But there is a particular kind of conference experience that senior CX leaders tend to describe when you ask them what they are actually looking for. It’s not about the biggest audience or the longest speaker list. It’s about something harder to engineer: a conversation that changes how you think, a CX peer who has wrestled with the exact problem sitting on your desk right now, and relationships that are still paying dividends years later.

When is the last time you left a conference having learned something that actually changed how you work? When is the last time you met someone in a session who became a genuine thought partner, not just a LinkedIn connection? When is the last time a conference sent you home thinking differently about your job function?

That is what CRS is built around.

At CRS Scottsdale (September 30–October 2, 2026), the format is intentionally intimate, designed to foster real conversations, share knowledge, and build relationships that outlast the event itself.

Here’s what sets it apart from other CX conferences.

Leaders Learning from Leaders

At most conferences, you learn from a stage. At CRS, you learn from the person sitting across from you at dinner. The insights come from the CX executive who just cracked a problem you have been wrestling with for months, or the C-suite keynote speaker who is willing to share not just what is working, but what isn’t. There is a candor in the room that is rare because it is composed of people who have actually done the work.

“This is the only event where true CX leaders can learn from other leaders.”

— Ebrahim Hyder, Vice President of Customer Service, Michael Kors

That peer-to-peer dynamic changes everything about how knowledge moves through an event. You aren’t passively absorbing presentations. You are actively exchanging hard-won experience with the people who understand your challenges most deeply.

Intimate by Design

CRS is intentionally small. And that is the whole point. You are not navigating a convention center floor hoping to catch five minutes with someone meaningful. The smaller scale is a deliberate structural choice that shapes every aspect of the event, from the session format to the way the agenda is built, with dedicated connection time woven throughout.

Collaboration at scale is a contradiction in terms. Real collaboration, the kind that surfaces new ideas and shifts your thinking, requires enough space for a genuine conversation. CRS is built around that insight.

“One of the things I really love about these conferences is how intimate it is. The smaller environment allows for a lot more collaboration.” 

— Dima Cichi, Global Customer Success & Service Transformation Leader, Microsoft 

An Openness You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

Something happens when you put the right people in a room together. The attendees who come to CRS are not there to pitch or to perform. They are there because they genuinely care about the customer experience and want to get better at it, alongside others who share this. That shared purpose creates a culture of openness that is hard to manufacture and impossible to fake.

“What keeps me coming back year after year are the friendships you make and the people you trust.” 

— Lisa Oswald, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Member Services, Travelzoo

When the people in the room trust each other, conversations go deeper. Problems get examined honestly. Advice is given and received in good faith. That is the environment CRS creates and protects.

Relationships That Last Beyond the Event

A conference that leaves you with a stack of business cards is forgettable. A conference that leaves you with a network of genuine partners is something else entirely. Attendees describe the connections they have made at CRS as those that have made them better leaders, strategists, and people. Relationships that did not end when the event did.

“I have developed relationships from coming here over many, many years that transcend work. They’re my partners. And I think that’s very unique in the conference space.There’s no other community like that in the industry.”

— Dave Pitsch, Vice President of Guest Services, Arc’teryx

That word, community, is what separates CRS from everything else. An event happens once a year. A community is always there.

Come Experience CRS for Yourself

We are at a complex moment in customer experience, trying to figure out how to harness AI while doubling down on the human connection that still defines great brands. The tension between those two imperatives is real, and the organizations navigating it best are the ones learning together in rooms like the ones CRS creates.

There is no better place to work through that challenge than alongside the leaders doing it in real time. If you have not been to CRS before, this is the year to find out what everyone keeps coming back for.

Learn More  

Register Today 

The post What Makes CRS Different from Other CX Conferences appeared first on Execs In The Know.

This is a meaningful moment for our community. By opening KIA to consultants and introducing two powerful new features, we’re creating more pathways for the kind of candid, high-value dialogue that makes this community worth showing up for. 

Introducing the KIA Consultant Directory 

At the heart of this update is the new KIA Consultant Directory, a dedicated space within the KIA community where you can explore consultant profiles, review areas of expertise, and quickly identify the right fit for the challenges you’re navigating. 

The KIA Consultant Directory features experienced CX professionals who have built their careers as corporate practitioners before launching their own consulting practices or joining small (1-3 people), specialized consulting firms. 

