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).

Amazon Sues Perplexity for Allegedly Misusing Its AI Shopping Tool

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

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

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

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

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

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

They said:

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

Read on to find out more.

Zoom Eyes the Small Business CX Market with Bonsai Buy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phishing Campaign Targets Cloudflare Pages and Zendesk to Mimic Support Portals

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microsoft Azure Outage After AWS Crash Exposes Weak Link in Customer Service

Just over a week after a massive outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) took down a range of websites and cloud-based services, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was hit by a service disruption that affected its services and customer applications, including the communications protocol that runs Dynamics 365 Contact Center.

Between 15:45 UTC on October 29 and 00:05 UTC on October 30, configuration change caused node failures in Azure Front Door (AFD), Microsoft’s global, cloud-based service that handles content delivery and routing, according to Azure’s status page.

A whole host of Azure services experienced latencies, timeouts and errors, including Azure Communication Services (ACS). The voice and SMS messaging channels in Dynamics 365 Contact Center are built on top of ACS, which enables organizations to provision phone numbers, enable voice calls and manage SMS capabilities through ACS directly.

The outage disrupted customer services across multiple industries, including airlines, retail and gaming, all of which use Azure for their backend operations including point-of-sale systems, customer portals, and mobile apps.

The outage served as a reminder of the critical role cloud infrastructure plays in modern customer service delivery and the risks of centralized dependencies (Read on…).

ServiceNow Expands Vision For AI Transformation

ServiceNow continues its vision to transform AI for its enterprise customers after a strong earnings report. 

On Wednesday, the enterprise giant released its quarterly earnings report, reaching a total revenue of $3.407BN, a 22% increase. 

Away from the finances, the company also used the call to outline its commitment to expanding its AI-driven and CRM solutions. 

As part of its plan to bolster AI across enterprises, ServiceNow has emphasized its goals to transform AI agents, customer relationship management, and return on investment results for customers.

During the call, ServiceNow execs discussed the company’s aim to transform AI for its customer enterprises through its real-time AI control tower, to monitor, track and govern its use.

By using its configuration management leadership to help with AI governance under one system, enterprises can simplify their AI management and integration process to deliver faster ROI.

Regarding its agents, ServiceNow has created its workflow ‘road map’ for them to function effectively across an enterprise and a tech stack, going from a simple chatbot to a complex AI tool.

You can find out more about what was discussed during the call by reading the full article here.

Forrester’s Customer Experience Predictions for 2026

It’s that time of year again: customer experience predictions season.

The nights are drawing in, the temperature is dropping, and CX analysts from across the globe are dusting off their crystal balls.

While you can expect an onslaught of predictions over the coming months, very few will have the prestige of Forrester, a leading global research and advisory firm with expertise in the CX space.

In a blog post discussing the current and future state of customer experience, Maxie Schmidt, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, described 2025 as “another tough year for CX teams.”

She believes that “many CX teams are drifting dangerously close to the event horizon of metric obsession” and are “circling the black hole of measurement without meaning.”

While Schmidt’s remarks sound troubling at best, and downright alarming at worst, she also offers reasons to be optimistic, stating that “2026 marks a critical inflection point.

“Some [organizations] will break free — modernizing, upskilling, and repositioning CX as a catalyst for business value. Others will cling to legacy practices and risk being pulled beyond the point of no return, where CX loses relevance and credibility.”

The predictions not only outline the challenges and roadblocks that CX teams might face in 2026, but they also offer guidance and advice on how to combat them (Read on…).

Zoho Builds CRM-Based Dealership Platform for Mercedes-Benz India

Zoho has built SKYLine, a new CRM-based dealership management platform for Mercedes-Benz India, which is designed to modernize how the automaker engages with customers.

The bespoke Dealer Management System (DMS), which was built on Zoho’s CRM and implemented by the software provider’s Enterprise Business Solutions team, has been rolled out across Mercedes-Benz dealerships across India.

SKYLine aims to deliver a more connected and transparent experience to customers across the company’s dealership network using AI-driven analytics. The system is designed to make each stage of the customer journey, from booking a service appointment to post-service feedback, faster and more personalized.

Vehicle owners get a unified portal where they can track service updates in real-time, view invoices, and access a full service history through a unified customer portal.

