AI-Driven Agents, Human-Centered Service
July 21 - 22, 2026
| Free CX Network Webinar Series
Day One - July 21
9:30 am - 10:00 am
Panel | Navigating contact center transformation at every scale
Tristan Rayroles -
Head of CX, International Wholesale Market,
Orange
John McCahan - Chief Customer Experience Officer, Fellers
For some organizations, contact center transformation moves very quickly, deploying voice AI in 45 minutes and cutting call volume by 15 percent in three days. For others, it means being deliberately careful, navigating data and security in the world of a smaller operation where ROI on AI can take longer to show up.
In this panel, two CX leaders at very different stages of the transformation journey will compare notes and strategies for CX leaders at different levels of size, budget and maturity. John McCahan, CXO at Fellers, is modernizing a business that until recently ran on little to no integrated tech, and is enshrining customer-centricity along the way. Tristan Rayroles heads CX for Orange's wholesale and international B2B markets, where transformation often means working smart with more limited means and navigating tight security requirements.
The panellists will explore what transformation looks like from different starting points. We'll discuss the key principles that apply to any contact center transformation and the key learnings from different types of business structure. Looking at the critical success metrics and the build vs. buy decisions many leaders are making currently, our panellists will have an open conversation about what works and what doesn't in contact center transformation.
Attendees will learn:
- How to build the business case for transformation when starting from legacy tech
- Why the metrics you choose define the culture of your contact centre, and which to consider
- What smaller operations can realistically expect from AI investment and in what timeframes
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Why Voice AI is the future of the contact center
Chatbots are increasingly common and can handle more simple customer interactions relatively seamlessly, but they can fall short in times of stress when human empathy is required. With super-fast response times (down to the millisecond) and real-time context awareness, voice AI is emerging as the go-to solution for contact centers seeking to remove the frustration that can come with ineffectual chatbots during emotionally charged interactions.
Voice AI usage grew 9x in 2025, and production voice agent implementation was found to have increased by 340 percent across 500+ organizations. With voice interactions now priced at around $0.40, brands are increasingly keen to capitalize on this new, cheaper way to deliver immediate and empathetic support at scale with voice AI deployments. It is no surprise that voice AI is set to grow even more in the coming years.
In this session, we'll take a deep dive into the benefits of implementing voice AI in the contact center, drawing on real-world examples from brands at the forefront of the voice AI revolution. We'll explore potential deployment pitfalls and cover key topics around deployment including internal – and external – change management, governance and security and the long-term impact on customer loyalty.
Attendees will learn:
- How voice AI works in practice in your contact center, and what this means for demand planning.
- The human + AI approach that ensures efficiency, empathy and brand consistency during surge times.
- Key learnings from successful deployments and pitfalls to avoid
10:30 am - 11:00 am
Fix the front door: A practical look at the future of contact centers
Keith Wilson -
VP, CX Strategy,
CSG
Most contact centers are still dealing with the same problems they've had for years, with — customers misrouted, agents overburdened, and technology that promised more than it delivered. In this session, Keith Wilson, VP of CX Strategy at CSG, gets specific about what's still broken and what it actually takes to fix it.
Keith will walk through how enterprises are modernizing the voice front door, the real role AI plays alongside human agents, and how journey orchestration connects the dots across the entire customer interaction. He'll go into how global brands are achieving a 30 percent reduction in misrouted calls, with 50,000 events processed per second.
Attendees will learn:
- Where traditional contact center models break down - and how to fix it
- How modern voice AI fits into your existing environment with practical examples
- What AI agents can actually do in the contact center today
- The proven framework for using journey orchestration to tie it all together
11:00 am - 11:30 am
How we turned our contact center into a growth driver
Most organizations still treat the contact center as a cost center to be minimized but leading brands are flipping the script, using customer interactions and contact center data as a source of revenue and business-critical insights.
In this session, our contact center leader speaker from a global organization will share how they repositioned the contact center from a reactive support platform to a proactive value-creation hub. We'll discuss how they leverage customer data and empower agents to identify cross- and upsell opportunities. Our speaker will also share how they communicate these wins company-wide to change the perception of the contact center and ensure it is seen as fully aligned with business outcomes. Rather than focusing purely on tech, we'll highlight organizational changes, KPIs and cross-functional alignment.
Attendees will learn:
- How to reframe the contact center's role from cost center to growth center
- The KPIs you need to track to link CX with revenue and retention
- Real examples of turning service interactions into loyalty and advocacy
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Improving agent experience and efficiency with Copilot
As contact centers deal with increasingly complex customer needs across channels, generative AI-powered Copilot, a real -time assistant that advises agents on responses and next-best actions based on a knowledge pool, comes to the fore as a solution.