Whether you’re tackling a CX transformation, evaluating technology investments, or benchmarking your approach against industry best practices, the Directory gives you fast, reliable access to trusted expertise. No cold searches and no guesswork. Just a curated roster of professionals whose backgrounds and specializations you can evaluate at a glance. 

The Directory lives directly within the KIA community, which means it’s seamlessly integrated into the experience you already know.  

A New Forum Built for Open Dialogue 

In addition to the Directory, we’ll launch a dedicated Consultant Discussion Forum where members can talk directly with consultants about relevant topics and challenges. To preserve the peer-to-peer nature of KIA, the main KIA discussion forum will still remain exclusive to corporate practitioners, and consultants will not have visibility into those conversations. 

This forum is designed to be a meeting ground. CX leaders and consultants can exchange perspectives, dig into shared challenges, and bring different vantage points to the topics that matter most in our industry. Consultants bring depth from working across organizations and verticals; community members bring the grounded, day-to-day reality of leading CX from the inside. That combination creates richer conversations for everyone involved. 

Think of it as a way to pressure-test ideas, get outside perspectives, and tap into knowledge that might otherwise take weeks to track down. 

Why This Matters 

KIA has always been built on the belief that great CX thinking happens in a community. This expansion reflects that same philosophy.  

More diverse perspectives mean more robust conversations. More direct access to expertise means faster paths to insight. And more opportunities for collaboration mean that the value you get from KIA membership continues to grow. 

This is about making a great community even better. 

Get Started 

Ready to explore? Head over to the KIA Consultant Directory to browse profiles and discover the expertise now available to you as a community member. 

Then jump into the Consultant Discussion Forum and join the conversation already underway. There’s a lot to talk about, and now, more voices to help us get there. 

Not a KIA member yet? Learn more about the KIA community and request to join to access the Consultant Directory, connect with fellow CX leaders, and participate in the conversations shaping the future of customer experience.

The post Expanding the Circle: KIA Welcomes Consultants to the Community appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Casio understands this better than most. From the calculator that transformed everyday computing to the iconic G-SHOCK watch known for durability and innovation, Casio has built its reputation by creating products people rely on. Today, that same commitment extends beyond the product itself and into every repair request, warranty interaction, and support conversation.

For Casio, customer service is not simply about resolving issues. It is about reinforcing the promise customers believed in when they chose the brand in the first place.

In a recent KIA Spotlight, Execs In The Know sat down with Mike Begala, General Manager of Service North America at Casio, to explore how the company approaches post-purchase support, balances technology with human connection, and creates experiences that strengthen customer loyalty.

The Post-Sale Experience is Where Trust is Reinforced

Casio’s service organization oversees technical support, repairs, parts, warranty programs, and customer care across North America. While operational performance matters, Begala believes success goes beyond traditional service metrics.

The real measure of a great customer interaction is whether someone leaves feeling confident in their decision to choose Casio.

“Some of the best feedback we receive is when a customer tells us they felt taken care of,” Begala shared. “If someone comes to us with a problem and leaves feeling better about the brand than when they started, we’ve done our job.”

That mindset reflects a broader shift happening across customer experience organizations. Customers are no longer evaluating brands only by the products they purchase. They are evaluating how companies respond when something goes wrong.

Combining Digital Efficiency with Human Support

Like many CX leaders today, Casio faces the challenge of delivering fast, convenient support while maintaining the personal connection customers expect.

Begala believes technology plays an important role in simplifying routine interactions and giving employees better access to information. However, technology should enhance the customer experience—not replace the empathy and expertise that make service memorable.

“The strongest teams are always looking for ways to improve customer experience and make things easier for the people around them,” he explained.

For Casio, the goal is creating a seamless experience where customers can quickly find answers when they need them while still having access to knowledgeable support when a more complex situation requires human assistance.

Leadership Starts with Empathy

A key theme throughout Begala’s conversation is the importance of people. While systems, processes, and technology are essential, he believes exceptional service starts with employees who genuinely want to help others.

“You can teach systems and processes, but it’s much harder to teach someone to care about the customer experience,” Begala said.

That focus on empathy is especially important as customer expectations continue to rise. The best service teams are not just solving problems—they are building relationships and creating moments that reinforce trust.

