From AI contact centers at WebexOne 2025 to who is most likely take the head of the table in CX, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Cisco Doubles Down on AI-Powered Contact Center at WebexOne 2025
San Diego, CA — At WebexOne 2025 this week, Cisco unveiled a series of major enhancements to its customer experience portfolio, pushing deeper into AI-powered quality management, agent assistance, and cross-industry integrations.
The announcements underscore Cisco’s strategy to position Webex Contact Center as a platform where AI agents and human agents work side by side — with supervisors given the tools to oversee both.
AI is the key to delivering amazing customer experiences at scale
Said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. “As AI and human agents increasingly collaborate, businesses need platforms designed to deliver quality experiences while moving faster than ever.”
AI Quality Management: Coaching Humans and Machines
Launching in early 2026, Webex AI Quality Management (QM) gives supervisors a unified view across their workforce — whether it’s people or AI agents.
Unlike traditional tools that focus on compliance, Cisco says AI QM will deliver:
- AI-assisted scoring and real-time insights
- Personalised coaching for human agents
- Performance optimisation recommendations for AI agents (Read on…)
Salesforce Axes Search In Favor of Agentforce, Users Push Back
CRM giant Salesforce is facing criticism from its own customers and community members after it quietly removed the search bar from its online help pages.
The previous search function has been replaced with the AI-powered Agentforce assistant.
The move has sparked a backlash with users calling for the return of the classic search functionality.
Previously, users on the Salesforce Help site could use the search bar to type keywords, filter by topic, and drill down to quickly find documentation, knowledge articles or troubleshooting resources.
That option is now gone. The only way to access information is to interact with the conversational AI assistant that must understand the user’s question, interpret it and generate an answer on the fly.
Complaints quickly sprang up online in response to the change, with users reporting that Agentforce, while promising in theory, is often slower to deliver what index-based search used to serve up instantly. It may misunderstand queries, hallucinate incorrect answers, or require more back-and-forth conversation to narrow down results.
Users on Reddit noted that Salesforce “killed simple access to the case creation form” recently and see this as the next step in its agentic AI push (Read on…)
Accenture Lays Off 11,000 Staff as Part of AI Reskilling Strategy
Accenture has laid off over 11,000 members of staff as part of a restructuring program.
The company’s 791,000 employees has been cut down to 779,000 in the past three months, and Accenture might not be done yet.
With AI continuing to dominate the tech space, the IT consulting group has introduced AI training for staff to keep up with this new era of technology.
Accenture has warned staff who cannot keep up with the new training could join the thousands already laid off.
In a discussion with analysts, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet provided further insights into the restructuring:
“We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need.
We are investing in upskilling our reinventors, which is our primary strategy. Those we cannot reskill will be exited.
Indeed, Accenture followed this announcement with the news that it is set to acquire Aidemy Inc, a reskilling specialist.
In doing so, the company is looking to strengthen its own reskilling and learning service, LearnVantage, and seemingly double-down on its commitment to fully embracing AI (Read on…)
CCaaS Market Set to Triple by 2030 – But Who Will Bear The Crown?
The global market for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is entering a period of rapid expansion.
Valued at just over $3.6 billion in 2023, industry analysts at Maximise Market Research predict it will soar to $11.4 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 17.8 percent.
For contact center leaders, the takeaway is clear: cloud-based platforms are no longer a niche option. They are fast becoming the default architecture for organizations that want to meet rising customer expectations without the burden of maintaining complex on-premises systems.
Why the Market is Surging
CCaaS offers enterprises the ability to unify customer interactions across voice, email, chat, and social media on a single platform.
With demand for frictionless, personalized experiences only increasing, these solutions have become vital for organizations that want to stay competitive.
At the same time, the rise of remote and distributed workforces has accelerated the move to the cloud. AI and automation are being woven into the core of modern platforms, enabling contact centers to reduce response times and provide agents with real-time assistance.
The Heavyweights Driving Growth
So far, the momentum is largely in the hands of a small group of dominant vendors. Genesys, NICE, AWS, Five9, and Talkdesk are the players most frequently highlighted by Gartner and other research firms as the clear leaders (Read on…).
