and coaching workflows
• Performance dashboards and gamification
• Real-time feedback and voice-of-the-employee programs
• AI-powered assistants and agent-facing automation

The best platforms do all of this across cloud environments, hybrid teams, and global time zones, with as little admin as possible. What really sets the WEM model apart is that it’s designed for people, not just processes. Vendors are building tools that offer real-time coaching prompts, simplified self-scheduling tools that actually consider agent preferences, and dashboards that monitor burnout.

WEM has become a strategic partner to:

• Operations: by tightening resource alignment and reducing downtime
• CX leaders: by lifting customer sentiment through empowered agents
• IT and digital teams: by enabling automation without alienation
• HR and L&D: by tracking skill development in real time, not quarterly

It also connects tightly to other pillars in the modern CX ecosystem, from ERP systems to business intelligence platforms.

WEM vs. Legacy Workforce Tools: Understanding the Evolution

Talk to any enterprise ops lead or CX architect about workforce software, and you’ll probably hear this first: “We’ve got some of that already.”

What they usually mean is WFO, WFM, or a quality management system that hasn’t been updated in years. Somewhere along the line, it all blurred together. But there are differences to be aware of.

• Workforce Optimization (WFO): This is the legacy stack. Workforce optimization was built for scale, not flexibility. It’s a system of record for making sure the right number of people were in the right place at the right time, with as little waste as possible.
• Workforce Management (WFM): Forecasts, schedules, rosters. If WFO is the umbrella, WFM is the spine. It calculates expected volumes and assigns shifts accordingly, across voice, chat, email, social, sometimes even back office tasks.
• Quality Management (QM): Every enterprise has some version of this. A system that records calls, tracks disclosures, and grades interactions. Some still use spreadsheets. Others have automated tools that flag risky phrases or negative sentiment.

Workforce engagement management changes the lens. It doesn’t just track productivity or performance; it helps create the conditions where productivity actually happens.

It connects scheduling with well-being. Performance with recognition. Coaching with data. It gives agents the ability to swap shifts, track progress, and get live feedback without jumping through three systems and two supervisors.

The best WEM software listens to agents as much as it monitors them. It surfaces burnout risk, not just missed KPIs. Plus, it turns “manager reviews” into live, AI-driven guidance when it matters most, in the middle of a conversation, not the end of the month.

Essential WEM Capabilities for Modern Contact Centers

Plenty of platforms claim to boost engagement. But WEM software is different, not just because of what it includes, but because of how it connects those features into the day-to-day flow of work.

Here’s what defines leading WEM solutions in 2025:

AI-Powered Forecasting & Scheduling

WEM starts with smarter staffing. AI tools predict contact volume across channels (voice, chat, social, email), then build schedules around both demand and agent availability, including preferences and skills. Some systems, like NICE EEM, even auto-adjust shifts intra-day to fill unexpected gaps.

Real-Time Quality Management

Traditional QM scores interactions after the fact. WEM platforms now layer conversational analytics, real-time transcription, and auto-suggestions to help agents course-correct mid-call, not after it’s too late. They go beyond quality monitoring and call recording, with real-time insights.

Performance & Gamification Dashboards

Agents and supervisors get tailored dashboards that show key KPIs from AHT to CSAT, alongside gamified goals, rewards, and badges. Not just for fun – for focus. It works: a Gallup study found gamification boosts productivity by up to 14% when combined with coaching.

Learning & Development, Embedded

WEM software often includes integrated learning management system (LMS) modules, allowing supervisors to assign training based on performance data, not gut feel. Employees get regular microlearning nudges tied to real-time metrics. They’re smart, targeted, and actually used.

Voice of the Employee (VoE) & Sentiment Tracking

Feedback tools are embedded into most leading WEM platforms. Pulse surveys, in-session sentiment tagging, eNPS trend tracking. All designed to give leaders a line of sight into engagement, before it becomes attrition.

Hybrid-Ready Scheduling & Self-Service

Self-scheduling. Mobile shift swaps. At-a-glance schedule visibility. In a hybrid world, these features are increasingly crucial. Companies don’t just need to manage employee schedules; team members need to be able to make shift changes themselves.

Measurable Business Impact: The ROI of WEM Solutions

Ask any enterprise CX leader where they’re losing ground, and chances are the answer isn’t tooling – it’s people. Attrition, disengagement, inconsistent performance. The fundamentals. The truth is, most of it’s avoidable if the systems around the work actually support the people doing it.

That’s the core promise of workforce engagement management in 2025. It’s not just better data or cleaner interfaces, but an operational model built for sustained, scalable performance: one that integrates AI, learning, flexibility, and accountability into the work itself.