Learning from the CX Community

As a member of the KIA Community, Begala also highlights the value of connecting with other customer experience leaders facing similar challenges.

From evolving technology to changing customer expectations, peer conversations provide valuable opportunities to share ideas, learn from successes, and accelerate innovation.

Casio’s approach reflects a powerful CX lesson: trust is built over time, but it is strengthened in the moments when customers need a brand the most.

Read the full KIA Spotlight to learn how Casio is redefining post-sale customer experiences through empathy, innovation, and a commitment to customer trust.

The post How Casio Builds Brand Trust After the Sale appeared first on Execs In The Know.

But as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, the conversation is shifting. The question is no longer just how organizations can use data to personalize experiences; it is how they can use technology to better understand customers and support the people who deliver those experiences.

How can AI help organizations move from knowing customer preferences to understanding the motivations behind them? And how can companies use AI in a way that enhances the human connections at the center of exceptional service?

A Luxury Hospitality Perspective on AI-Powered Service

In luxury hospitality, where every detail and personal connection matters, this opportunity takes on even greater importance. The challenge is not simply applying technology to make interactions faster or more efficient. It is exploring how AI can help teams create experiences that feel thoughtful, personal, and considered.

That is the conversation Julio Lopez, Vice President of Sales Enablement, Global Reservations at The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, will explore during his keynote at CRS Scottsdale.

In today’s AI discussions, much of the focus centers on automation, efficiency, and cost reduction. The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is approaching AI through a customer-first lens, exploring how the technology can help uncover richer insights, recognize individual preferences, and support employees in delivering more personalized experiences.

During his keynote, Julio will share how his team is using AI to better understand guest personas, identify motivations and expectations earlier in the customer journey, and equip advisors with the intelligence needed to deliver the anticipatory service that defines The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.

As organizations across industries continue evaluating how AI fits into their CX strategies, the conversation around meaningful implementation becomes increasingly important. Technology alone does not create exceptional experiences. The value comes from how organizations apply intelligence to better understand the people they serve and empower employees with the information they need.

What opportunities could emerge if organizations had a deeper understanding of customer expectations before each interaction begins? How can CX leaders balance the possibilities of AI with the importance of thoughtful, human-centered service?

If your organization is exploring what’s next for AI in CX, this keynote will offer a compelling perspective on where the conversation is headed.

Join us at CRS Scottsdale, September 30–October 2, to hear Julio share how The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is reimagining CX through anticipatory service.

Learn more, explore the full agenda, and register today.

The post How Luxury Hospitality is Raising the Bar for Anticipatory Service appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Jyotsna Khandekar sits at the center of that work. As a Director of Product Management, she leads the customer-facing digital platforms and AI initiatives that serve millions of users, including Cisco Community and the systems that surface the right insights to the right customers at the right time. Over 17 years in technology, spanning go-to-market, partner commerce, and now customer experience, she’s built a rare, end-to-end view of how product, revenue, and customer relationships all connect.

We sat down with Jyotsna to talk about where AI is genuinely improving customer experience, what it actually takes to build trust in AI systems, and why she believes the next real competitive edge isn’t your product or your data; it’s how fast your organization can turn customer understanding into action.

Execs In The Know (EITK): AI is transforming customer experiences across industries. What opportunities excite you most, and where do you see organizations getting it wrong?

Jyotsna: What excites me most is the shift AI makes possible in customer experience — moving from reactive to proactive, predictive, and personalized. For most of our support history, we waited for a customer to hit a wall and come to us. AI lets us flip that: anticipate what a customer needs and meet them with the right help at the right moment, sometimes before they’ve even had to ask. That’s a fundamentally better experience, and we’re only at the beginning of it.

Where organizations get it wrong is in starting with technology rather than the customer. There’s a lot of pressure right now to “have an AI story,” which pushes teams to adopt AI first and then hunt for a problem to attach it to. The ones who get it right do the reverse; they start with a real customer problem and ask whether AI is genuinely the best way to solve it. The other trap is optimizing for internal efficiency at the customer’s expense, measuring success by what the company saves rather than the value the customer actually gains.

EITK: Trust has become a critical topic in the age of AI. What does “trustworthy AI” mean to you, and how should organizations build trust with customers while adopting new technologies?

