in this issue
The New Human Touch: Re-Earning Trust in the Age of AI
As AI reshapes customer experience, trust, not efficiency, becomes the differentiator.
by Execs In The Know
For the better part of a decade, customer experience (CX) leaders have been asked some version of the same question: Can artificial intelligence (AI) deliver?
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Can it reduce friction? |
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Can it handle volume? |
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Can it operate at a scale humans simply can’t? |
Most organizations now know the answer. AI can deliver, often faster and more consistently than any
human-led system ever could. But a quieter, more important question has emerged in its place, one that
doesn’t show up neatly on a roadmap: Can AI earn trust?
As AI becomes embedded across customerfacing interactions, from chat and voice to personalization engines, recommendations, and automated decisioning, customers are no longer evaluating technology in isolation. They are evaluating the brand judgment behind it.
Every automated interaction is now interpreted as intent, every decision carries meaning, and every moment either reinforces confidence or erodes it. In this new reality, the human touch hasn’t disappeared. It has simply moved upstream, into how experiences are designed, governed, explained, and felt.
They are also the moments where trust is decided.
Trust Has Become the New CX Currency
Customer trust has always mattered, but AI has changed its economics. When trust is broken in a human interaction, the impact is often contained. When trust is broken in an automated one, it scales instantly. One poorly designed workflow can undermine thousands of interactions before anyone realizes what’s gone wrong.
Trust erodes not because AI exists, but because it is applied without balance or choice. Only 32% of consumers believe companies are doing a good job balancing AI-powered and human assistance. And nearly two-thirds say there is too much AI in customer service journeys.1
This is why trust now behaves like a form of currency in CX. It compounds when handled carefully, and it devalues quickly when mishandled. According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer,2 trust now outweighs traditional drivers like price and convenience when customers decide which brands deserve their loyalty.
At the same time, the financial consequences of broken trust are becoming more immediate. PwC’s CX research3 shows that even long-standing brand affinity can be undone by a single experience that feels dismissive, confusing, or misaligned with customer expectations, particularly when technology mediates the interaction. Customers may not articulate this explicitly, but they feel it. And once confidence is lost, it is far harder to recover than it is to measure.
The CX Conversation Has Shifted
In early AI deployments, organizations focused on containment, deflection, and cost-to-serve. The priority was keeping operations moving. Today, that framing feels incomplete. The most forward-looking CX leaders are asking more uncomfortable, and more strategic, questions:
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Does this experience reflect how we want customers to feel about us? |
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Are we transparent enough about how decisions are made? |
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When something goes wrong, do customers know who, or what, is accountable? |
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Would we be comfortable explaining this interaction on a main stage? |
This is the inflection point. AI is no longer just a back-end efficiency lever; it has become a frontline representative of brand values, and customers are paying attention.
Designing AI Experiences That Customers Can Trust
Trust is rarely built through a single interaction. It is built through consistency, clarity, and restraint over time. Trust-first AI experiences don’t begin with features; they begin with intent. They start by asking: What should a customer reasonably expect from us in this moment?
That expectation shapes everything, from tone and timing to escalation paths and transparency. Customers don’t need every technical detail, but they do need to understand when automation is involved, what it is doing on their behalf, and where the boundaries are. This expectation is increasingly explicit. Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer research4 shows that a majority of consumers want brands to be transparent about when AI is used and how it influences outcomes. Transparency doesn’t diminish confidence; it reinforces it.
In a recent research report on Ethics, Adoption, and Opinion: Consumer Perspectives on AI for CX,5 72% of consumers believe brands should clearly identify when an interaction is powered by AI. Among customers aged 60-plus, that expectation rises to 83%.
Equally important is emotional context. A billing question after a declined payment carries different emotional weight than a product inquiry during normal business hours. Systems that treat those interactions as equivalent may be efficient, but they feel tone-deaf.