Here’s where the return on investment becomes undeniable:

1. Serious Retention Improvements

Contact centers have a talent problem. The work is hard, the pressure is growing, and legacy systems aren’t built to reduce either. The result? Enterprise-level attrition rates of 35%–45% are still considered “normal”, and the true cost per lost agent runs deep:

• $10,000–$15,000+ in replacement and training costs
• Knowledge loss
• Disrupted team continuity
• CX instability, especially for high-value customers

WEM solutions counter this with structure. They allow agents to:

• See progress, not just tasks
• Adjust schedules to fit real lives
• Receive feedback that’s timely and specific
• Access growth paths without needing to chase them

This is what shifts perception from “just a job” to a role worth keeping.

2. CX That Starts From the Inside Out

What drives true loyalty, especially in high-emotion, high-complexity interactions, is the confidence and care on the other end. WEM software makes that possible by:

• Flagging sentiment changes in real time
• Providing AI-suggested prompts during live interactions
• Helping agents manage stress levels and emotional loads through pacing and workflows
• Tying the voice of the employee (VoE) insights directly into customer journey metrics

When agents feel heard, supported, and prepared, they’re more likely to listen, support, and solve.

3. Operational Control Without the Micromanagement

This is one of the reasons contact center leaders actually like WEM: it puts control back in their hands without overloading supervisors or requiring three tools to do one job.

Key benefits from the ops side include:

• AI-powered staffing models that adjust by hour, not just day
• Intraday management tools that detect gaps, absenteeism, and surges in real time
• Blended service support: voice, chat, async messaging; all tracked against unified KPIs
• Integration with CPaaS platforms to connect agent workflows with external customer comms

WEM helps ops teams run smoother shifts, make smarter staffing calls, and prevent fire drills before they start. It turns guesswork into decision science.

4. A Feedback Loop That Actually Works

Traditional employee feedback processes are often slow, vague, and almost never actionable in the moment. WEM makes engagement and feedback part of the actual workflow:

• End-of-shift sentiment pulses
• In-the-moment feedback tagging
• eNPS scores tied to performance windows
• Manager dashboards showing team trends in real time

Instead of waiting for problems to surface, WEM lets companies track friction as it builds, and respond before people check out.

5. A Bridge to the AI-Enabled Future of Work

AI isn’t just for self-service chatbots. The most forward-looking WEM platforms are already embedding it directly into the agent experience, not to replace humans, but to extend their capabilities.

• Smart Assist: Live prompts during customer interactions
• Auto-tagging of performance triggers and coaching moments
• Adaptive learning that updates training based on new behaviors
• Workflow routing that adapts to agent strengths and availability
• Emotional analysis to detect frustration and disengagement on both the agent and customer side

Some companies are even experimenting with systems that empower leaders to manage AI agents and human employee workflows on the same platform.

Leading WEM Vendors and Platform Selection

There are dozens of impressive workforce engagement management vendors worth considering today. Some are blending WEM and business intelligence, others are going all-in on AI. But all of the top providers have one thing in common – a commitment to improving the employee experience.

A few examples of companies to keep an eye on:

• NICE: NICE has been pushing WEM as more than a product; it’s a strategy. Their CXone WEM suite includes AI-powered forecasting, real-time coaching, voice of the employee tools, and gamification in one system.
• Genesys: The Genesys WEM suite is packed with tools for elevating employee experience, AI-powered scheduling and forecasting, automatic quality assurance, workplace scheduling, and even sentiment analysis are all included.
• Five9: Another CCaaS mainstay, Five9’s WEM capabilities have evolved rapidly, especially in AI-assisted scheduling and integrated performance management. It’s a good choice for organizations already using Five9 as a contact center backbone, looking to consolidate their workforce tools under one vendor.

Companies like Calabrio, Verint, and even AWS, all offer their own solutions tied to contact center systems and business intelligence tools.

Need a closer look? Visit the WEM market map.

THE WEM MARKET MAP

Choosing the Right WEM Solution: What to Ask

Before jumping into demos and procurement cycles, smart buyers get clear on three things:

• Where does WEM sit in your wider CX stack? Is it standalone, or does it need to integrate tightly with CRM, CCaaS, or CPaaS tools?
• What metrics are you trying to move? Retention? CSAT? Schedule adherence? Time to competency?
• How usable is it at the agent level? A platform is only as good as the adoption it gets, especially from the people actually doing the work.

Remember innovation, too. Most of the leading WEM vendors in the market today are going all-in on artificial intelligence, governance management, and intuitive automation. Take advantage.