Jyotsna: To me, trustworthy AI comes down to three things: visibility, governance, and safety.

Visibility means you can observe which model handled a request and what data and actions were involved, audit the decisions afterward, and explain the output with clear reasoning and sources. If you can’t see what the system did and why, you can’t trust it.

Governance means real human oversight, with clear conditions for when a person can step in and when they should.

And safety means guardrails: monitoring for abnormal behavior, setting stop conditions, and hardening against attacks. When you can account for all three, and put that visibility in the customer’s hands, the AI earns trust.

Working at Cisco shapes how I see this: trust in the AI era depends on the full stack working together — the network that carries it, the security that protects it, and the observability that lets you see what’s actually happening end-to-end. That’s how you build trust with customers, too: by showing them the system is observable, governed, and safe, not just telling them.

EITK: What’s one AI myth you’d like to debunk?

Jyotsna: One myth I’d debunk is that keeping a human in the loop is a weakness, a sign your AI isn’t good enough yet. I see it the opposite way: it’s a sign of maturity, because it means you understand the stakes. Autonomy without boundaries isn’t innovation, it’s risk.

The goal isn’t to remove people as fast as possible; it’s to know exactly where human judgment matters most and design for it.

EITK: What’s one CX metric you pay closest attention to?

Jyotsna: The one I watch closest is adoption depth — how much of what a customer already owns they’re actually using. I care about it because it’s a leading indicator, not a lagging one: a renewal tells you what has already happened, while adoption depth tells you, months ahead, whether a customer is getting value and is likely to stay. It’s also what my team directly works to move — sending customers the right insights through the right channels about what they’re using and what they’re not yet using, so we’re actively closing that gap. If someone’s using only a fraction of what they’ve invested in, that’s a signal to act now. And if they’re deeply adopted, satisfaction and renewal tend to take care of themselves.

EITK: What technology trend are people underestimating right now?

Jyotsna: This one isn’t about a specific model or chip; it’s about where competitive advantage actually comes from now.

For a long time, the moat was your product or your data. But AI has changed that: product ideas can be copied and rebuilt faster than ever, and data alone is everywhere. So in my view, the real moat now is context, and what I’d call contextual velocity. Context is how deeply you understand your users; contextual velocity is how fast that understanding flows through your organization so you can act on it and turn it into relevant experiences for customers. When anyone can copy the product, what differentiates you is the context you hold and how quickly you can put it to work. People are only starting to realize this, but it’s becoming the real differentiator.

This is the first installment of 5 Questions With, a new blog series in which we sit down with CX leaders from different brands to hear how they’re thinking about customer experience today. Keep an eye out for the next conversation.

The post 5 Questions with Cisco’s Director of Product Management appeared first on Execs In The Know.

That gap between what the data says and what customers actually feel is the defining challenge for customer experience (CX) leaders right now. And it is exactly what keynote speaker Julie Weingardt, Chief Operations Officer at Turo, is bringing to the mainstage at CRS Scottsdale.

There is a quiet crisis happening inside organizations that, by every measurable standard, appear to be doing everything right. Operational benchmarks are met, and satisfaction scores hold steady. And yet trust, the thing that actually drives repeat business and long-term loyalty, is eroding in ways the traditional dashboard was never built to detect.

Weingardt has a name for this problem: dashboard blindness. It is what happens when organizations confuse hitting their numbers with understanding their customers. When the metrics are green, but the friction is real, the disconnect does not stay invisible for long. It shows up in social feeds, in churn, and eventually, in revenue.

The Signal in the Silence

One of the most important insights Weingardt will unpack is what unrated interactions reveal. An interaction that goes unscored is not a neutral data point. It is a gap, and those gaps have consequences that quietly compound over time.

As automation becomes a larger part of the customer journey, the moments where customers disengage without providing feedback deserve far more attention than most organizations give them. The absence of a response is itself a response.

The Pressure Every CX Leader Feels Right Now

There is no avoiding the conversation about artificial intelligence (AI). The pressure to reduce costs through automation is real, it is coming from the top, and it is not going away. But Weingardt will challenge CX leaders to think carefully about what gets lost when the pendulum swings too far.

Human empathy, speed in the right context, and the ability to read nuance are not luxuries. They are operational assets with a measurable impact on customer trust. The question is not whether to adopt AI. The question is how to evaluate the trade-offs honestly, using frameworks that account for what a cost-savings analysis alone will never show you.