A shipping update checked out of curiosity feels different than one opened after a customer has already rearranged plans. A policy explanation requested during onboarding carries less weight than the same explanation delivered after a denied claim or unexpected charge. A service outage notification read during off-hours is not the same as one encountered mid-task, mid-deadline, or mid-crisis. The brands earning trust are designing AI to recognize context, not just intent, and to default to help rather than deflection when stakes are high.
Efficiency and Empathy Are Not Opposites
One of the most persistent myths in CX is that efficiency and empathy exist in tension with one another. In practice, they are often strongest when designed together. AI excels at pattern recognition, recall, and speed. Humans excel at judgment, emotional nuance, and repair when things go wrong. The most effective CX organizations are not choosing between the two; they are intentionally pairing them.
Execs In The Know’s recent article on agentic AI6 in the contact center outlines a clear human–AI operating model, distinguishing when AI should assist, lead with oversight, or operate autonomously. This reinforces that trust depends on when judgment is handed off, not just whether automation exists.
McKinsey research7 consistently shows that organizations combining AI-driven insights with human judgment outperform automation-only models on customer satisfaction, not just efficiency. When humans remain in the loop, customers feel the difference. The reason is simple: Customers don’t want faster answers at the expense of feeling understood. They want experiences that respect both their time and their emotions.
Yet in practice, many AI deployments stop short of this balance. While AI often optimizes operations, it frequently stalls when it comes to customer trust. The findings in the State of the Tech: AI in the Contact Center report8 show that 53% of CX leaders report no significant improvement in customer satisfaction (CSAT) after implementing AI and only six percent say AI has greatly increased CSAT, despite widespread productivity gains.
Re-Training Teams for AI-Assisted Emotional Intelligence
Technology transformations often focus heavily on tools and insufficiently on people. AI changes the nature of frontline work, but it doesn’t remove the need for human judgment. In fact, it raises the bar to maintain it. Agents today are being asked to interpret AI-generated insights, assess their relevance, and decide when to follow them, and when not to. This requires a new kind of skill set: AI-assisted emotional intelligence.
It’s the ability to understand how recommendations are generated without treating them as absolutes. It’s knowing when automation has missed something subtle and stepping in with empathy. It’s maintaining an authentic human voice even when supported by machine intelligence. Leading organizations are investing in training that demystifies AI rather than positioning it as an authority. When agents understand how systems work, they are better equipped to use them responsibly, and to challenge them when needed. That confidence translates directly to customer trust.
According to Accenture,9 consumers who trust companies are 54% more likely to buy again. Yet, only 39% trust companies to have good intentions, and 43% trust their claims.
Measuring Trust
If trust is the outcome, measurement has to evolve. Traditional metrics like handle time and containment still matter, but they tell only part of the story. They don’t capture how customers feel during automated interactions, or whether confidence is building or eroding over time.
Many CX leaders are expanding their measurement frameworks to include sentiment shifts, friction at handoff points, and customer confidence indicators following AI-mediated interactions. Gartner predicts10 that in 2026, most CX organizations will move away from traditional satisfaction surveys in favor of real-time sentiment and behavioral analytics, reflecting a broader shift toward measuring trust as it evolves.
Trust is not static; it changes with every interaction. And increasingly, AI makes those moments visible if organizations choose to measure them.
Governance Is a CX Responsibility
As AI influences more customer-facing decisions, governance can no longer sit exclusively with legal, compliance, or IT teams. Trust-first organizations treat governance as part of the CX operating model. That means defining accountability for automated decisions, auditing for bias regularly, and establishing clear escalation paths for edge cases where ethical judgment is required.
World Economic Forum research highlights11 this tension, with a significant share of consumers expressing concern about bias and misuse in AI-driven services, particularly in regulated and highstakes industries.
Customers may not frame these concerns in technical language, but they feel the impact when systems behave unfairly or inconsistently. Governance, in this context, is not about slowing innovation. It is about protecting credibility at scale.
Hyper-Personalization Under the Trust Microscope
Few areas of AI create more tension than personalization. When done well, personalization saves time, reduces effort, and makes customers feel known. When done poorly, it feels intrusive, unsettling, and overly familiar.