SKYLine replaces legacy systems with a decentralized architecture in which each dealership operates on its own Zoho CRM solution. This gives individual dealers the flexibility to tailor their workflows to their operations, while aligning with brand standards and compliance.

The system integrates with the automaker’s global HQ infrastructure through a middleware layer powered by Zoho’s workflow orchestration tool, Qntrl. This allows real-time data exchange across multiple protocols without requiring the automaker to make changes to its legacy systems.

“Together, we have built a decentralized platform that empowers each dealership with autonomy, while maintaining central control and real-time HQ integration,” said Mani Vembu, Zoho’s CEO (Read on).

Dreamforce 2025: The Top Announcements, ft. Agentforce 360, The New Slack, & Apromore Acquisition

This week, 50,000 people descended on San Francisco for one of the biggest events in the enterprise technology calendar: Dreamforce.

The 23rd annual conference was Salesforce’s chance to showcase its latest innovations, share success stories, and enable customers to network.

Below is a snapshot of some of the biggest revelations from the event:

• Agentic Enterprise Vision: Salesforce unveiled the “Agentic Enterprise,” where every employee works with an AI partner that autonomously handles tasks, creating a 24/7 intelligent and augmented workforce.
• Agentforce 360 Platform: The new Agentforce 360 Platform extends Salesforce beyond CRM, embedding AI agents across apps like Sales, Service, and Marketing to automate workflows across all departments.
• Slack as the Agentic OS: Slack becomes the central interface for agentic AI, enabling employees and AI to collaborate and act directly within Slack without switching apps.
• Acquisition of Apromore: Salesforce acquired process intelligence firm Apromore to give customers end-to-end workflow visibility and enable smarter, automated agent deployments.
• OpenAI Partnership: Salesforce and OpenAI expanded their collaboration, integrating GPT-5 and ChatGPT into Slack and Agentforce 360 to enhance AI-powered workflows and commerce.

You can find out more about all the major Dreamforce announcements here.

Zoom Announces 15,000-Seat CCaaS Megadeal with Oracle, Advances Broader Partnership

Zoom has confirmed that its contact center solution will be used to support Oracle’s customer service operations.

The 15,000-seat CCaaS megadeal will bring Zoom CX to Oracle’s global service agents.

Zoom first teased the deal back in February, reporting that the company had landed its largest-ever contact center deal, but has now confirmed that the unnamed Fortune 100 company mentioned at the time is Oracle.

The announcement is part of an expanded partnership between the two tech firms, which will see Zoom CX now available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

The vendors believe that the collaboration between their solutions will allow enterprises to enhance customer engagement, boost workforce productivity, and advance business outcomes.

In discussing the availability of Zoom Contact Center on OCI, Chris Morrissey, General Manager of Zoom CX, claimed that the companies were “empowering organizations to unify customer interactions, employee workflows, and data into a single intelligent system.

The outcome is faster resolutions, stronger relationships, and measurable value at scale.

Christine Sarros, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Engineering at Oracle, also commented on the expanded partnership, stating that the combination of OCI and Zoom’s communications platform will “give enterprises a foundation for AI-driven engagement.” (Read more…).

Snapchat AI Spill Shows Why Chatbots Aren’t Ready to Run Customer Support Alone

A Cyber News experiment has once again exposed the cracks in an AI chatbot, this time Snapchat’s My AI, offering a stark reminder for companies rushing to put artificial intelligence in the customer experience driver’s seat.

Cyber News researchers recently tested Snapchat’s AI chatbot, which is used by over 900 million people worldwide, with some creative prompting that framed requests as storytelling exercises to trick the bot into sharing instructions for making improvised explosive devices, like Molotov cocktails.

While Snapchat’s safeguards block direct queries about weapons, the chatbot recited historical “how-tos” under the guise of a narrative when the team prompted it to tell a story about the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union and include details about how incendiary devices were reportedly made at the time.

This instance raises concerns about what other dangerous content could slip through, especially to younger users.

The Cyber News team explained:

“While the bot may never directly provide instructions on how to build improvised weapons, it will tell you a realistic and detailed story of how improvised weapons used to be built without any hesitation. This raises concerns about dangerous AI information availability for minors.”

The researchers notified Snapchat, but the vulnerability wasn’t patched immediately (Read more…).