This is the cost-trust paradox, and navigating it well is quickly becoming one of the most important skills a CX leader can develop.

From Satisfaction to Advocacy

The session is ultimately a call to rethink the entire leadership model around customer loyalty. Satisfaction, as a goal, is reactive by nature. You wait for the interaction to happen, measure how it went, and adjust. Advocacy requires something different: a proactive, systematic approach to how organizations listen, what they measure, and how they scale the kind of experiences that build loyalty over time.

That shift is harder than it sounds, especially inside organizations that have spent years optimizing for the metrics they know how to measure. But it is the work that separates companies’ customers return to from companies customers tolerate.

Why This Conversation Matters Now

The timing could not be more relevant. As AI capabilities expand and budget pressures intensify, the temptation to optimize for efficiency at the expense of connection has never been stronger. Weingardt brings a practitioner’s perspective to a conversation the industry needs to have with honesty and urgency.

Whether you lead CX for retail, a financial institution, healthcare, or anywhere in between, the dynamics she is describing are not unique to Turo. They are the defining tensions of the moment.

Hear Weingardt’s full keynote at CRS Scottsdale. Learn more and register to attend.

The post Why Trust is a CX Metric That Matters appeared first on Execs In The Know.

These shifts were at the center of our recent Outsourcing Briefing, held on May 7, 2026, at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond. The one-day executive gathering brought together CX leaders for candid conversations about the realities of outsourcing in an AI-driven world, from workforce transformation and operational governance to trust, performance, and the evolving role of strategic partnerships.

Here are some of the biggest themes and takeaways that emerged throughout the day.

Turnover isn’t just a BPO problem; it’s a shared cost

Nearly every leader in the room is wrestling with attrition and has started building it into the contract.

One approach: instead of chasing a raw turnover number, track time to proficiency: how long it actually takes an agent to become fully productive on your specific product, and tie incentives to retaining people past that point. For complex products, that number can be well over a year. Once a partner’s team clears that threshold, they gain access to higher-volume or growth opportunities during peak season. It reframes retention as a shared investment rather than a penalty clause.

Another leader described a simpler version: rather than tracking 10 KPIs, pick 2 or 3 that actually matter, and cap how much a partner’s top-performing quartile can shrink in a given month. Fewer metrics, tighter guardrails, and less noise.

The consensus: if turnover isn’t written into your service level agreements (SLAs) yet, it probably should be because even when a partner backfills a seat for free, you’re still paying for it in longer handle times and lost institutional knowledge.

Some companies are quietly rethinking the phone call

One of the more candid moments came from a leader whose team eliminated voice support almost entirely, pushing customers to a self-service portal to reduce inefficient back-and-forth. It worked until it didn’t. For a subset of high-value customers doing complex annual transactions, the lack of a phone option became a genuine trust problem, and the team is now building a more targeted (and possibly paid) phone experience back in.

The lesson wasn’t “don’t cut voice” or “always keep voice”; it was that channel strategy needs to be segmented by customer, not applied as a blanket policy.

Onshore vs. offshore

More than one attendee pushed back hard on the old mental model of “our team” versus “the BPO.” Their approach: every location, including domestic work-from-home teams, gets a site code and is managed to the same standard. No special treatment for the U.S. team, no lower bar for an offshore site. Leaders who’ve made this shift report that it kills the “us vs. them” dynamic that quietly undermines many outsourcing relationships, and in some cases, offshore teams have gone on to outperform the domestic team once expectations are equalized.

Transparency reinforced this. Several leaders described sharing performance data openly across partners by letting one BPO see how another is performing on the same account as a surprisingly effective way to build trust and drive improvement, rather than a competitive risk.

Vetting a partner properly

This was maybe the most tactical, immediately useful advice of the day: when you visit a potential BPO site, don’t just talk to leadership. Ask to speak with frontline agents without their managers present.

The same skepticism applies to the numbers behind the business. A few leaders said they’ve started looping in finance and audit teams to vet a partner’s financial health directly, not just data security, because a BPO that looks great in a pitch deck can still be late paying its own vendors. With consolidation picking up across the outsourcing industry, that diligence is becoming more important, not less.