Customers value relevance, but only when personalization feels ethical, transparent, and genuinely helpful. The difference often comes down to agency.
Do customers understand why they are seeing certain recommendations? Can they control how their data is used? Does personalization feel like support, or surveillance? The answers to those questions determine whether personalization builds trust or quietly undermines it.
Personalization as Empowerment
Trust-centered personalization is not about how much data a brand can gather, but how intentionally it chooses to use it. It is grounded in restraint and respect, favoring opt-in models over inference, explaining value in plain language, and giving customers real agency rather than hiding controls in fine print or fragmented settings. When personalization is designed this way, it feels less like targeting and more like service. T
he most trusted brands resist the temptation to know everything. Instead, they focus on knowing what genuinely matters in the moment and being explicit about where the line is drawn. They communicate not only what data is used, but why, and just as importantly, what is deliberately left unused. In an era where AI makes nearly anything technically possible, trust is often built through judgment: the conscious decisions organizations make about when not to personalize, when not to predict, and when to leave space for the customer to lead.
The New Human Touch
I has changed the mechanics of CX, but it hasn’t rewritten the emotional contract customers expect brands to honor. They still want to feel respected. They still want clarity when something goes wrong. And they still want confidence that someone, human or machine, is acting in their best interest, not simply following a script.
What will distinguish the next generation of CX leaders is not how quickly or broadly they deploy AI, but how deliberately they embed it into systems of judgment, accountability, and care. The new human touch is not a retreat from technology. It is the discipline of designing trust into every interaction, upstream, by default, and on purpose long before a customer ever becomes aware of the machine behind it.
That expectation is already here. And increasingly, it is the standard by which customers decide which brands are worth their loyalty and which are not.
Article Links:
- https://execsintheknow.com/knowledge-center/customer-experience-research/hot-topics-research/ethics-adoption-and-opinion-consumer-perspectives-on-ai-for-cx/
- https://www.edelman.com/trust/2024/trust-barometer
- https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/business-transformation/future-customer-experience-is-supply-chain.html
- https://www.salesforce.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/documents/research/State-of-the-Connected-Customer.pdf
- https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketingand-sales/our-insights/unlocking-the-next-frontier-of-personalized-marketing
- https://execsintheknow.com/knowledge-center/customer-experience-research/hot-topics-research/state-of-thetech-ai-in-the-contact-center/
- https://execsintheknow.com/knowledge-center/customer-experience-research/hot-topics-research/state-of-thetech-ai-in-the-contact-center/
- https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-10-21-gartner-unveils-top-predictions-for-it-organizations-and-users-in-2026-and-beyond
- https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/accenture-com/document-2/Accenture-The-Empowered-Consumer.pdf
- https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Transforming_Consumer_Industries_in_the_Age_of_AI_2025.pdf
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Thanks to Our Partner
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Expect real stories of integrity under pressure—from culture flashpoints to customer-impacting crises—and leave with practical insights on how courage, vulnerability, and personal accountability can transform organizations. Attendees will walk away inspired to embrace self-respect as a leadership operating system that not only protects employees and customers but also creates the foundation for authentic, lasting trust. |
Thanks to Our Partner:
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Senior Vice President, Customer Service  |
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 Glen Tillman
Senior Director Product Marketing |
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Thanks to Our Partner
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Thanks to Our Partner
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If you’re looking to quickly accelerate your AI journey and maximize ROI—without overpromising or overengineering—this session is for you.
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How AI Is Powering the Next Wave of Omnichannel Customer Service Today’s customers don’t think in channels. They expect fast, personalized support, wherever they are. From chat and social to messaging apps, email, and phone, customer service is now omnichannel. But with this flexibility comes a new challenge: delivering consistent, contextual, and cost-effective service at scale. In this session, Freshworks will explore how AI is transforming customer support across every channel, not by adding more tools, but by making every interaction smarter. Through a live demo and collaborative discussion, they’ll break down how Freddy AI works across chat and email to resolve common queries, empower agents with insights, and simplify tool complexity. You’ll get a practical look at how it all comes together, including:
Attendees will leave with clear strategies for scaling intelligent support without sacrificing the human touch.
