RingCentral has expanded its AI platform, AIR Pro, with a suite of agentic AI capabilities for RingCX, enabling enterprises to automate more complex customer interactions while preserving context when conversations transition to human agents.
Announced at Customer Contact Week (CCW) Las Vegas 2026, the update introduces native AI agents, autonomous outbound engagement, intelligent handoffs, AI-assisted workflow creation and new analytics capabilities.
The release embeds AI agents directly into RingCX workflows across voice and digital channels. Rather than supporting agents with recommendations, the AI can independently execute processes such as appointment confirmations, customer verification and CRM updates during a single interaction.
RingCentral Moves AIR Pro from AI Assistance to Autonomous Action
RingCentral is also introducing autonomous outreach, allowing AI agents to proactively contact customers based on business events. Potential use cases include appointment reminders, payment notifications and service updates, with the AI able to complete actions such as confirming balances and processing payments over the phone.
A key component of the announcement is intelligent handoffs between AI and human agents. RingCentral said AI agents will transfer conversations with full customer history, CRM information, connected application data and relevant recordings, reducing the need for customers to repeat information after escalation.
Jim Dvorkin, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience Products at RingCentral, said:
“Our announcement today is about expanding AIR Pro and adding key updates to RingCX as we make progress toward our vision of AI agents and humans working together.”
“The addition of native AI agents, along with autonomous outreach, intelligent handoffs, and our AI powered workflow builder for RingCX helps businesses improve customer experiences and achieve measurable results.”
The announcement comes as many organizations continue to explore how agentic AI can be deployed at scale. Speaking recently to CX Today, Russell Tilsed, Vice President U.K. at RingCentral, said businesses are often struggling to move from proof-of-concept projects into operational deployments.
“We’re very willing and interested in getting into proof of concepts. It’s where we’re trying to translate those as a country into actual projects is where we’re tending to get stuck,” he said.
According to Tilsed, successful deployments are typically focused on improving specific workflows rather than implementing AI for its own sake.
“Where organizations have told us they’re making the most impact in deployment of AI agents is where we’re actually putting them into a workflow. They’re taking something that’s end to end and they’re dropping the AI in and they’re making an improvement of that workflow overall.”
That philosophy is reflected in RingCentral’s latest product updates, particularly its AI-powered workflow builder and native AI agents designed to execute business processes across customer interactions.
The company is also simplifying workflow development through a new natural language interface. Using RingCentral’s AI Virtual Assistant (AVA), administrators can describe the workflow they want in plain language, with the system automatically generating the required automation without coding.
AVA is also being extended to RingCX Analytics, enabling supervisors and contact centre leaders to retrieve operational metrics and reporting information through conversational prompts rather than manually navigating dashboards.
Alongside the AI updates, RingCentral expanded its workforce engagement management offering, RingWEM, with live screen monitoring. The capability allows supervisors to observe agent activity in real time and provide coaching or intervention during customer interactions.
The company has also added WhatsApp Voice support, enabling customers to move from messaging to voice conversations within WhatsApp while maintaining the complete interaction history for agents.
Rather than replacing human employees, agentic AI is best suited to automating repetitive tasks, Tilsed noted.
“There’s lots of repetitive elements of background checking… that, to be quite frank, a machine should be doing. It allows the people, the agents, to carry on doing what they do best with their customers as only a human could.”
Agentic AI Gains Ground as Enterprises Look Beyond Proofs of Concept
Industry analysts see the market moving in the same direction. Hayley Sutherland, Conversational AI Analyst at IDC, said organizations will increasingly need to implement unified management across human and AI workforces.
“The industry is moving beyond AI assistants towards increasingly autonomous AI agents that can participate in customer journeys alongside human workers. Organizations will need a common framework for managing performance, quality, analytics, and governance across both—and having that native to the contact center platform is the right approach.”
The announcement also provides further evidence of RingCentral’s broader AI strategy, which executives outlined during the company’s recent earnings call. CEO Vlad Shmunis argued that enterprises are increasingly seeking a combination of automation and human expertise.
“While agentic AI is very powerful and will be transformational to how businesses interact with consumers, our core belief is that it won’t replace all humans. AI can and will do a lot, and it will make remaining humans in the loop more effective.”
The new intelligent handoff capabilities, native AI agents and workflow automation features for RingCX closely align with that vision of AI and human agents operating together inside a unified customer engagement platform.
President and COO Kira Makagon pointed to growing demand for AIR Pro among enterprises looking to automate workflows through integrations with CRM, scheduling, billing and industry-specific systems.
RingCentral reported that more than 1,700 businesses were using the platform at the end of the first quarter of 2026, representing more than 70 percent year-over-year growth. According to the company, more than half of RingCX customers are already using AI capabilities.
The new AI agent functionality and autonomous outreach will be offered on a consumption-based pricing model aligned with AIR Pro. Most of the newly announced RingCX capabilities are currently in beta, with general availability planned for the second half of 2026. AI-powered RingCX Analytics and RingWEM Live Screen Monitoring are scheduled to become available during the third quarter.
