It’s been a busy week for some of the heaviest hitters in the CX space.
Microsoft announced its biggest 365 update in eight years, Google demoed a new online shopping experience, Salesforce continued to dominate the CRM market, and Zendesk’s CCaaS platform became generally available.
Here are the extracts from these popular news stories.
Microsoft 365’s “Biggest” Update in 8 Years Will Transform Microsoft Teams Into a Hub for AI Agents
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has claimed that the latest enhancements to Microsoft 365 Copilot signify the biggest update for the productivity platform “since Teams launched”.
Now generally available, the 365 Copilot brings together each of the following tools into one “scaffolding that’s intuitive”:
- Chat allows users to search for answers within work and web data.
- Search ensures access to data beyond Microsoft 365, now including Confluence, Google Drive, JIRA, ServiceNow, and others.
- Notebooks allow businesses to combine chats, pages, documents, and emails in a single collection. From that, they can create guides, audio reviews, and even podcasts.
- Create enables brands to turn documents, like PowerPoint presentations, into images, graphics, and even explainer videos.
- Agents anticipate, reason, and act to autonomously perform tasks across the 365 environment.
Sharing some examples of these AI agents, Nadella describes Microsoft’s “Researcher” as “perhaps the biggest game changer”.
The CEO explained how the Researcher agent is able to synthesize data from web and enterprise sources and analyze it with sophisticated chain of thought reasoning.
Another example outlined in the address was the Analyst agent, which can transform raw data from sources like Excel files into insights, forecasts, and visualizations. (Read on to find out how this news will impact Microsoft Teams…).
Google Kills the Checkout Page, Reimagines Online Commerce Experiences
Google demoed a new online shopping experience during its annual developer conference: Google I/O.
In doing so, it introduced virtual try-ons, price tracking, and an agentic checkout, with the latter threatening to kill the checkout page.
As an important prelude, Google first announced a new search experience that is now available in the US.
“AI Mode in Google Search” is a more conversational approach to search, which provides AI-generated answers to long, complex queries.
According to the company, it can also offer “helpful, personalized” suggestions based on a user’s past searches.
Yet, the new Google Search doesn’t only answer questions; it completes tasks, including those related to commerce. (Read on…).
Salesforce Still Dominates the CRM Space, Leads on Revenue for the 12th Straight Year
IDC has named Salesforce the biggest CRM provider in the world for the 12th year running.
Figures from its 2025 Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker show that Salesforce earned over $21.6BN in CRM revenues last year.
That’s over $5BN greater than its four closest competitors combined. They are: Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, and SAP.
Microsoft is the nearest rival, earning $5.45BN in 2024, almost four times less than Salesforce.
The IDC study analyzed CRM vendors from 50+ countries across six continents, with Salesforce claiming first place at a canter.
Commenting on the results, David Schmaier, President and Chief Product & Impact Officer at Salesforce, credited the company’s “clear and evolving vision for the future of CRM” and its “commitment to customer success.”
Our deeply integrated platform empowers businesses of all sizes to leverage AI and data to make every customer interaction smarter, automate their processes, significantly reduce costs, and increase employee productivity at scale.
Overall, Salesforce owns 20.7 percent of the market. Notably, that’s down from 21.7 percent in the previous study. (Read on…).
Zendesk for Contact Center, the “Un-CCaaS” Platform, Is Now Generally Available
Zendesk has announced the general availability of its CCaaS platform: Zendesk for Contact Center.
The news comes after the company closed its acquisition of Local Measure.
Zendesk for Contact Center represents a relaunch of the Local Measure Engage CCaaS solution. Yet, it’s now “properly integrated” into the Zendesk ecosystem.
Interestingly, Zendesk isn’t marketing the solution as “CCaaS”. Instead, it’s positioning the platform as “Un-CCaaS”.
Think back to 2013 when T-Mobile announced its “Un-carrier” campaign to frame itself as a disruptive market alternative.
Similarly, Zendesk indicates that it’s the disruptor the CCaaS space needs.
The terminology comes as many large contact centers experiment with several contact center solutions.
Having perhaps not made the best choice when moving to CCaaS the first time around, rushing to sign “COVID-contracts”, many enterprises are reconsidering their options (Read on…).