Thanks to Our Partner
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TripAdvisor’s Playbook for AI That Gets 5-Star Reviews: How to Avoid the Implementation Mistakes That Break Customer Experience You’ve seen the pattern: AI projects that start strong, then somehow make everything more complicated. What looked like a quick win turns into months of integration headaches, frustrated teams, and executives asking uncomfortable questions about ROI. TripAdvisor made this exact mistake. Then Tim Barker and his team developed a holistic approach that transformed their entire customer support operation—dramatically improving resolution times while reducing costs and boosting agent satisfaction. In this hands-on session, Tim and Laivly’s Matt Bruno will walk you through the same methodology that delivered these results. What You’ll Experience Real-World Case Study Strategic Framework Deep-Dive Interactive Workshop Walk out with your personalized AI workflow map and phased implementation plan.
Thanks to Our Partner
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RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG) is a leading provider of AI-driven cloud business communications, contact center, video and hybrid event solutions. RingCentral empowers businesses with conversation intelligence, and unlocks rich customer and employee interactions to provide insights and improved business outcomes. For more information, visit: ringcentral.com . |
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Powered by purpose, TELUS Digital leverages technology, human ingenuity and compassion to fuel remarkable outcomes and create inclusive, thriving communities in the regions where we operate around the world. Guided by our Humanity-in-the-loop principles, we take a responsible approach to the transformational technologies we develop and deploy by proactively considering and addressing the broader impacts of our work. Learn more at: telusdigital.com |
TELUS Digital ibex delivers innovative BPO, smart digital marketing, online acquisition technology, and end-to-end customer engagement solutions to help companies acquire, engage and retain customers. ibex leverages its diverse global team and industry-leading technology, including its AI-powered ibex Wave iX solutions suite, to drive superior CX for top brands across retail, e-commerce, healthcare, fintech, utilities and logistics.For more information, visit: www.ibex.co |
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Flip It Live: How Belk Launched Voice AI in Record Time Why talk about launching AI when you can watch it be deployed in minutes? In this interactive session, you’ll see a real retailer, Belk, set up Flip’s Voice AI from scratch to fully operational in minutes, proving what most vendors call “impossible.” Belk’s Senior Director of Customer Experience, Jessica Patel, joins Flip’s Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, Sam Krut, and Vice President of Demand & Partnerships, Shawn Li, to share how the 137-year-old retailer replaced its IVR with a modern Voice AI experience and went from first conversation to launch in only 74 days. They’ll reveal early results from successfully putting customer-facing AI on phones without a long, custom, expensive build, and the early results Belk is seeing in its most important channel. Join this session for laughs, learnings, and a guide for how your brand can launch Voice AI, too. You’ll see and hear:
Watch a brand “flip the script” on phone-channel CX and walk away with a practical roadmap to launch Voice AI.
Thanks to Our Partner
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Unlocking Call Center Revenue: How Princess Cruises is Driving Growth Most call center agents spend more time figuring out who to call or what to say than actually talking to guests. Princess Cruises is flipping that model — using AI and real-time data to put the right leads, the right insights, and the right timing directly into agents’ hands, making their jobs easier and more rewarding. Join Alvin Stokes, VP of Global Reservation and Guest Services at Princess Cruises, and Scott Sahadi, CEO of harpin AI, as they reveal how new tools are helping agents close more bookings with less guesswork. You’ll learn how Princess Cruises is:
This isn’t about more calls. It’s about smarter calls that convert — faster. If you want to see what significant MoM revenue growth looks like in action, don’t miss this.
