Customer experience improvement remains a top initiative for business and information technology leaders. The stakes are high in CX. My research has found that 95% of companies now compete on CX and, last year, two-thirds of millennials admitted to switching brands because of a single bad experience. Contact centers and the customer experience professionals who staff them are the unsung heroes of many businesses.
NICE recently held its Interactions user event under the hot and sunny skies of Las Vegas. Over the years, NICE has used Interactions as a platform for big news, and the 2024 edition was no different. At the event, the company announced its new 1CX product which offers customers a full unified communications as a service (UCaaS) suite for the low cost of $5 a month.
Unplanned downtime — whether it involves minor service interruptions or major system outages — extends far beyond technical glitches. Downtime affects the foundation of business operations and profitability, resulting in long-term consequences. Splunk Inc. analyzed unplanned downtime’s financial and nonfinancial implications by surveying 2,000 executives from some of the world’s largest companies — the Global 2000.
Last week, Zingly.ai emerged from stealth mode with its “Collaborative Customer Experience” (CCX) platform to rethink how businesses deal with customers. Industry veterans from Avaya, Five9, Glia, and Talkdesk are leading Zingly, whose platform merges generative AI (gen AI), digital interactions, and telephony. The platform is designed for businesses that want to offer personalized services to their customers, which should be almost all companies.
Cisco Live was held last week in what has become my second home, Las Vegas. I had dubbed this the most important Cisco Live in the Chuck Robbins era, as the company is looking to put a stake in the artificial intelligence ground. Simultaneously, Cisco Systems Inc. is integrating its Splunk acquisitions and reshaping the security business in real time. For most companies, doing one of these things would be all-encompassing, but these are not typical times.