Why Cloud-First CX Is No Longer Enough

Kore.ai’s Raj Koneru Reveals the Multi-Agent CX Shift Leaders Can’t Ignore

As customer experience (CX) teams push beyond basic chatbot deployments, a new model is emerging: coordinated multi-agent AI systems that can execute end-to-end workflows across teams, tools, and policies. In this interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Raj Koneru, Founder and CEO at Kore.ai, about why this shift is happening now and what leaders should demand before they trust AI with real customer-facing execution. Koneru argues that the last 12 months have changed the game because AI models have improved dramatically in both generation and reasoning. That progress moves automation beyond question answering and into task completion, where agents can take action across systems and processes. In regulated and complex environments, he says, a single agent is limited by context and scope. A multi-agent approach better mirrors how organizations actually operate, with specialized functions like billing, fraud checks, fulfillment, and escalation requiring orchestration. Koneru also outlines what tends to fail in single-bot deployments: inconsistent answers, broken handoffs between bots and humans, actions taken without enough context, and heavy cleanup work for frontline teams. Risk and compliance leaders, he adds, often struggle because prompt chains offer limited traceability and control. For CX leaders, he recommends insisting on deterministic policy enforcement, clear permission boundaries, human escalation controls, and runtime observability before going live. He emphasizes that governance should not be bolted on after deployment. It needs to be embedded into the platform and runtime so teams can reproduce, audit, and optimize outcomes. Finally, Koneru shares the production metrics that matter: non-negotiables like failure recovery, auditability, and compliance, plus business outcomes like resolution rates, customer effort reduction, and time to resolution. He also highlights the “soft” impact of better experiences on brand loyalty and long-term value.

Why Cloud-First CX Is No Longer Enough

CX Today’s Rhys Fisher sits down with Rupert Adair, Director of Product Management at Enghouse Interactive. The cloud migration era has run its course, but for many enterprises, it hasn't delivered the CX transformation promised. With Flexera's 2025 data showing over 20% of workloads being moved back from public cloud to on-prem environments, the conversation has shifted. It's no longer about whether you're in the cloud; it's about whether your architecture is built to win. Rupert Adair explains what that looks like in practice. Cloud got the industry moving. But moving fast in the wrong direction is still the wrong direction. Adair makes the case that the next competitive edge in CX is architectural thinking, not cloud adoption. 🔴 The cloud-first playbook has real limits: data sovereignty, uptime requirements, and legacy integration mean that simply lifting workloads doesn't automatically improve customer experience. Rupert shares a real example: a European bank that completed its cloud uplift only to hit data residency issues, latency problems, and lost functionality – making things worse, not better.  🔴 Architecture has to come before deployment: instead of asking ‘what can we move to the cloud?’, winning organizations start with ‘what experience are we trying to deliver?’ As Rupert puts it: “Cloud first asks where should this run. Design first asks what are you trying to build.”  🔴 Hybrid is increasingly the destination, not a detour: Gartner predicts 90% of organizations will adopt hybrid cloud strategies by 2027. Rupert argues that for many enterprises, hybrid is a deliberate architectural end state that delivers both resilience and the flexibility to innovate with AI. For more Customer Experience tech news visit CX Today [https://www.cxtoday.com].

Your Board Wants ROI in Six Months - Your Contact Center Needs Eighteen - Salesforce

Is your board expecting AI ROI in six months while your contact centre needs eighteen? You're not alone — and that gap is producing some genuinely bad decisions. In this interview, Rob Scott sits down with Gautam Vasudev, SVP of Agentforce Contact Center at Salesforce, to get into the real story behind enterprise AI deployments — why 95% of pilots fail to deliver measurable business impact, what the organisations that actually succeed do differently, and how to close the gap between board pressure and operational reality. They cover the data readiness problem most vendors gloss over, the "triple penalty" of deploying AI on stale or badly structured data, a practical 12-month playbook for CX leaders, and why starting small isn't a hedge — it's the only argument your CFO will actually respect. No vendor pitch. Just the honest version.

Cisco: The AI Chatbot Era Is Dead – Here's What Comes Next

At Cisco Live 2026, Cisco pulled back the curtain on a suite of AI-native tools designed to help organizations orchestrate, secure, and manage a blended workforce of human and AI agents. To get the inside track, CX Today’s Rhys Fisher sat down with Vinod Muthukrishnan, VP and GM of Webex CX at Cisco, for a wide-ranging conversation on what the shift to AI-native CX actually demands in practice. Muthukrishnan is clear that the industry has moved past the experimentation phase, and that the bar for what comes next is significantly higher than most vendors are letting on: > “It’s never been easier to build an AI agent. It’s, however, never been harder to make it enterprise grade. And that’s the dichotomy we’ve got to deal with.” The conversation covers a lot of ground. Muthukrishnan pushes back on the industry’s fixation with deflection and containment rates, arguing that no single metric can capture the full customer journey. He walks through Cisco’s AI Agent 360, a framework combining custom guardrailing, runtime monitoring, and Splunk-powered observability, and makes the case that security and observability are foundational requirements for any serious agentic deployment, not optional extras bolted on afterward. He also introduces the concept of “one experience”: the idea that regardless of channel, timing, or how many agents were involved, every customer interaction should feel like a continuation of the last. Looking further ahead, Muthukrishnan raises a question that will resonate with anyone thinking seriously about where this technology leads. If agentic AI can cut across every organizational silo, does the enterprise as we know it still make sense?

Two Lanes, One Outcome: Designing Dual Paths for Humans and AI - TTEC Digital

In this CX Today interview, Carrie Brough, Director of Strategy and Ops for TTEC Digital EMEA, argues that a single CX model is fast becoming a liability. Brough explains why AI-driven interactions need quick, decision-ready responses, while humans still need empathy, context, and brand nuance. Carrie breaks down the operational warning signs that your AI and human traffic are colliding, including repeat contacts, confused outcomes, and frontline teams being forced into a “clean-up” role. The conversation also covers when an interaction should move from the AI lane to a human agent, and why risk, not emotion, needs to drive escalation decisions.