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Transforming Your Contact Center into a Modern Resolution Engine For too long, themes in CX have been focused on deflection, asking, “How many customers can we avoid?” The more meaningful question is: “How can we resolve their issues?” Customers don’t care how many steps you eliminated in your workflow or how much faster your team completed their post-call dispositions. They care about one thing: Was my problem solved quickly and effectively? As CCaaS continues to evolve, contact-center leaders must meet ever-higher demands for efficiency, personalization, and seamless omnichannel service. Teams can no longer tolerate half-baked channels, siloed agents, or reporting nightmares. Today, they’re embracing AI-powered, unified workspaces that weave rich contextual data with intelligent, empathy-driven tools so every interaction becomes fast, personal, and on-brand at scale. In this session led by Zendesk, you’ll explore real-world examples of contact centers around the world that have:
You’ll walk away with actionable strategies to transform your contact center into a modern resolution engine by:
Thanks to Our Partner
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Designing the Modern Contact Center Experience: Human + AI Collaboration, Omnichannel Orchestration, and Voice Platform Transformation As customer expectations evolve and AI continues to reshape service delivery, contact centers must transform into agile, intelligent experience hubs. This forward-looking workshop explores how to design the modern contact center by integrating the best of human empathy, agentic AI, and omnichannel strategy. Participants will dive into how to orchestrate seamless journeys across voice, chat, email, and social, creating consistent experiences regardless of channel. We’ll explore how to modernize legacy systems and elevate voice platforms through next-generation IVR (NGIVR) and agentic AI that empowers agents and streamlines customer interactions. A key focus will be on Human + AI collaboration: learning how to optimize handoffs between bots and humans, design emotionally intelligent experiences, and deploy next-gen agent assist tools that elevate frontline performance. Through practical frameworks, real-world case studies, and collaborative exercises, attendees will leave with a better understanding of:
A must-attend session for contact center leaders focused on delivering measurable, strategic value through every customer interaction. Thanks to Our Partner
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Sierra is the platform that helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences with AI. Founded by industry veterans Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, Sierra enables companies to deploy autonomous AI agents that provide fast, personalized, always-on support across channels. Trusted by brands like SiriusXM, Sonos, and ADT, Sierra’s flexible model meets customers where they are—offering everything from enterprise-ready, fully supported deployments to build-your-own no-code journeys. Both CX and Engineering teams can move fast, choosing the right approach to fit their evolving needs. For more information, visit: sierra.ai |
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The Human Advantage: Why People Still Power Great CX in the Age of AI In an era dominated by AI and automation, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s most critical in delivering standout customer experiences: the people making them happen. Amid the tech-driven transformation of CX, one truth remains—companies that thrive are those where agents, and the teams supporting them, are engaged, empowered, and equipped to deliver at a high level. In this dynamic session, Terri DeMent, Director, Consumer Engagement at Nestlé Purina—and Amy Bouthilet, VP of Global Talent at Alta Resources, a leading end-to-end CX BPO, discuss what it truly takes to build and sustain an employee-first culture. Drawing from real-world examples, they’ll share the challenges and breakthroughs of scaling engagement across complex enterprises, and how placing people at the core of CX operations leads to measurable impact—from improved customer satisfaction scores to stronger revenue performance. With a 9-year partnership with Gallup, Alta’s proven approach to employee engagement and leadership development has redefined how to embed culture into the everyday fabric of CX delivery. Attendees will gain actionable strategies to overcome barriers, develop engaged teams, and elevate both employee and customer outcomes in a world increasingly shaped by technology. Key Takeaways:
Join us to discover why, amid rapid technological change, people still drive CX success.
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A Masterclass in CX Technology Sourcing Choosing the right customer experience (CX) technology partners isn’t just a procurement decision—it’s a strategic one. From discovery to delivery, the way you source, evaluate, and manage technology solution providers can make or break your ability to deliver seamless, high-impact customer experiences. In this expert-led panel, seasoned CX leaders will guide you on techniques to find and evaluate the best providers to deliver on your business requirements. You’ll hear real-world examples and gain practical tools for maximizing value from your technology partnerships while staying agile in a fast-evolving digital landscape.