Microsoft Expands AI Customer Service Strategy with L&G Contact Center Deal

UK financial services provider Legal & General (L&G) is working with Microsoft to build an AI-powered customer service platform.

The new system will use Dynamics 365 Contact Center to help employees provide faster and smoother assistance to L&G’s 12.4 million customers.

The platform, which will be integrated with Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant, will give customer service teams a complete, real-time view of each customer’s relationship with the business. The first phase will focus on customers who have workplace savings, retail protection, and annuities, with additional product lines to follow.

The move aims to simplify the service experience. Dynamics 365 Contact Center will analyze conversations with customers, highlight useful tools to support the conversation, suggest relevant next steps, and prompt outreach across customers’ preferred channels. The system is designed to reduce complexity for employees by consolidating multiple tools and minimizing the need to transfer calls.

The agreement with Microsoft is part of a broader process at L&G to use technology to transform its customer service interactions, Laura Mason, Chief Executive Officer, Retail at L&G, said.

We recently launched the first fully digitized claims process, cutting average claim times by nearly two weeks, while our pensions app is the highest rated among peers, using digital tools to help people take control of their savings.

This new collaboration takes that ambition further, using AI to raise the bar while ensuring our teams can tailor support for customers who need us most (Read more…).

• Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research
• Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research
• Rebecca Wettemann, CEO & Principal Analyst at Valoir
• Shelly Kramer, resident & CEO at Kramer & Company
• Michael Fauscette, Founder, CEO & Chief Analyst at Arion Research
• Derek Top, Senior Analyst at Opus Research

During the discussion, the panel dives into three major CX stories:

ServiceNow Unveils “AI Experience” 

ServiceNow has launched a unified AI platform designed to bring together data, workflows, and automation across the enterprise. The analysts unpack what this means for platformization, adoption, and the move toward truly role-aware, embedded AI in the flow of work.

Oracle’s New Role-Based AI Agents 

Oracle rolls out AI agents for service, sales, and marketing within its Fusion suite, at no extra cost for customers. The panel explores what this means for the rise of specialized, task-focused agents and the future of multi-agent collaboration. 

Qualtrics Acquires PG Forsta for $6.75 Billion

Qualtrics doubles down on the Voice of the Customer (VoC) market with a blockbuster acquisition, combining three of Gartner’s top five leaders (as PG Forsta recently snapped up InMoment). Our analysts discuss how this reshapes the VOC landscape.

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Salesforce Makes Its Big ITSM Launch, Talks Differentiators Over ServiceNow

Salesforce has launched its new IT service management (ITSM) product: Agentforce IT Service.

ITSM solutions help IT teams manage the services they offer across the enterprise. That includes troubleshooting, configuring devices, running applications, granting access to them, and more.

As teased last month, Agentforce IT Service will become a key fixture of Service Cloud, as Agentforce for HR Service did in May earlier this year.

HR Service solutions similarly support issue resolution, handle requests for vacation, update employee personnel details, and more.

With these two additions, Service Cloud is suddenly much more than a customer support application; it’s a full-scale service platform.

That’s a critical differentiator that Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM for Service Cloud at Salesforce, stressed when answering how Agentforce IT Service can have success in an already consolidated ITSM market, led by ServiceNow.

“Everything we’ve created lives on one unified platform,” said Chetan.

Other solutions often have separate platforms for employees and fulfillers, creating integration overhead. Salesforce removes that friction.

ServiceNow may soon contest this, as it rolls out its new AI Experience offering. Nevertheless, Chetan highlighted other differentiators, starting with its native Agentforce agents embedded at the Agentforce IT Service solution’s core. As the vendor claims, it’s not a legacy system retrofitted for AI (Read on…).

Zendesk Unveils Major AI Push – Voice, Admin Co-Pilot, and HyperArc Take Center Stage

Zendesk has announced a major expansion of its AI portfolio, introducing a series of new capabilities that bring more automation, intelligence, and flexibility to its Resolution Platform.

Revealed at the company’s AI Summit, the upgrades span across contact center, employee service, and platform administration.

Among the slew of releases, the headline-grabbers are with the launch of fully autonomous Voice AI Agents, new low/no-code building tools, and powerful analytics through its HyperArc acquisition.

The announcement signals Zendesk’s ongoing commitment to accelerating service resolution at scale and deepening its AI leadership.