Regional consideration is getting more nuanced

Geography came up constantly, but not as a straightforward cost conversation, more as a question of fit. The Philippines remains a major hub and was described as a safe, proven choice for a reason, but several leaders pushed back on treating it as a default. A few flagged longer ramp times for complex, less-scripted products, and there was real debate about whether the market’s famously warm, accommodating service style is always the right match. Some customer bases respond better to a more direct, no-frills tone, and that mismatch can show up in satisfaction scores in ways that are easy to miss if you’re only looking at cost and language proficiency.

The most notable shift was geographic curiosity: multiple leaders are actively expanding into or exploring Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa, citing strong English proficiency and labor quality alongside open questions about political stability and operational risk that the group agreed are worth investigating firsthand. Nobody in the room described these markets as fully proven yet; the tone was less “we’ve cracked it” and more “we’re piloting carefully and comparing notes with peers who are doing the same,” which is exactly the kind of ground-truth intelligence that’s hard to get anywhere except a room like this one.

Underneath both points was a broader shift in how leaders are evaluating location altogether: less “where is labor cheapest” and more “where can we find the right combination of skill, tone, stability, and scalability for this specific line of business.” A single global outsourcing strategy is giving way to a more deliberately blended footprint, matched to the complexity and sensitivity of the work being handled.

Outcome-based pricing has momentum

There’s a real appetite for moving away from pure productive-hour pricing toward outcome- or value-based models. But leaders running businesses with many product lines and transaction types described the practical challenge honestly: it’s hard to set fair, meaningful targets when your business has dozens of different call types, each with its own effort and value profile.

Nobody in the room claimed to have fully solved this, but the direction of travel was clear.

AI is the backdrop to every one of these conversations

AI didn’t dominate the discussion, but it ran underneath all of it as the thing that will keep pulling the “mundane, repetitive” work out of outsourced teams over time, and as a source of new tension (agents optimizing for first-contact resolution sometimes over-extend calls trying to preempt every possible follow-up question).

Those in attendance don’t think outsourcing is going away because of AI. If anything, the room’s read was the opposite: outsourcing is likely to grow as a strategic lever over the next few years, not shrink, with AI reshaping what gets outsourced rather than whether it does.

As customer expectations, AI capabilities, and outsourcing strategies continue to evolve, ongoing peer dialogue has never been more valuable.

Want in on the next conversation?

Keep an eye on our leadership events page and join us at an upcoming Outsourcing Briefing in Spring 2027 to connect with fellow CX leaders, exchange practical insights, and explore the strategies shaping the future of customer experience outsourcing. Whether you’re reevaluating existing partnerships or building your next-generation operating model, these discussions are designed to help you lead with greater confidence and clarity.

The post What We Learned About CX Outsourcing at Microsoft HQ appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Not burying the disclosure or softening it with a vague persona name and hoping no one asks. Actually telling customers upfront that they’re talking to an AI and giving them an immediate way out if they’d prefer a human.

The result, according to practitioners who attended our latest Virtual Executive Roundtable who’ve deployed this at scale? The vast majority of customers stay and engage.

In an era of debate about whether AI can match human service quality, organizations that lead with full transparency find that only a small fraction of customers opt out. And those who stay report customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores that, while not yet at parity with human agents, are closing the gap fast. Some deployments are seeing AI-handled interactions score 93% compared to 98% for humans.

What Actually Frustrates Customers

Most organizations approach AI deployment with a reasonable-sounding concern: if we tell customers they’re talking to a bot, they’ll disengage, they’ll demand a human, or they’ll leave frustrated. This instinct is understandable.

A Gartner survey found that 61% of consumers want the ability to toggle AI interactions on or off, reinforcing that customers don’t reject AI; they just want agency over it.

What actually frustrates customers isn’t AI; it’s deception. It’s filling out a form, expecting a live agent, only to discover mid-conversation that you’ve been talking to a bot the whole time. It’s being transferred without context, left waiting, or handed off to a human who has no idea what was already discussed.

Transparency short-circuits all of that. When customers know from the start what they’re dealing with, and know they can leave if they want to, they calibrate their expectations accordingly. And when the AI delivers, they’re satisfied.

What Transparency Looks Like

In practice, the organizations seeing these results aren’t just slapping a disclaimer at the bottom of a chat window.

