CX is entering its next era: not AI that talks — AI that works.
PLUS: A platform upgrade turning AI from conversation into action
📅 November 21, 2025 | ⏱️ 4-min read
Good Morning!
The real shift in CX is becoming impossible to ignore: AI isn’t just answering questions anymore — it’s doing the work. Today’s stories all point in the same direction. Platforms are fusing with services. Agents are becoming actors. Conversation data is becoming the truth you can’t afford to overlook.
This is the moment where leaders either treat AI like a teammate or keep treating it like another tool. One approach scales. The other falls apart.
Here’s what matters today.
🧠 Sprinklr + SAMY: CX platform meets social-first execution
Sprinklr announced an expanded global strategic partnership with SAMY, a 1,000+ person social-first agency, combining Sprinklr’s AI-native Unified-CXM platform with SAMY’s marketing and execution capabilities. The alliance is positioned as a shift from tactical, project-based support to a tightly integrated go-to-market and delivery model focused on “human-first” experiences and measurable business impact across channels.
Why this matters for CX leadership:
This is the stack + services play: tech alone isn’t winning deals anymore — platforms are partnering deeply with agencies that can turn data and AI into creative, localized experiences.
For you, the risk is obvious: if you only own one side (the platform or the people), you’re dependent. The advantage is in orchestrating both.
Practical question: Who in your organization owns the bridge between AI CX platforms and campaign/experience teams — or is that relationship left to chance?
Source: Sprinklr & SAMY strategic alliance – BusinessWire
💡 8x8 tightens the loop between AI and omnichannel service
8x8 announced new AI and omnichannel enhancements to its Platform for CX: real-time AI voice summaries that auto-log into CRMs, AI-powered post-call transcription in the 8x8 Work app, smarter email handling for agents, and WhatsApp carousel templates for richer campaigns — all on the same CX foundation. The focus is faster first-contact resolution and less agent time wasted on admin.
Why this matters for business:
This is AI as process glue, not a sidecar. Summaries, routing, transcription — all the “boring” pieces that make or break service quality — are being automated in-line.
If your CX stack is still a patchwork of point tools with no shared memory, AI will amplify that chaos instead of fixing it.
Leadership lens: don’t just ask, “Do we have AI in the contact center?” Ask, “Where exactly is AI removing manual work and making it easier to resolve issues on the first interaction?”
Source: 8x8 – Customers Resolve Issues Faster With New AI, Omnichannel Enhancements
🤖 UJET buys Spiral: turning raw conversations into CX intelligence
UJET, an AI-powered contact center provider, has acquired Spiral, a conversational analytics and AI company that analyzes millions of customer interactions across voice, chat, email, surveys, and social media. Spiral’s tech surfaces ultra-specific customer issues, makes interaction data searchable via an AI agent, and is being offered both as “Spiral by UJET” and as a tightly integrated capability inside UJET’s AI-first CCaaS platform. The release notes that many enterprises manually extract only about 5% of issues from ~300,000 monthly support conversations — leaving millions of dollars in churn on the table.
Why this matters for CX & commercial strategy:
UJET is going after the “why” layer of CX — using AI to mine conversation data at scale and feed insight back into products, self-service and agent scripts.
If you’re still relying on quarterly NPS and anecdotal feedback while sitting on thousands of support transcripts, you’re effectively running blind.
Strategic move: decide who owns “conversation intelligence” in your org. If no one owns it, you’re handing this advantage to whoever in your category moves first.
Source: UJET Acquires Spiral – BusinessWire
📱 From chatbots to agentic AI: Telcos show what ‘doing’ looks like
Telecompetitor highlights how rural broadband service providers are moving beyond traditional chatbots to agentic AI — systems that don’t just answer questions but take actions: running diagnostics, rebooting equipment, creating tickets, and even handling sales flows end-to-end. The article stresses that these AI agents must be specialized (sales, technical support, internal ops), deeply trained on company procedures, and governed with clear escalation rules — more like onboarding a digital employee than switching on a widget.
