AI claims in CX: Trust it or trash it? At CCW Las Vegas 2026

Hi, everyone. We're here at CCW Las Vegas this week talking to the brightest minds in CX. One thing that we see at these conferences is a lot of talk around AI, a lot of buzzwords, and claims that might not be truthful. To help me with this, I brought along our CX expert, Chris Arnold. Chris, hello. Hey. Thanks for having me. So the first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna say a claim, and you're gonna tell me if you trust the claim or if you wanna trash it and why. Ready? Okay. Let's do it. Trust it or trash it? The safest way to deploy AgenTik AI is to keep humans approving every customer interaction. Do you trust it or don't? Trash it. Trash it? Why? Absolutely. Because we're in the agentic AI era, we have an opportunity to actually roll reverse. So for quite a while, we've had AI assisting human agents. Now it's time to flip the script with generative and agentic solutions. We actually have the opportunity to now have the human assist the AI. And this will completely change the labor equation. It'll change the cost structure. It'll change the value of the entire contact center. So next one, trust it or trash it, Chris? If your AI containment rate is increasing, your customer experience is automatically improving. Do you trust that one or you trash it? Trashing that one it too. Okay. Why? Containment as, you know, for a long time, we focused a lot on containment as new automation technologies have been deployed. And containment tends to hide a lot of problems because your customer may just leave one channel and show up in another because maybe chat didn't resolve their issue. And so the right way to think about this rather than containment is to really look at resolution. How am I reducing customer effort and how am I achieving real first contact resolution, you know, on as many interactions as possible. Next, trust it or trash it. Agencik AI should be measured against human performance, not against traditional automation. Absolute truth. Truth? Yeah. Why? Yeah. I think the, the fact that we we hold our technology to an incredibly high standard, but what we're not doing is building a better chatbot. So what we really need to do is look at the AI solution as we put these agentic solutions in front of customers. How well is it performing from a speed and accuracy and, of course, resolution perspective relative to how well our human agents perform today. Here's another one that's interesting. Knowledge management becomes less important as AI gets smarter. Do you trust that or trash it? Trash. That's Trash. Absolute. And I think everybody's gonna understand the importance of data in an AI first world. You know, you tend to get into if you have bad data, you're just automating problems at scale as you deploy more and more sort of bad knowledge, if you will. And so now it's really elevating the importance of knowledge as you leverage AI to do more, you know, interactions autonomously. So to follow-up with that, how do you how do you determine when your knowledge and is when your source of truth is ready for AI? How do you how do you gauge that? Yeah. I think the most important factor is you wanna make sure that the data you have is very purpose built for the AI to interact directly with the customer. And you really realize that, you know, when you go through simulations. So before you release it in production in front of the customer, let's make sure we're using, you know, in ASAP's case, the customer experience platform to simulate those interactions so that you can really see if, the outcomes are the ones that you're looking for. So next one. The biggest risk of AI transformation is moving too quickly. Do you trust that or trash that one, Chris? I would say for the most part, I trash that Okay. With a caveat. I think it's critical that every enterprise gets started now. Okay. And there's so much benefit to starting small, learning, and iterating. So you don't wanna go too far too fast because then we will end up repeating the sins of the past where we made automation and containment for containment sake the goal. The goal right now is really improving customer experience while also, you know, taking advantage of all the efficiencies that comes with AgenTic solutions. And so we need to really make sure that we get started, but we are thoughtful about how quickly we move. Next one. A successful AI deployment will likely reduce the number of customer service interactions live agents have to handle. What do you think of that? Trust it. Trust it? One hundred percent. Yeah. The goal of today's agentic solutions is to do more of these interactions replacing a lot of the human workload, you know, where the human has really had to manage the one hundred percent of the interaction in the past. Again, like I said before, when we flip the script and the human is only supervising and guiding the AI, the AI is managing ninety five or more percent of the interaction. And so over time, new jobs will emerge. You know, as we put AI into the hands of these this workforce, new jobs will emerge. There will be old roles that will evolve. You know, and over time, the entire workforce is going to be right sized. Right. New skills. New skills emerging. So that leads me to the next one. Trust it or trash it? The future contact center will need fewer agents but more AI supervisors, trainers, and governors. Trust it. Trust it. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. Next is human in the loop means the AI works until it fails and then transfers to a human. Trust it or trash it? Definitely trash it. Trash it. Why? I would say that's that's the way we've operated for two decades where allow the automation, the technology to go as far as it can, and when it can't go any further, we just have to escalate it. When I talk about this role reversal where now humans are assisting the AI, you're really talking about, you know, the opportunity of no longer escalating but allowing the human to supervise and guide to really allow the AI to finish the the conversation and again manage the vast majority of the workload. Now to follow-up on that, ASAP does human in the loop a little differently. Can you explain it? Absolutely. Yeah. It's ASAP's solution is what we call human in the loop agent. And that's exactly what I was describing when I talk about the role reversal. Now, human in the loop agent, rather than managing a ten minute interaction, they are supervising and guiding, you know, in thirty seconds, they're providing the AI what it needs to get unstuck or resolve a policy conflict to a pry provide an approval that the company may or may not trust the AI with at this point. And so you're completely changing the labor equation where the human agent no longer has to manage the ten minute call. It's now a thirty second guidance if you So in your opinion, is human in the loop just a buzzword that people are latching onto right now with not understanding the full impact of it? I think there's a again, like you said, there's a lot of noise in the market. Most of the time, what I'm seeing, particularly with the AI solutions that are more of a bolt on, more of a feature, and not so much sort of changing the operating framework at the core. It absolutely is more often just a pure escalation, what we've always done Right. Instead of really the role reversal that I've talked about. Sure. Sure. Good perspective there. The companies that win with AgenTik AI will treat AI as their new CX operating system, not as another channel. Do you trust that or trash it? Trust it. Trust it? Why? Yeah. I think the when you look at the capabilities of today's AgenTic solutions and you put, you know, AI at the center, you know, you'll hear a lot of buzzwords. There's a lot of AI first, and I think there's a place for AI first. But when AI is at the center and it really becomes the intelligence layer that really, you know, your AI is doing the vast majority of the interacting with your customer. It's dipping into knowledge and other systems. When it's really at the center of everything, it fundamentally changes your entire operation. And it's gonna be something that's very, very different than anything we've ever seen in the CX space. And then a bonus question for you, Chris. In five years, the biggest competitive advantage in customer service will be having the largest workforce. Absolute trash it. Trash it. Yeah. How so? For all the reasons I already mentioned, you know, the workforce is gonna change. Yeah. The role of the CX employee, if you will, and there's, you know, a lot more than just frontline agents. You know, there's back office operations. There's quality assurance analysts. All of these roles when they are equipped with a powerful AI solution, you know, like I said before, the old roles will evolve. Yeah. New roles will emerge, and the workforce is going to look incredibly different. And I don't subscribe to sort of the apocalyptic AI is coming for all of our jobs. Right. We all need to figure out how to get the most of, you know, AI as a tool in our toolbox. But it will fundamentally change how CX landscape looks. So it's about humans plus AI. That's right. Excellent. Well, there you have it. We've taken some of the biggest market claims, and we've trusted it or trashed it. Thanks, Chris. You're welcome.