From key insights in this year’s ISG Contact Center Buyers Guide to new specialized bots at Verint, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
The ISG Contact Center Buyers Guide 2025: 7 Top Takeaways
The contact center technology market is crowded, with more players from a CRM, UCaaS, and even CPaaS heritage sensing an opportunity to win business in the space.
Most, if not all, are banging the AI drum. In 2024, some thudded much harder than others. Yet, in 2025, AI integration is much deeper in the tech stack and more consistent across vendors.
The use cases aren’t surprising, including self-service, AI assistance, conversational intelligence… these were all big last year too, but now are more embedded and refined.
Still, some are ahead of others, but the gap in terms of capability is closing, and spotting what sets the vendors apart gets trickier.
Against this backdrop and the explosion in contact center options, the ISG Buyers Guide goes deeper into the changing market and the vendors leading from the front (Read on…).
Thoma Bravo to Snap Up PROS for $1.4BN, Follow Up Its Verint & Dayforce Acquisitions
Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire PROS, a prominent AI-powered pricing and revenue management software provider.
The all-cash deal is valued at approximately $1.4BN and is expected to close during the fourth quarter.
It is Thoma Bravo’s third acquisition in just a matter of weeks, following the roll-ups of Dayforce and Verint in late August.
Yet, PROS brings new capabilities to its portfolio, including CPQ (configure, price, quote), price optimization, and revenue intelligence solutions.
In announcing the deal, Jeff Cotten, President and CEO of PROS, stated that as a private company, “PROS will be more agile and have greater flexibility to invest in innovation and expand our platform.”
It will also gain the luxury of focusing on longer-term goals, like leading the emerging field of agentic intelligence and analytics, as it no longer has to manage for short-term quarterly results.
Nevertheless, what most excites Martin Schneider, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, is how PROs fits into the broader Thoma Bravo portfolio.
“Thoma Bravo continues to build out a sizable portfolio of applications providers outside of its previous concentration in cybersecurity,” he noted. “It will be interesting to see how well they can continue to drive momentum for PROS as a private equity-backed company.” (Read on…).
Talkdesk Expands Vertical Focus with New CX Platform for Service-Based Industries
Talkdesk has released a new customer experience automation (CXA) platform designed for service-based businesses, the company’s latest move in a broader strategy to deliver vertical-specific solutions.
The Talkdesk Commercial & Residential Services Experience Cloud platform is aimed at home services, property management, logistics, and field service businesses. These face distinct customer service challenges, including a high volume of time-sensitive calls, dispatch coordination and appointment logistics.
The platform uses agentic AI, intelligent automation, and proactive outreach capabilities to help customers around the clock through their preferred channel, whether through voice, chat, text message, or mobile app.
The aim is for businesses to be able to use AI to manage routine scheduling, billing and updates, according to Rohit Madhavarapu, Vice President of Omnichannel and Industries at Talkdesk:
In service industries, every minute counts and every interaction shapes trust… It’s about speed, confidence, and convenience at scale, giving customers instant answers and giving service companies the edge they need to grow.
After all, customers don’t want to wait around for answers. Whether they’re checking on an appointment time, wondering where the technician is, or sorting out a billing issue, they expect quick, hassle-free responses (Read on…).
Verint Unveils New Specialized Bots, Expands Its Contact Center Workforce Management Porfolio
Verint has unveiled two new specialized bots: an Exact Forecasting Bot and an Intraday Spike Bot.
Debuted at Verint Engage 2025, the bots aim to augment contact center workforce management (WFM) operations.
That’s crucial, as the WFM space hasn’t enjoyed the same transformative innovation as other realms of the contact center.
While generative AI may have moved the needle elsewhere, advanced WFM relies on more complex machine learning models and neural networks, especially in regards to forecasting.
As such, many still view WFM technology as an enterprise luxury, while smaller contact centers stick with spreadsheets and Erlang Calculators.
Yet, with hybrid human-AI teams, the already difficult job of a contact center resource planner is only becoming more so.
WFM teams need more accessible innovations to boost their toolkit. That’s what these two specialized bots aim to provide. (Read on…).