Implementation Best Practices for Maximum Impact

Getting WEM software in place is one thing. Making it part of how teams actually work is more complicated. Here’s what high-performing teams do differently:

Start with Outcomes, Not Features

Before rolling out dashboards or changing schedules, clarify what you’re trying to improve.

• Higher agent retention?
• Smoother hybrid workflows?
• Faster time-to-proficiency for new hires?

Let those outcomes shape the strategy, not the other way around.

Need help planning your rollout? Read: The New Best Practices for WEM

Embed Feedback Loops

Don’t wait for the annual employee engagement survey.

• Use in-session pulse checks
• Track sentiment shifts in real time
• Let agents rate coaching interactions, not just supervisors

The feedback is already there. WEM just needs to catch it, route it, and act on it. Done right, it becomes part of the daily rhythm, not another initiative.

Personalize Performance, Without Playing Favorites

WEM dashboards make it easy to rank people. But the real value comes from coaching individual patterns, not just posting leaderboards.

• Who’s improving fastest?
• Who’s flatlining under pressure?
• Who’s consistently solving complex issues, but missing soft skill marks?

Use that insight to tailor coaching, training, and recognition, not just for fairness, but for effectiveness.

Build for Flexibility, Not Just Control

Self-scheduling, mobile notifications, shift trades: these features are friction reducers. Give agents more control, and watch adherence go up, not down.

Especially for hybrid or global teams, asynchronous flexibility is a major retention lever, and WEM platforms make it manageable without compromising ops integrity.

Integrate with the Rest of the Stack

WEM works best when it’s not a silo. That means tight integration with:

• CRM systems (for customer context)
• Business intelligence tools (for strategy alignment)
• CPaaS or CCaaS platforms (for seamless routing and escalation)

If it’s not connected, it won’t scale.

Workforce Engagement: What’s Next

Workforce engagement management hasn’t finished evolving. In the same way customer experience has evolved from contact resolution to journey orchestration, workforce engagement management is shifting, from dashboards and reports to intelligent, adaptive systems that respond in real time to what’s happening on the floor.

The core function hasn’t changed: WEM exists to help teams perform better, stay longer, and deliver consistently great experiences. What’s changing is how that happens, and the speed with which enterprise buyers are now expected to keep up.

Here’s where WEM is headed next:

• Intuitive AI-driven coaching: Vendors are moving from QA scorecards to live feedback systems. Agents are no longer waiting for weekly reviews to know how they’re doing. With conversational analytics and sentiment detection now embedded in many WEM platforms, coaching happens mid-interaction.
• Personalization at the Team Level: Personalization isn’t just for customers anymore. The best WEM software is already adapting performance plans, learning modules, and scheduling rules based on individual agent profiles, considering skill levels, schedule preferences, and past coaching outcomes.
• Experience Data: Historically, “engagement” was something companies surveyed once a year and filed under HR. But in a high-churn, always-on contact center? That model fails. In 2025, Voice of the Employee (VoE) and EX metrics are treated as critical signals as important as CSAT or NPS.
• Improved Hybrid Orchestration: Hybrid teams aren’t going away. If anything, they’re expanding, especially in regions where talent is global and support demand is 24/7. Modern WEM tools now handle multi-time-zone scheduling, mobile shift self-service, and role-specific dashboards.
• Increased Convergence: The days of WEM as a standalone product are ending. It’s becoming part of something bigger, an integrated experience management layer that spans customer data platforms, CRMs, CCaaS ecosystems, and analytics tools.

Need an up-to-date view of the latest trends in the WEM landscape? Check out the latest research and reports, with insights taken straight from market leaders.

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Why Workforce Engagement Management is Crucial to CX

There’s a shift happening in enterprise CX. It’s not just about faster tools or lower handle times. It’s about creating operations that care about people as much as they care about performance. Because in every customer interaction, agents either lift the brand or quietly erode it.

When companies treat engagement as a measurable, manageable part of their CX operation, the benefits stack up fast:

• Lower attrition
• More consistent experiences
• Higher trust from agents and customers alike
• Operational efficiency that doesn’t burn people out to deliver it

WEM doesn’t solve everything. It gives teams the infrastructure to solve what matters, from burnout to broken feedback loops, without building from scratch every quarter.

Looking to upgrade? CX Today is here to help:

• Join the Community: Be part of a dynamic CX community. Share insights, benchmark strategies, and keep pace with the leaders transforming customer and employee experience.
• Test the Tech: Explore the latest WEM platforms, CRM systems, CDPs, and more with real-world events, focused on the CX industry.
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Alternatively, explore the ultimate CX guide, a single destination for everything enterprise leaders need to know about the technologies, processes, and strategies shaping the future of experience.

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