If Customers Have to Repeat Themselves, You Didn’t Automate Anything.
PLUS: Closed-loop CX is the new bar: detect friction, fix the root cause, and stop the repeat contacts.
📅 January 22, 2026 | ⏱️ 4-min read
Good Morning!
The Executive Hook:
We’ve all been weirdly proud of “smart” bots that can talk for five minutes and still not actually fix anything. Meanwhile the customer’s just sitting there thinking, “So… do I have my refund or not?”
That’s why today’s theme is simple: AI that closes the loop beats AI that fills the air. Medallia + Ada is basically a push to turn CX insights into real-time repairs, not another quarterly “here’s what customers are mad about” deck. And the Capacity numbers are the gut check: if 58% of customers don’t feel truly resolved, then “resolved” is just a status we made up to feel better.
🧠 THE DEEP DIVE: Medallia + Ada want CX signals to trigger real-time fixes, not just reports
The Big Picture: Medallia and Ada announced a partnership to unite customer intelligence with agentic AI—so insights can drive action inside the journey (not just a quarterly readout).
What’s happening:
One loop, not two tools: Medallia’s experience/operational signals get paired with Ada’s automation so patterns can translate into fixes.
Automation with adult supervision: The framing is “enterprise-ready” automation—meaning policy, QA, and governance aren’t optional add-ons.
The goal isn’t fewer chats—it’s less friction: Think fewer repeat contacts and fewer “why is this still broken?” moments.
Why it matters:
This is what mature CX AI looks like: not “the bot handled 20% more volume,” but “the business got smarter and stopped creating the same tickets.” If your AI doesn’t reduce root causes, it’s just a faster hamster wheel.
The takeaway:
Ask one question in every AI review: Where does the insight go next? If the answer is “a dashboard,” you’re still in the observation era.
📊 CX BY THE NUMBERS: Customers don’t want “resolved.” They want done.
Data Source: Capacity — The Closure Index
58% of customers say their support issue isn’t truly resolved. (Translation: your ticketing system is lying.)
Clear communication and speed drive closure—simple, but hard to deliver consistently across channels.
“Resolved” ≠ “I trust this won’t come back.”
The Insight:
Closure is the loyalty moment. It’s when the customer stops thinking about you—and that’s the win.
🧰 THE AI TOOLBOX: TruGen AI Video Agents (because sometimes text feels like a dodge)
The Tool: TruGen makes AI video agents—basically, a conversational AI that shows up as a lifelike on-screen person. Think “digital concierge” energy, not a static avatar reading a script.
What it does: You can plug in real-time voice + video (or voice-only) so customers can talk, get answers, and move through a task with an agent that feels more human than a chat bubble. The big promise is low-latency, natural interaction, and an API-first setup so it can live inside your app or site.
CX Use Case:
The “please don’t make me type this” moments: troubleshooting, returns/claims intake, onboarding—anything where customers abandon because the process is annoying.
Situations where empathy is half the product: billing surprises, cancellations, service recovery. Sometimes the medium matters, and video can lower the temperature faster than text.
Trust:
Here’s the honest bit: video is a trust accelerator—in both directions. If the agent is vague, slow, or feels “uncanny,” customers won’t just dislike it… they’ll distrust the brand behind it. So if you go video, do the basics well: clear disclosure, tight permissions, and real governance. TruGen positions the offering as enterprise-ready and highlights security/compliance messaging—still worth validating in your own review, but it’s the right conversation to be having.
⚡ SPEED ROUND: Quick Hits
Yelp is acquiring AI lead-management platform Hatch to help service businesses respond faster and convert leads (aka: fewer missed calls, fewer lost customers).
Mastercard is publishing “rules of the road” for agentic commerce—because AI agents buying things on behalf of humans only scales at the speed of trust.
GoTo rolled out new AI tools for auto dealerships (integrations + AI scheduling + insights) aimed at answering more calls and booking more service.
📡 THE SIGNAL: Clean endings are the new competitive advantage
Most CX stacks are brilliant at spotting friction—and oddly bad at removing it. We’ll name the problem, tag the transcript, build the dashboard… and then wonder why the same customers come back with the same issue wearing a slightly different outfit.
That’s why Medallia + Ada is interesting. It’s not another “insights” story. It’s a push toward closed-loop CX: learn something and act on it fast enough that the customer actually feels the difference. Pair that with the Closure Index stat—58% of customers don’t feel truly resolved—and “resolved” starts to look like an internal coping mechanism, not an outcome.
And if you’re thinking about video agents like TruGen, the stakes go up again. The second you put a face on the experience, you’ve basically made a brand promise. If the agent is slow, vague, or uncanny, customers don’t blame the tool—they blame you. The advantage in 2026 won’t be having more automation. It’ll be delivering fewer repeats, clearer next steps, and experiences that end cleanly.
See you tomorrow,
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