They’re doing a few things deliberately:

• A named AI persona. Not “our virtual assistant,” an actual character with a name that sets clear expectations. This gives customers something concrete to interact with, rather than an ambiguous blob of automation.
• An immediate opt-out. From the very first message, without a maze of options or having to express frustration to trigger a transfer. Just a clear path to a human, available at any point.
• Continuity through handoff. When a customer does choose to transfer, the human agent receives the full conversation history. Nothing is repeated, nothing is lost. The handoff feels seamless rather than punitive.

Salesforce’s 7th edition State of the Connected Customer report, surveying 16,500+ individuals, found that trust in businesses to use AI ethically dropped from 58% in 2023 to just 42% in 2024, a 16-point decline in a single year.

From the same Salesforce report: 89% of customers say it’s important to know when they’re communicating with AI rather than a human, yet most brands still don’t consistently disclose it.

The low opt-out rates practitioners are seeing aren’t a sign that customers are trapped. They’re a sign that the experience is good enough that customers don’t feel the need to leave.

Some Interactions Shouldn’t Be Handled by AI

These findings challenge something deeper than an operational assumption. They challenge a C-suite narrative that has framed AI deployment as an inherently delicate act of customer management, to be introduced gradually, carefully disguised, and constantly hedged.

That framing has it backward. Customers are not fragile or universally hostile to AI. What they are is perceptive. They know when they’re being misled, feel the friction when a bot pretends to be something it isn’t, and they reward honesty with engagement.

There’s also an important exception worth noting: some interactions should never be handled by AI, full stop. Pet loss. Genuine financial hardship. Emotional escalations. These are human moments, and the organizations getting this right have been explicit about drawing that line. Transparency isn’t just about telling customers what they’re talking to; it’s about knowing, as an organization, where your AI should never go.

Are You Solving for the Wrong Problem?

If your organization is still in the pilot phase, debating how visible to make your AI deployment and nervous about customer backlash, the data suggests you may be solving the wrong problem. The question isn’t how to introduce AI without customers noticing. The question is how to build an AI experience good enough that customers don’t mind.

Transparency is the foundation of that. Not because it’s the right thing to do (though it is), but because it’s what works. It sets accurate expectations, builds trust, and creates the conditions under which customers will give your AI a fair chance — and, as practitioners are finding, most of them will decide it earns one.

The brands that will lead in AI-powered CX over the next few years won’t be the ones that hid their AI the longest. They’ll be the ones who trusted their customers enough to be honest and built something worth being honest about.

These are exactly the kinds of candid, leader-level conversations happening inside our Virtual Executive Roundtables. If you want to hear how your peers are thinking through the opportunities and tradeoffs ahead, and contribute your own perspective to the discussion, join us at a future Virtual Executive Roundtable. It is a chance to step into a smaller, high-value conversation with fellow CX leaders navigating many of the same questions in real time.

Join our mailing list to receive event invites.

The post Why Transparency is a Good AI CX Strategy appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Across industries, CX leaders are now facing a familiar tension: strong momentum in adoption, uneven results in execution. AI is embedded in more contact center workflows than ever before, yet achieving consistent, enterprise-wide impact remains difficult. The technology is advancing faster than most operating models can absorb it.

According to our 2026 CX Leaders Trends & Insights: Corporate Edition Report, two-thirds of contact centers now operate with some form of AI in their workflows, more than double the rate in 2022. But only 7% of CX leaders describe themselves as very effectively meeting their AI objectives. Nearly half say they are only somewhat effective.

That gap tells its own story. This is a question of translation, moving from isolated use cases to reliable, repeatable performance inside complex service environments.

Turning AI into Operational Impact

The reality is that AI in CX is no longer a pilot conversation. It is an operational one. And in operational terms, success depends less on what the technology can do in theory and more on how it behaves under real-world constraints: legacy systems, fragmented data, shifting customer expectations, and frontline teams who must integrate new tools without losing service quality.

The same research underscores the tension:

• 67% of contact centers now use AI (up from 31% in 2022)
• 49% cite customer frustration with AI quality as a growing concern
• AI virtual assistants still resolve only ~60% of interactions, compared with 87% for phone-based service

These are not signs that AI is failing. They are signals that scale is harder than adoption. What separates progress from stagnation is rarely the model or platform itself. It is the clarity of the use case, the discipline of implementation, and the willingness to confront what happens after deployment when customers begin to interact with the system in unpredictable ways.