But as Matthias Goehler, Zendesk CTO for EMEA, explained in an exclusive interview with CX Today, this is also about “closing the loop between AI and human service, and bringing everything together in one place.”

Voice AI Comes to the Fore

For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of getting stuck in a mind-numbing, seemingly never-ending IVR loop, the promise of Voice AI Agents will be music to your ears.

Equipped with fully autonomous AI-powered voice capabilities, Zendesk’ Voice AI Agents are designed to handle complex queries without the clunky IVR trees that have tested the patience of even the most Zen customers (Read on…).

SAP Connect 2025: The Top 10 Announcements (So Far!)

SAP’s push into AI agents with Joule and its fast-tracked cloud migrations mean that one major conference a year no longer suffices.

In addition to the annual SAP Sapphire, it has rebranded and expanded its SuccessConnect event, so practitioners, partners, and execs can keep their finger on the pulse.

At this year’s event, that pulse raced, with many massive announcements including AI agent advancements, a new engagement platform, and much more.

Celebrating the event’s many headlines, Muhammad Alam, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product & Engineering, said:

Our announcements today demonstrate the power of SAP Business Suite, where AI, data, and applications come together in an experience to propel smarter decisions, faster execution, and scalable transformation.

That suite envelops the enterprise, yet its customer experience portfolio is a key cornerstone.

Given that, here’s a rundown of the event’s biggest news, with extra emphasis on CX (Read on…).

Qualtrics to Snap Up Press Ganey Forsta in $6.75BN Deal, Consolidate the VoC Market

Qualtrics has agreed to acquire Press Ganey Forsta for $6.75BN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cisco Doubles Down on AI-Powered Contact Center at WebexOne 2025

San Diego, CA — At WebexOne 2025 this week, Cisco unveiled a series of major enhancements to its customer experience portfolio, pushing deeper into AI-powered quality management, agent assistance, and cross-industry integrations.

The announcements underscore Cisco’s strategy to position Webex Contact Center as a platform where AI agents and human agents work side by side — with supervisors given the tools to oversee both.

AI is the key to delivering amazing customer experiences at scale

Said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. “As AI and human agents increasingly collaborate, businesses need platforms designed to deliver quality experiences while moving faster than ever.”

AI Quality Management: Coaching Humans and Machines

Launching in early 2026, Webex AI Quality Management (QM) gives supervisors a unified view across their workforce — whether it’s people or AI agents.

Unlike traditional tools that focus on compliance, Cisco says AI QM will deliver:

• AI-assisted scoring and real-time insights
• Personalised coaching for human agents
• Performance optimisation recommendations for AI agents (Read on…)

Salesforce Axes Search In Favor of Agentforce, Users Push Back

CRM giant Salesforce is facing criticism from its own customers and community members after it quietly removed the search bar from its online help pages.

The previous search function has been replaced with the AI-powered Agentforce assistant.

The move has sparked a backlash with users calling for the return of the classic search functionality.

Previously, users on the Salesforce Help site could use the search bar to type keywords, filter by topic, and drill down to quickly find documentation, knowledge articles or troubleshooting resources.

That option is now gone. The only way to access information is to interact with the conversational AI assistant that must understand the user’s question, interpret it and generate an answer on the fly.

Complaints quickly sprang up online in response to the change, with users reporting that Agentforce, while promising in theory, is often slower to deliver what index-based search used to serve up instantly. It may misunderstand queries, hallucinate incorrect answers, or require more back-and-forth conversation to narrow down results.

Users on Reddit noted that Salesforce “killed simple access to the case creation form” recently and see this as the next step in its agentic AI push (Read on…)

Accenture Lays Off 11,000 Staff as Part of AI Reskilling Strategy

Accenture has laid off over 11,000 members of staff as part of a restructuring program.

The company’s 791,000 employees has been cut down to 779,000 in the past three months, and Accenture might not be done yet.

With AI continuing to dominate the tech space, the IT consulting group has introduced AI training for staff to keep up with this new era of technology.

Accenture has warned staff who cannot keep up with the new training could join the thousands already laid off. 

In a discussion with analysts, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet provided further insights into the restructuring:

“We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need.

We are investing in upskilling our reinventors, which is our primary strategy. Those we cannot reskill will be exited.

