Ask ten enterprise CX leaders what they’re modernizing first, and you’ll likely get ten different answers.
Some are deep into AI pilots, others are finally confronting aging telephony infrastructure, and a few might be rebuilding outbound campaigns from scratch.
The ambition is rarely the problem. The sequencing almost always is.
Most modernization priority lists aren’t built from first principles; they’re shaped by vendor pitches, internal politics, and whatever technology is currently getting the most airtime.
AI dominates the headlines, so it gets the budget. Telephony is complicated, so it gets deferred.
The result is a modernization plan shaped by the wrong inputs, one with a habit of producing expensive surprises.
So, what does a smarter sequence actually look like? According to Rupert Adair, Director of Product Management at Enghouse Interactive, it starts by asking a different question entirely:
“The customer experience should be first. You should think about how you’re trying to engage the customer – and that includes both inbound and outbound engagement: every contact the customer is going to experience.”
It’s a reframe that changes everything downstream. Rather than skipping all your due diligence and just asking something like ‘What should we modernize?’, instead you’re asking ‘What experience do we want to create, and what does that require?’ The technology stops being the project and starts serving one. So, that’s first in your sequence.
From there, Adair advocates building around what he calls the foundational layer – voice infrastructure, data architecture, and data location – before layering more agile components on top.
“We would start with the big items: core telephony, where the data is going to be, where the majority of the traffic might be,” he explains.
“The more agile pieces – AI, reporting, and so on – are easier to navigate afterwards.”
The Real Sequencing Mistake
When listening to Adair discuss the importance of sequencing in modernization, it is hard to understand why so many organizations get this process wrong.
When pushed on this, the Enghouse man revealed that the biggest mistake people make is not really about sequence at all. “I think it’s actually communication at the outset,” he says.
“We see contact center managers, supervisors, and even agents who are really deeply frustrated with a new system because they weren’t considered in the workflow. They weren’t consulted; they weren’t part of the design team.”
The distinction he draws is between treating modernization as a technology project versus a journey:
“It should be: ‘How are we going to provide better service to the customer?’ ‘What should we move, and what shouldn’t we?’”
Once that conversation happens early and honestly, he argues, the sequence tends to follow logically.
Where AI Actually Fits
Given the volume of attention AI is receiving right now, it might seem counterintuitive that it isn’t where Enghouse typically starts.
However, Adair is firm in his belief that AI only delivers modernization value once routing and data are fixed.
He argues that AI depends on clean interaction data, consistent routing, and structured customer content.
“Deploying AI before fixing telephony and data leads to low accuracy, fragmented automation, and the need for rework once underlying systems are corrected,” he says.
That isn’t to say that he is against the technology by any means. But he has a more measured take than many of the AI hype machines currently flooding the CX sector:
“A year ago, I would have said AI was in the proving stage. There was a lot of hype, and some organizations were feeling disillusioned. But now we’ve seen customers really crystallize on what they’re trying to do, and we’ve seen providers really crystallize what they’re providing. We’re definitely seeing tangible benefits.”
Agent assist tools are where he sees the strongest near-term ROI. These capabilities process engagements in real time, monitor customer tone, surface relevant information mid-conversation, and handle post-interaction admin so agents can stay focused on delivering a better customer experience.
The caution is real, though. Adair points to a high-profile fintech case where an aggressive AI-first strategy ran into well-publicized difficulties as a reminder that deploying AI without laying the groundwork is its own form of risk.
“Just ticking the AI box isn’t going to work,” he says.
The Telephony Trap
Despite its undeniable importance, telephony occupies an uncomfortable position in most modernization plans. In many ways, it is too central to ignore, but too complex to touch lightly.
The instinct to tread carefully isn’t wrong. What is wrong, Adair suggests, is the assumption that careful means doing it all at once:
“Companies seem to think they can lift and shift the whole telephony stack and dump it in the cloud, and everything will be the same; it’s not the case. A lot of the stuff in legacy platforms is there for a reason.”
Enghouse has worked with customers who inherited exactly this problem: organizations that replaced incumbent systems wholesale, only to end up with degraded agent capability and broken customer workflows on the other side.
A Practical Rule of Thumb
For decision-makers who want something concrete, Adair’s framework is deliberately simple: start with the experience you want to deliver; layer in compliance and data sovereignty requirements; then work through the contact center as a set of building blocks, with voice first, then digital, AI, and agent tools.
Resist the pressure to do it all at once.
“Do it in stages,” he says. “That’s when things go wrong, when you go wholesale.”
In an industry obsessed with what’s next, sometimes the sharpest competitive move is knowing what order to do things in.
Enghouse Interactive’s balanced CX portfolio includes cloud (public or private), hybrid and on-premises contact center options. Read this blog to understand the benefits of each type of deployment so you can work out what’s right for you.
