From a $2BN Verint takeover to Avaya’s company-wide voluntary exit packages, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Verint Confirms $2BN Takeover by Thoma Bravo, Set to Merge with Calabrio
Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire Verint in a deal that values the tech provider at $2BN, including debt.
Upon the deal’s completion, Verint will merge with Calabrio, its workforce engagement management (WEM) rival, which Thoma Bravo owns.
Also under the private equity firm’s ownership are Aisera and Medallia, which compete with Verint in the conversational AI and voice of the customer (VoC) markets, respectively.
However, there is no suggestion that these CX stalwarts will also be brought into the fold.
A Verint press release announcing the move contains a quote by an anonymous spokesperson, stating:
Together, Calabrio and Verint will bring a powerful set of products to accelerate a shared vision: delivering an AI-powered, open CX platform to customers who are focused on driving strong business outcomes in their operations.
In bringing these companies together, Thoma Bravo merges two of the “big three” WEM providers, with NiCE being the other (Read more…).
Accenture Snaps Up NeuraFlash, a Prominent Salesforce & AWS Consulting Company
Accenture has confirmed the acquisition of consulting firm NeuraFlash.
NeuraFlash chiefly provides services and solutions for businesses committed to Salesforce and AWS.
Yet, over the past 12 months, it has made a lot of noise in the CX space by developing agentic solutions for sales, service, and field service operations.
By doing so, it has established a reputation as a leading partner of Salesforce’s Agentforce platform, reporting 60+ Agentforce implementations in May 2025.
In a LinkedIn post from last week, NeuraFlash CEO and Co-Founder, T. Brett Chisholm, claimed his company is the “#1 Salesforce Agentforce partner!”
Salesforce echoed a similar sentiment during a recent earnings call, with Srini Tallapragada, President & Chief Engineering Officer, naming NeuraFlash a key Agentforce partner, alongside Accenture.
With the deal to roll up NeuraFlash, Accenture is perhaps looking to move from one of several key Agentforce players in the space to the undisputed, go-to Agentforce leader (Read more…).
Google Is Building AI Mode Agents to Automate Customer Support Tasks
Google has unveiled a new AI Mode agent designed to take on basic service tasks, starting with restaurant reservations.
The feature, currently locked behind the $250-per-month Google AI Ultra subscription, plugs into the company’s AI Mode for Search, which transforms the traditional results page into a Gemini-powered assistant.
For now, the agent’s functionality is limited. It can check live restaurant availability and link customers directly to booking platforms like OpenTable, Resy, and Tock.
However, future capabilities have already been mentioned, with Google planning integrations for local service appointments and event tickets via Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek, and Booksy.
This points to a much broader ambition: creating AI-powered ‘machine customers’ that can handle service interactions independently on behalf of humans.
The idea of machine-to-machine customer service isn’t entirely new.
Google has been experimenting with customer-facing AI for years – from Duplex making dinner reservations in 2022, to its more recent ‘Ask for Me’ feature, which dials businesses for users.
Yet, as analysts recently discussed on The Big CX News Show, these latest moves feel less like a revolution and more like an incremental step (Read more…).
Avaya Offers All Its Staff Voluntary Exit Packages, Sources
Avaya has offered “everyone at the company” a voluntary exit package, a person familiar with the matter told CX Today.
The source revealed that Avaya hopes the move will shed “a lot of employees”.
CX Today has reached out to Avaya for a statement, but the company declined to comment.
The objective to shed employees is one Avaya has chased since its CEO transition, announced in July 2024.
Just four months later, Avaya kick-started a sweeping round of layoffs. While these initially impacted North America, they stretched across the globe by early 2025.
In January, CX Today learned the layoffs left some regions, including Europe and the Middle East, threadbare.
Now, Avaya appears to be following up with another drastic move to cut its staff further and leave some areas with little more than a remote presence.
Reacting to the speculation, Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, told CX Today:
Such a move would likely aim to maximize profitability, so Avaya can return profit to equity holders.
Having only emerged from a second bankruptcy in seven years in 2023, these headlines will fan the flames of speculation about Avaya’s long-term future (Read more…).