Why this matters for your CX roadmap:
This is the real inflection point: from “AI that talks” to AI that acts inside your systems. That’s a different level of risk, value and governance.
The hidden cost is training: gathering policies, troubleshooting flows, testing edge cases, and setting guardrails. Leaders who ignore this will see erratic behaviour and trust erosion.
Ask yourself: if you hired a digital employee tomorrow, what playbook would you give them? If you don’t have one, you’re not ready for agentic AI — no matter what your vendor promises.
Source: More Than Just Talk: Agentic AI Gets the Job Done – Telecompetitor
🛠️ Tool of the Day: ASAPP Customer Experience Platform (CXP)
ASAPP launched its Customer Experience Platform (CXP) — pitched as a unified platform for the “agentic enterprise.” Powered by its GenerativeAgent® technology, CXP gives every customer a personalized AI agent that can orchestrate end-to-end workflows across chat and voice. It connects into existing CRMs, billing and ticketing systems, and uses different modes (generative flows, rule-based flows, human involvement) depending on the task. It also captures persisted interaction data to build long-term memory and provides transparent tools for orchestration, testing, and monitoring.
Commercial & CX impact:
This is the system of action idea: instead of adding more channels, you centralise decisions and workflows in an AI layer that sits on top of existing systems of record.
For enterprises with complex service environments (airlines, banks, telcos), this kind of platform can shift the contact center from a cost centre to a value engine — if you’re willing to redesign processes around it.
Leadership questions:
Which workflows are you prepared to let AI complete end-to-end?
How will you prove safety, fairness and accuracy to your board and your customers?
Who signs off when an AI agent changes something material (like a billing decision or a travel rebooking)?
Source: ASAPP CXP – Official Press Release
📊 DCX AI Data Stat
FedEx’s 2025 Holiday Season E-Commerce Trends report finds that 97% of large U.S. retailers surveyed plan to use AI to enhance the shopping experience this holiday season, using tools like chatbots, audience targeting, inventory management, and pricing optimisation. On the consumer side, 4 in 10 shoppers expect to use AI themselves — mainly to find deals, compare products, get gift ideas and research brands.
Why this matters for CX & behaviour:
This isn’t niche anymore. AI is becoming the default interface for both sides of the transaction — retailer and customer.
If your brand isn’t using AI to personalise discovery, service and returns, customers will increasingly experience that level of intelligence elsewhere and then bring those expectations back to you.
Strategic implication: your returns, logistics and post-purchase experience are now AI problems, not just ops problems. Ignore that, and you’ll lose on convenience even if your product is strong.
Source: FedEx – 2025 Holiday Season E-Commerce Trends Report
⚡ Your 1-Minute Action Plan
Pick one of your high-volume journeys — e.g. “order issue,” “billing question,” or “onboarding.”
Map the current workflow end-to-end (systems touched, decisions made, handoffs).
Mark three steps where an AI agent could do something concrete (summarise, route, approve within rules, trigger an action).
Design a pilot where AI executes those steps with guardrails, and define one metric each for:
Customer effort
Time to resolution
Cost per case
If you can’t define those metrics, you’re not ready for agentic AI — you’re still in “shiny object” mode.
🔎 See you Monday
Everything this week comes back to one idea: AI is becoming part of the operational heartbeat of CX. Not the extra layer — the core layer. And the teams that win will be the ones willing to rethink the work itself, not just the interface.
Before the week closes, ask yourself:
Where are we still doing work manually simply because no one has questioned it?
That’s your first real AI opportunity.
👥 Share This Issue
If this issue challenged your thinking or helped you lead better, share it with someone who’s ready to audit their AI strategy.
📬 Feedback & Ideas
What tension between AI and customer experience should we be talking about next? — drop me a line; the best insights come from leaders doing the work.