From a major Zendesk AI declaration to Qualtrics’ PG Forsta acquisition, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Zendesk Declares the Chatbot Era Dead, Unveils Autonomous Service Workforce
Zendesk has used its annual Relate conference in Denver to declare that the age of the chatbot is over.
At the event, the vendor announced what it is calling the Autonomous Service Workforce: a vision for customer and employee service built around specialized AI agents that, crucially, are priced on outcomes rather than interactions.
The vendor is positioning this as a direct shot at the deflection-first model that has defined and frustrated the contact center bot market for years.
In discussing the news, Tom Eggemeier, CEO of Zendesk, said:
“The era of the chatbot — the era of frustration and deflection — is over. We are entering the age of the autonomous service workforce.”
At the core of the announcement is the Zendesk Resolution Platform, a unified system spanning data, intelligence, knowledge, workflows, and governance (Read more…).
Qualtrics Closes $6.75BN Press Ganey Forsta Acquisition to Expand AI-Powered XM in Healthcare and Beyond
Qualtrics has completed its $6.75BN acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta, bringing one of healthcare’s largest experience datasets into its AI-powered Experience Management (XM) platform.
The deal, first announced in October 2025, marks one of the largest consolidation moves in the XM market and significantly expands Qualtrics’ position in healthcare. It combines the Qualtrics platform with Press Ganey Forsta’s healthcare experience and benchmarking datasets benchmarking, and Voice of the Customer capabilities.
According to Qualtrics, the acquisition adds “the world’s largest healthcare experience dataset” to its XM AI and data platform, with more than 41,000 healthcare facilities using Press Ganey Forsta systems, including the majority of U.S. hospitals.
The company says the combination will help organizations move beyond retrospective experience measurement and toward predictive, real-time interventions powered by AI.
Check out the full article here.
Is AI Breaking Down the Walls Between CC and UC? 8×8 Thinks So
Amongst the facts, figures, and forecasts, 8×8 CEO Samuel Wilson’s comments about the convergence of the contact center and unified communications spaces were arguably the most enlightening part of the company’s Q4 2026 earnings call.
Indeed, when describing 8×8’s Engage product, Wilson seemingly struggled to place it in a specific box.
“Is that a CC product? Is that a UC product? Yeah. Somewhere in the middle between those two,” he said.
“I believe the walls are coming down with these categories of UC and CC and CPaaS… the walls are coming down between these segments.”
The CEO’s words can be viewed as a challenge to one of the CCaaS market’s foundational assumptions: that customer-facing interactions are the exclusive domain of the contact center.
8×8 Engage, which reached general availability during the quarter, extends customer engagement capabilities beyond dedicated agents to frontline sales and operational teams (Read more…).
Brand Awareness Is Overrated, Sprinklr Social Index Finds
Brands today are louder than ever, yet increasingly disconnected from the audiences they aim to reach.
A Sprinklr benchmark report has revealed that retail brands are more socially active than any other sector, yet 78% of these brands fail to generate meaningful engagement.
This gap highlights the growing CX challenge that visibility alone no longer builds loyalty, and customers increasingly reward brands that deliver timely, relevant, and human interactions across every digital touchpoint.
Joy Corso, Chief Administrative Officer at Sprinklr, argues that the main issue for many brands is their inability to create meaningful customer connections.
“Brands don’t lack visibility. They lack relevance,” she said.
“The brands winning on social aren’t the ones saying the most – they’re the ones showing up in the right moments, with relevance and clarity to create meaningful connections.
“Brands that listen continuously across every customer touchpoint, use AI to separate real signals from social noise, and act on those insights through a single, unified system are well prepared to win the moment.”