In many organizations, early AI wins are real but isolated. A reduction in handle time here, a deflection improvement there, or a successful pilot that performs well under controlled conditions. The challenge emerges when leaders try to extend those results across channels, geographies, and volumes without losing performance and customer trust.

That is where the conversation is shifting now: from “what can AI do?” to “what does it take to make it reliable and scalable?”

From AI Possibility to AI Proof

This is precisely the value of examining AI through structured use cases, not as abstract innovation stories, but as operational decisions. What problem was being solved? What trade-offs were made in design? What changed in the workflow? And what happened when the system met real customer behavior?

Our upcoming event, From Investment to Impact: Rapid-Fire AI Use Cases for Customer Experience, is built around that premise. It brings together real implementations from across CX environments, each grounded in a defined business challenge, a specific execution approach, and measurable outcomes.

Facilitated by Chad McDaniel, President of Execs In The Know, the format is intentionally direct. Solution providers present concrete use cases, and CX leaders respond in real time with questions grounded in their own operational realities: what works, where it works, and why.

For leaders navigating AI strategy today, the value is not in another overview of what is possible. It is in seeing what is already working under real constraints, and understanding what it actually takes to replicate it.

Join us and learn how leading organizations are applying AI in real CX environments, the challenges they’ve encountered, and the results they’re achieving.

This session is exclusively for end-user corporate CX leaders responsible for customer experience strategy, operations, and technology decisions.

If you are a vendor interested in participating as a solution provider, please contact Scott Moberly at Scott@execsintheknow.com.

The post What AI Use Cases Are Really Delivering in CX Today appeared first on Execs In The Know.

A new research report from Execs In The Know, CX Agent Insights: Perspectives from the Front Line, changes that. Based on a 33-question survey of 107 contact center agents across internal and outsourced environments, it delivers something rare: an unfiltered, data-driven look at what agents actually experience, what motivates them, and what’s holding them back.

A Workforce That Genuinely Wants to Succeed

Here’s the good news: your agents care. A lot.

An overwhelming 88% of agents surveyed report being passionate about the brands they represent, and 82% say they’re satisfied in their roles. Nearly 9 in 10 believe their organization is committed to putting the customer first. This isn’t a disengaged workforce waiting for the clock to run out; it’s a motivated group of professionals who want to do meaningful work and do it well.

In fact, 67% of agents say they plan to stay and grow within the contact center industry in the long term. That’s a workforce with real tenure potential, and a real appetite for investment. So if agents are engaged and aligned, what’s the problem?

Tools, systems, and technology that simply aren’t keeping up with job demands.

Your Agents Want Faster, More Reliable Tools

When agents were asked what area of their contact center operation most needed improvement, technology ranked first, cited by 24% of respondents. Only 40% say they’re very satisfied with the technology they use day-to-day. Just 50% report that their systems integrate well and work seamlessly together. And when asked what single technology improvement would make the biggest difference in their work, the answer wasn’t AI or fancy new features; it was faster, more reliable tools, named by 54% of respondents.

The picture that emerges is of a capable, committed workforce operating with one hand tied behind its back. Agent performance isn’t capped by motivation; it’s capped by the operational environment around them.

The Hidden Risk: Career Clarity

There’s another gap that the research surfaces that deserves attention. While 67% of agents plan to grow in the field, only 47% feel their organization provides clear career paths and advancement opportunities. For a workforce that’s experienced (45% have five or more years in the role), that disconnect is a retention risk hiding in plain sight.

Agents are willing to commit. Organizations need to show they’re willing to invest in return.

What This Means for CX Leaders

The research is clear on one thing: improving CX outcomes starts with improving the agent experience. Not through perks or culture programs alone, but through faster systems, better integration, clearer career frameworks, and feedback loops that actually lead to visible change.

Ready to see the full picture? The complete CX Agent Insights: Perspectives from the Front Line report is packed with data, analysis, and actionable insights across hiring, satisfaction, technology, and operational strategy.

Read and Download the Full Report →

The post 107 Contact Center Agents Have Spoken — Are CX Leaders Listening? appeared first on Execs In The Know.