Stop Automating the Conversation. Start Fixing the Experience.
Plus: AI is finally attacking the root causes of customer pain
📅 February 4, 2026 | ⏱️ 4-min read
Good Morning!
If you’re tired of “AI in CX” meaning “another chatbot,” today’s issue is for you. The more interesting shift is AI moving into the stuff customers never think about until it breaks. Networks. Routing. Reliability. Discovery. The unsexy plumbing that quietly decides whether people stick around or bail.
The Executive Hook:
Let’s be honest: customers do not wake up hoping to “engage with your AI.” They wake up hoping their internet works and their bill makes sense. So here’s the real tension: speed vs. trust. Automation vs. “please do not make me repeat myself.” The teams winning this year will use AI to remove steps, not add layers.
🧠 THE DEEP DIVE: AI comes to the cable box and the call center at the same time
The Big Picture: Google Cloud and Liberty Global signed a five-year partnership to use Gemini and Google Cloud tools across Liberty’s European operations, including TV search and discovery plus customer-service automation.
What’s happening:
Liberty plans to roll this out across multiple European businesses (including Virgin Media O2, Telenet, VodafoneZiggo, and Sunrise).
The partnership includes AI-driven search and discovery in Horizon TV, plus automation in customer service.
They also flagged network reliability and security improvements, and possible data monetization with privacy requirements.
Why it matters: Telecom is where “good enough” service turns into churn, fast. If AI helps detect issues sooner, route problems smarter, and make self-service actually helpful, that’s not just cost savings. That’s fewer angry calls, fewer cancellations, and fewer customers posting “is anyone else’s internet down?” every other week.
The takeaway: If you lead CX, stop treating infrastructure like “someone else’s problem.” AI in service ops, diagnostics, and routing can do more for loyalty than another bot with a cheerful tone.
Source: Liberty Global
📊 CX BY THE NUMBERS: Insurers are using GenAI, but they’re not being reckless about it
Data Source: EIOPA GenAI survey
Nearly two-thirds of insurers surveyed said they are already using GenAI.
64% of the reported use cases focus on back-end productivity (like extracting data, drafting, underwriting support).
36% are working on customer-facing uses like voicebots or chatbots, with many still in proof-of-concept.
The Insight: This is the sensible adoption curve. Start where the blast radius is smaller, build controls, then go customer-facing once accuracy and escalation are rock solid. If your org is trying to skip straight to “fully autonomous support,” congrats, you are speed-running into a trust problem.
🧰 THE AI TOOLBOX: Socialhub.AI Customer Intelligence Platform (CIP)
The Tool: Socialhub.AI launched an “AI-native” customer intelligence platform with deeper deployment on Microsoft Azure.
What it does: The pitch is simple: unify customer signals and workflows so teams can act on the full picture, not fragments.
CX Use Case:
Give agents and journeys one shared, usable customer view across channels, so customers are not forced to re-explain their life story.
Turn feedback and interaction data into next-best actions for retention, recovery, and proactive outreach.
Trust: AI gets weird when it lacks context. Better customer data hygiene means fewer wrong guesses, fewer tone-deaf moments, and fewer “why are you offering me this” experiences.
⚡ SPEED ROUND: Quick Hits
Apple continues expanding its AI Support Assistant - If Apple makes self-service troubleshooting feel effortless, customers will expect that vibe everywhere, including industries that currently treat support like a scavenger hunt.
Genspark uses Twilio to power an AI calling agent - AI placing real calls is peak convenience, until it says the wrong thing to the wrong person. Disclosure, consent, and guardrails just became brand issues.
Snowflake’s deal with OpenAI highlights the enterprise AI race - The real game is distribution: CX teams will increasingly get AI through platforms they already pay for, not shiny standalone tools.
📡 THE SIGNAL: The best CX work is about boring things done brilliantly
We love talking about “conversational AI,” but customers judge you on outcomes.
Did the service come back quickly?
Did the issue get routed to someone who can actually fix it?
Did the experience feel simple?
AI is starting to live inside the systems that make those outcomes happen. That means CX leaders need to be part of reliability, data, and service ops conversations, even if it feels like wandering into the basement with a hard hat. Because that basement is where loyalty gets built, quietly, one avoided headache at a time.
See you tomorrow,
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📬 Feedback & Ideas
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