Whether you’re looking to optimize current vendors or source new technology, this panel will offer a blueprint for smarter, more strategic CX technology decisions.
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Trista Miller|
Reality Check: Are AI & Automation Living Up to Their Promise in CX AI and automation are no longer emerging tools; they’re embedded in the DNA of today’s CX strategies. From transforming contact centers to driving operational efficiency and delivering more seamless customer interactions, they’ve promised smarter, more seamless customer experiences. But are they delivering? This panel takes a clear-eyed look at what’s really happening after implementation. What gains have proven sustainable? Where are expectations falling short? And how are CX leaders rethinking their approach as they face the hard truths of integration, training, measurement, and impact? You’ll hear from leading brands on navigating the evolving balance between humans and machines, including how they’re redefining agent roles, capturing the right metrics, and translating the voice of the customer into iterative, AI-fueled improvements. Whether you’re scaling automation or just beginning to integrate AI pilots, this session offers grounded insights, honest lessons, and forward-looking guidance for building the intelligent contact center of tomorrow. Thanks to Our Partner
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CX Livewire: Polling, Predictions, and Instant Feedback This fast-paced session brings together a panel of CX leaders who are deeply immersed in the challenges and opportunities facing the industry today. Drawing on their diverse backgrounds and day-to-day leadership, panelists will explore what’s driving progress, what’s standing in the way, and how leading organizations are turning insight into impact. Attendees will walk away with a clearer view of the CX landscape, real-time benchmarking from peer responses, and fresh strategies they can apply within their own teams. By pairing live polling with Execs In The Know’s latest research report’s core findings, we’ll use the session to test predictions, validate (or challenge) existing data points, and capture what’s changed in real-time. This approach gives attendees a rare opportunity to see how their organization stacks up, where their peers are headed, and what strategies are gaining traction across industries right now.
Thanks to Our Partner |
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The Talent Shift: Hiring, Training, and Compensation in an AI World Customer expectations aren’t the only thing evolving, so are the people behind every interaction. As AI and automation continue to reshape the contact center, they’re not just enhancing tools and workflows; they’re fundamentally transforming the agent role itself. In this new era, agents are expected to do more than follow a script. They’re problem solvers, brand ambassadors, and emotional first responders—navigating increasingly complex issues that require both high-tech fluency and high-EQ finesse. These changes are pushing organizations to rethink everything: how we recruit and train, how we compensate and support, what skills matter most in the modern CX workforce, and how entirely new roles may emerge. This panel brings together CX leaders to unpack how AI is reshaping the future of work: redefining the skills we hire for, influencing compensation models, and transforming how training, reskilling, and upskilling are delivered and absorbed. As the role of the agent evolves—shifting from repetitive tasks to higher-value, empathy-driven work—companies must balance automation with human augmentation and adopt strategies for building and supporting a workforce prepared to meet the demands of a more complex, tech-integrated customer experience. The future is faster, smarter, and more connected but success depends on leading with intention, investing in emotional intelligence, and designing roles that elevate both technology and humanity.
Thanks to Our Partner |
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Board Panel: The Signals We’re Missing In a world flooded with dashboards and metrics, the loudest signals often steal the spotlight—while the most powerful insights go unheard. This panel explores what it means to truly listen to the silent majority of customers: those whose feedback isn’t captured in traditional surveys, whose experiences are filtered through cultural bias, or whose voices are lost in outdated listening systems. Join the EITK Advisory Board as they challenge the current state of customer listening by asking hard questions:
We’ll also explore how AI-powered sentiment detection can help uncover unspoken truths and emerging emotions—if applied with intention and ethics. From tuning into passive signals to reshaping how and where we listen, this conversation will open new possibilities for creating a listening culture that is inclusive, intelligent, and alive. If we want to meet customers where they are, we must hear even what they don’t say. The future of customer experience depends not just on collecting more data—but on listening differently.
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