From Salesforce’s major ITSM push to Zendesk’s slew of fresh AI features, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Salesforce Makes Its Big ITSM Launch, Talks Differentiators Over ServiceNow
Salesforce has launched its new IT service management (ITSM) product: Agentforce IT Service.
ITSM solutions help IT teams manage the services they offer across the enterprise. That includes troubleshooting, configuring devices, running applications, granting access to them, and more.
As teased last month, Agentforce IT Service will become a key fixture of Service Cloud, as Agentforce for HR Service did in May earlier this year.
HR Service solutions similarly support issue resolution, handle requests for vacation, update employee personnel details, and more.
With these two additions, Service Cloud is suddenly much more than a customer support application; it’s a full-scale service platform.
That’s a critical differentiator that Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM for Service Cloud at Salesforce, stressed when answering how Agentforce IT Service can have success in an already consolidated ITSM market, led by ServiceNow.
“Everything we’ve created lives on one unified platform,” said Chetan.
Other solutions often have separate platforms for employees and fulfillers, creating integration overhead. Salesforce removes that friction.
ServiceNow may soon contest this, as it rolls out its new AI Experience offering. Nevertheless, Chetan highlighted other differentiators, starting with its native Agentforce agents embedded at the Agentforce IT Service solution’s core. As the vendor claims, it’s not a legacy system retrofitted for AI (Read on…).
Zendesk Unveils Major AI Push – Voice, Admin Co-Pilot, and HyperArc Take Center Stage
Zendesk has announced a major expansion of its AI portfolio, introducing a series of new capabilities that bring more automation, intelligence, and flexibility to its Resolution Platform.
Revealed at the company’s AI Summit, the upgrades span across contact center, employee service, and platform administration.
Among the slew of releases, the headline-grabbers are with the launch of fully autonomous Voice AI Agents, new low/no-code building tools, and powerful analytics through its HyperArc acquisition.
The announcement signals Zendesk’s ongoing commitment to accelerating service resolution at scale and deepening its AI leadership.
But as Matthias Goehler, Zendesk CTO for EMEA, explained in an exclusive interview with CX Today, this is also about “closing the loop between AI and human service, and bringing everything together in one place.”
Voice AI Comes to the Fore
For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of getting stuck in a mind-numbing, seemingly never-ending IVR loop, the promise of Voice AI Agents will be music to your ears.
Equipped with fully autonomous AI-powered voice capabilities, Zendesk’ Voice AI Agents are designed to handle complex queries without the clunky IVR trees that have tested the patience of even the most Zen customers (Read on…).
SAP Connect 2025: The Top 10 Announcements (So Far!)
SAP’s push into AI agents with Joule and its fast-tracked cloud migrations mean that one major conference a year no longer suffices.
In addition to the annual SAP Sapphire, it has rebranded and expanded its SuccessConnect event, so practitioners, partners, and execs can keep their finger on the pulse.
At this year’s event, that pulse raced, with many massive announcements including AI agent advancements, a new engagement platform, and much more.
Celebrating the event’s many headlines, Muhammad Alam, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product & Engineering, said:
Our announcements today demonstrate the power of SAP Business Suite, where AI, data, and applications come together in an experience to propel smarter decisions, faster execution, and scalable transformation.
That suite envelops the enterprise, yet its customer experience portfolio is a key cornerstone.
Given that, here’s a rundown of the event’s biggest news, with extra emphasis on CX (Read on…).
Qualtrics to Snap Up Press Ganey Forsta in $6.75BN Deal, Consolidate the VoC Market
Qualtrics has agreed to acquire Press Ganey Forsta for $6.75BN.
Press Ganey Forsta, often referred to as “PG Forsta”, is a rising force in the voice of the customer (VoC) space, rivaling Qualtrics.
Indeed, it recently placed as a Leader in the market’s latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for VoC.
In doing so, PG Forsta ranked alongside InMoment, which it later rolled up in May.
As such, this latest acquisition brings together three of the VoC space’s biggest brands.
Yet, Qualtrics is one of the market’s two most prominent names, with Medallia the other.
The acquisition will extend its market leadership and help consolidate the space.
Nevertheless, it will also boost Qualtrics’ industry-specific offerings, with PG Forsta widely deployed in the healthcare space and other highly-regulated sectors (Read on…).