Indeed, Accenture followed this announcement with the news that it is set to acquire Aidemy Inc, a reskilling specialist.

In doing so, the company is looking to strengthen its own reskilling and learning service, LearnVantage, and seemingly double-down on its commitment to fully embracing AI (Read on…)

CCaaS Market Set to Triple by 2030 – But Who Will Bear The Crown?

The global market for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is entering a period of rapid expansion.

Valued at just over $3.6 billion in 2023, industry analysts at Maximise Market Research predict it will soar to $11.4 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 17.8 percent.

For contact center leaders, the takeaway is clear: cloud-based platforms are no longer a niche option. They are fast becoming the default architecture for organizations that want to meet rising customer expectations without the burden of maintaining complex on-premises systems.

Why the Market is Surging

CCaaS offers enterprises the ability to unify customer interactions across voice, email, chat, and social media on a single platform.

With demand for frictionless, personalized experiences only increasing, these solutions have become vital for organizations that want to stay competitive.

At the same time, the rise of remote and distributed workforces has accelerated the move to the cloud. AI and automation are being woven into the core of modern platforms, enabling contact centers to reduce response times and provide agents with real-time assistance.

The Heavyweights Driving Growth

So far, the momentum is largely in the hands of a small group of dominant vendors. Genesys, NICE, AWS, Five9, and Talkdesk are the players most frequently highlighted by Gartner and other research firms as the clear leaders (Read on…).

The ISG Contact Center Buyers Guide 2025: 7 Top Takeaways 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zoomtopia 2025: The Top 10 Announcements

Zoom is spreading a clear message at Zoomtopia 2025: it’s a platform built for people.

Employees, entrepreneurs, creators, educators… they’re the ones driving progress every day.

For Zoom, that makes it different. It believes that Microsoft builds for IT and procurement, while Google bundles collaboration into its suite. Yet, it aims to deliver for the user.

For that reason, Zoomtopia’s theme is all about connecting people to progress.

That theme runs through all of Zoomtopia 2025’s announcements, with the top ten outlined below, starting with those that matter most to customer experience teams.

1. Zoom Bolsters Its Contact Center Partnerships with Salesforce & ServiceNow

As the Zoom Contact Center has surged, customers have requested tighter integrations with their customer support CRMs.

Zoom has acted by partnering with prominent CRM providers and embedding its contact center tooling within their solutions.

Its latest move is to make its real-time transcription, unified routing, and AI assistant technology available in Salesforce Service Cloud. (Read more…).

Genesys Scoops Its Second-Largest CCaaS Win Ever

Genesys has won its second-largest Genesys Cloud deal to date with a top ten global bank. 

The CCaaS stalwart disclosed few additional details about the deal but noted it was one of two eight-figure annual contract value (ACV) agreements secured over the past 12 months.

It also revealed that it signed a high-seven-figure ACV deal with another Fortune 20 financial services firm, worth $45MN+ in total contract value (TCV).

In doing so, Genesys underscored its momentum in a sector known for its high complexity.

Ultimately, that aligns with its reputation for doing “big” well, as rubberstamped by the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS report, where Genesys once again slotted into the leader square.

Yet, while many regard it as a safe choice for migrating to CCaaS, Tony Bates, Chairman and CEO of Genesys, stressed his desire for the vendor and its customers to push the boundaries of innovation. (Read more…).

ServiceNow Teams Up with Five9 to Drop Another Unified CRM-CCaaS Offering

ServiceNow and Five9 announced that their unified CCaaS-CRM offering is now generally available.

As teased in November, the “Five9 Fusion for ServiceNow” solution embeds some of Five9’s CCaaS tooling directly into ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM).

In doing so, both vendors hope to deliver a unified agent experience, consolidate support data, and lower management burden.

Five9 also has a similar offering with Salesforce. Meanwhile, ServiceNow has set up similar integrations with Genesys and Zoom.

These announcement signals that, as customers demand tighter CCaaS and CRM connections, both vendors are ready to lead from the front. (Read more…).

Zendesk to Shutter Zendesk Sell, Go All-In on Customer Service

Zendesk is exiting the sales CRM business, closing down its Sell product on August 31, 2027.

Customers will continue to have full access to the Sell product until the shutdown date.

