PE Pours Fuel On CX Automation, Human-AI Harmony Tested
PLUS: Fix the AI handoff and blueprint your vendor stack
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🗓️ August 26, 2025 ⏱️ Read Time: ~5 minutes
👋 Welcome
Today’s CX narrative is dominated by high-stakes consolidation and real-world pivots. Asset managers are doubling down on AI-powered CX platforms, but cracks are showing in the form of automation misfires and employee trust challenges. The pressure is building to prove not just efficiency, but reliability and confidence.
📡 Signal in the Noise
Tomorrow’s CX isn’t about smarter tech, it’s about how humans and machines work together without losing trust or empathy.
🧭 Executive Lens
Private equity’s $2 billion acquisition of Verint signals both confidence and urgency in AI-driven CX investments. But real-world failures—a glitchy AI drive-thru and outdated ways of measuring human-AI performance remind us that orchestration matters more than hype. The real winners will blend automation with human trust, not replacement.
📌 Stories That Matter
💰 Thoma Bravo swoops in on Verint for $2 billion
Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire AI-powered CX platform Verint, paying roughly $20.50 per share in cash and valuing equity at about $1.23 billion. The deal, which includes debt, is expected to close by Verint’s fiscal year end. The acquisition underscores the pace of consolidation in the CX automation market.
Why this matters: Private equity is consolidating CX tech enablers, betting big on AI to drive efficiency at scale.
Try this: Map your CX tech stack and identify opportunities to rationalize platforms or partner with orchestration-capable vendors.
Source: Reuters
🔗 LivePerson teams with AWS to unify CX channels
LivePerson has integrated with Amazon Connect, blending voice and digital conversational AI into a single customer support platform. This joint play aims to deliver consistent experiences across historically siloed channels. The shift highlights how unified platforms reduce friction and enable more data-rich service.
Why this matters: Channel silos are crumbling, and unified tools align more closely with customer expectations.
Try this: Pilot a cross-channel orchestration platform to measure containment and CSAT lift across both voice and digital journeys.
Source: PR Newswire
🚚 DHL: AI as “colleague,” not replacement
DHL is leveraging its AI platform Gaia for call management, translation, and training, handling over a million calls monthly. While job cuts are looming, leadership is stressing that AI supports rather than replaces human work. This approach aims to build trust by framing AI as augmentation.
Why this matters: AI adoption is sustainable only when it is positioned as augmentation, not replacement.
Try this: Design your AI change-management roadmap around human-AI collaboration and involve staff directly in pilot programs.
Source: Financial Times
🍔 When AI goes wrong—White Castle’s drive-thru glitch
An AI-powered drive-thru system at White Castle miscalculated an order, charging a customer $15,400 instead of about $16. The error went viral, triggering outrage and scrutiny of automation reliability. The story highlights how fragile customer trust becomes when everyday AI systems fail.
Why this matters: Automation errors damage trust fast—reliability trumps novelty every time.
Try this: Add anomaly detection and manual override mechanisms to AI systems with financial risk before edge cases go live.
Source: The Sun
📊 Stop siloing human and AI agent performance
Evaluating human and AI agents separately is quickly becoming outdated. Customers only care about resolution, not who or what delivered it. Blended performance metrics allow for optimization of the whole system, not isolated parts.
Why this matters: Standalone metrics distort incentives and dilute accountability.
Try this: Experiment with blended SLAs like resolution time or FCR that measure “team performance” across both AI and human agents.
Source: No Jitter
💡 Prompt of the Day
The Human-AI Handoff Stress Test
Analyze your customer service workflow for human-AI handoffs and identify:
1. The most common failure points when AI escalates to humans.
2. Latency introduced during handoff and its impact on customer sentiment.
3. Signals customers give that AI misses before escalation.
4. Opportunities to preempt escalation with better AI prompts or routing.
Use this format in your output:
- Handoff Map: Visualize all AI → Human transitions.
- Pain Points: 3 key friction areas with customer examples.
- Trust Risk Score: Rate 1–10 with justification.
- Fix Script: Rewrite 2 AI responses to smooth escalation.
What this uncovers: Pinpoints the exact cracks in your AI-human orchestration that erode trust.
How to apply: Use insights to redesign escalation logic, adjust AI guardrails, and retrain agents for smoother pickup.
Where to test quickly: Start with billing disputes or complaint escalations—journeys where trust is most fragile.
🛠️ Try This Prompt
The CX Tech Consolidation Blueprint
As a CX strategist, evaluate our vendor stack with a focus on orchestration ROI. Based on this data: [INSERT VENDOR LIST + COSTS], create a consolidation plan that includes:
1. Overlapping platforms or redundant licenses.
2. Integration gaps that create friction across channels.
3. Orchestration capabilities missing from the current stack.
4. Cost savings potential from consolidation.
5. Risk factors of vendor reduction (data loss, migration complexity).
6. A phased 90-day consolidation roadmap with quick wins and long-term milestones.
Format as an executive briefing with projected savings, efficiency gains, and impact on customer satisfaction.
Immediate use case: Transforms vendor sprawl into a clear plan for simplification and ROI.
Tactical benefit: Equips you with a board-level briefing to push consolidation and smarter orchestration.
Quick to implement: Start by mapping license costs against usage and running 1–2 pilot consolidations in high-volume channels.
📎 CX Note to Self
Human trust is the real ROI of CX automation.
👋 See You Tomorrow
I’m keeping a close eye on how companies handle the messy middle—where AI passes the customer to a human. Those moments can either build trust or destroy it. Add in the growing push to simplify vendor stacks, and you’ve got two big levers for shaping the future of CX.
How are handoffs working in your org? Are they seamless, or are customers still feeling the cracks? Hit reply and share what you’re seeing.
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-Mark
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