As Zendesk noted in a web post, the move will help channel all its attention toward transforming the customer service stack.

“This change allows us to focus even more deeply on what we do best – helping businesses like yours deliver exceptional customer and employee service,” noted Jennifer Chang, VP of Product Development Program Management and Operations at Zendesk.

By concentrating our efforts on service, we can move faster, innovate more boldly with AI, and build solutions that make a bigger impact for your teams and your customers.

To help customers make the transition, Zendesk has set up a native integration with the Pipedrive sales CRM so they can export their data from Sell. (Read more…).

Salesforce Introduces Agentic IT Service to Compete with ServiceNow in ITSM

Salesforce has officially entered the ITSM space with the launch of Agentic IT Service.

Last week, CEO Marc Benioff announced the company’s plan to showcase a new ITSM product at Dreamforce 2025.

Now, the CRM leader has unveiled the solution a month early, with Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce, taking to LinkedIn to release a video of the new solution in action.

In the post, Chetan claimed that the offering will help IT teams cut costs and empower them to resolve issues “in minutes, not hours.” He added:

Agentic IT Service combines 25 years of Salesforce customer service expertise with the power of Slack and Agentforce to deliver a modern, conversational, and agentic support solution.

But what exactly are ITSM platforms, and how will Salesforce’s differ?

In short, they enable IT teams to efficiently manage the range of services they provide across an organization, from granting app access and configuring devices to running internal applications and overseeing cloud storage.

Traditionally, ServiceNow has been the clear market leader in the sector. However, Benioff believes that Salesforce, through Slack, could challenge that market dominance. (Read on…). 

Genesys Deepens Its ServiceNow Partnership, Releases New Agentic AI & Orchestration Capabilities

Genesys has announced an expanded partnership with ServiceNow at its Xperience 2025 event.

The event also set the stage for the release of new agentic AI capabilities, journey orchestration tools, and a program to help establish, connect, and automate end-to-end resolution flows.

Yet, the ServiceNow partnership is the headline-clincher, with those end-to-end resolution flows also a key part of the announcement.

Indeed, the two vendors pledged to deliver Agent2Agent (A2A) orchestration. That means brands can build AI agents that flit between the Genesys Cloud platform and ServiceNow Unified CRM, within defined guardrails.

For instance, the newly ‘agentified’ Genesys Virtual Agent may interact with AI agents on the ServiceNow AI Platform to mechanize resolution flows that cross the middle and back offices. That could allow the contact center to automate more complex customer queries.

To further aid mutual customers in extending the scope of contact automation, Genesys and ServiceNow also pledged to provide mutual customers with a unified service model. (Read on…).

ServiceNow Debuts Agentic Playbooks to “Set a New Standard” for Workflow Automation

ServiceNow has rolled out its Zurich release, expanding its platform with several “breakthrough” innovations.

Agentic Playbooks is one of those innovations. It allows teams to break down complex, cross-enterprise processes into step-by-step guides.

Indeed, it offers an interface for teams to map out workflows across enterprise systems, like whiteboard sketches.

To further boost this capability, ServiceNow announced it’s combining Process and Task Mining insights on one platform. As such, companies can better understand how work gets done, identify opportunities for AI agents, and spot where a human touch is critical.

From there, brands can return to their Agentic Playbooks and apply that intelligence to recreate those workflows.

The Playbook can then guide AI agents as they do some of the work and prompt humans when they’re needed to step in.  (Read on…).

RingCentral Acquires CommunityWFM, Boosts Its Contact Center Platform

RingCentral has snapped up CommunityWFM, the workforce management (WFM) tech provider.

The move aims to bolster RingCentral’s cloud contact center solution: RingCX, which it launched in late 2023.

Since then, RingCX has accrued over 1,000 customers. Many chose the CCaaS solution because of its close integration with RingEX, the widely implemented unified communications platform.

While that’s its biggest differentiator, RingCentral had all the baseline capabilities of a CCaaS platform apart from WFM, until now.

Already, CommunityWFM’s capabilities are available as “RingCentral AI Workforce Management (WFM)”, which starts at a pricing point of $20 per agent, per month.

Additionally, with RingCX’s automated quality assurance (QA) solution, RingCentral can ensure its solution delivers a broad range of workforce optimization (WFO) capabilities. (Read on…).