In addition to real-time help for agents, copilots also reduce post-contact work, providing instant call summaries with analysis.
In this, copilots not only lighten the load for agents but help them to work more efficiently and more consistently, reducing the chance of human error during service. The reduced workload frees up agent time for more meaningful (and profitable) tasks.
Join this session to learn why copilot is an essential tool for a modern contact center and how to successfully implement it and integrate it with existing tools and platforms.
Attendees will learn:
- How to boost engagement and retention: Discover proven strategies for improving agent satisfaction, reducing burnout, and keeping top talent in an increasingly competitive labor market.
- Leveraging technology for workforce management: Explore the latest tools in workforce engagement, like AI-driven scheduling, real-time coaching, and performance analytics, and how they’re making life easier for teams and leaders alike.
- Building a culture of growth: Understand how to upskill agents for evolving roles, embed continuous learning into daily workflows, and align employee experience with wider CX goals.
12:00 pm - 12:30 pm
How to use AI to cut ticket resolution times by 150%
Sujit Mohanty -
Senior CX Program Manager,
TikTok
When running a marketplace with over a million sellers, contact center challenges can feel overwhelming. Especially with new features rolling out constantly, and when every update generates a fresh wave of support tickets (sometimes up to 50,000 per week). Without a strong knowledge base or AI-powered workflows, resolution times can reach seven or eight days.
In this session, Sujit Mohanty, Senior Program Manager for CX at TikTok, will share how he has built AI-enabled workflows to give agents solid context when a ticket comes in, with suggested next best actions. Combined with an improved knowledge base and better agent training, initial results during testing have been striking, with a 150 percent reduction in resolution times.
When dealing with dozens of different lines of business, however, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, with some ticket types being straightforward enough for automation to handle cleanly, while others full automation struggles with. In the session, we will discuss Sujit's approach to rigorous experimentation that helps to find the right solution for each unique context.
1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
From PR crisis to CX comeback: How Back Market rebuilt customer trust through contact center transformation
Rufus Kahler -
Head of Product Design, Content and Research,
Back Market
When Back Market made headlines in 2024, it wasn't for the reasons a brand wants. The businesses self-serve after-sales strategy and push for operational efficiency had revealed unintended consequences: making it harder for customers to get help. A spike in detractors followed, and stories of frustrated customers found their way into the press. For a brand in a nascent category (like refurbished tech), building trust is critically important so the reputational stakes couldn't have been higher.
This crisis, however, became a catalyst for positive change. It created the moment that gave CX and design leaders the buy-in from senior leadership to fundamentally reshape customer care and to make the case that it isn't just a cost centre but a revenue and loyalty driver.
In this session, Rufus Kahler, Back Market's Head of Product Design and Content Design, will share the story of that turnaround: the strategic U-turn, the multi-year replatforming effort and the rollout of Care 2.0, a hybrid human-AI contact centre model built to meet the needs of customers navigating the complexities of refurbished tech. He'll be candid about the hard decisions along the way, including the cultural shift from "build" to "buy" and the process of finding a tech partner capable of keeping pace as AI capabilities continue to evolve.
Attendees will learn:
- How a PR crisis became the catalyst for transforming the contact center from cost center to revenue and loyalty driver
- The build vs. buy debate: Why even a brand that loves to build chose to partner and how they chose the right vendor
- What a human-AI model looks like in practice across a complex marketplace
1:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Why cultural transformation must keep pace with tech – and how
Heather Arthur -
VP, Global Client Experience Centres,
Scotiabank
The contact center industry is in the grip of an AI arms race and CX and contact center leaders are investing heavily in AI and automation. This makes sense with the significant efficiency gains available and increased competitive environment. There is ,however, a creeping risk in going all-in on tech without putting the same energy into culture reform. The potential result is that every contact center ends up with the same tech stack and deflection rate with little left to differentiate them.
The human skills that will define tomorrow's contact center – namely curiosity and empathy - don't emerge from software deployments. They have to be hired for and trained for.
In this session, Heather Arthur, Vice President of Client Experience Centres at Scotiabank, will make the case for a parallel transformation in which investment in AI is matched by investment in the agents and wider culture surrounding it. We will explore what that looks like in practice, from rethinking hiring for a world where agents handle only the most emotionally charged calls, to redesigning training programs that prioritize connection and building feedback loops that make frontline agents feel seen and heard. We will also address the internal structural challenge that has held the industry back, in which technology lives in IT and culture lives in HR, and they rarely speak. This session will make the case for contact center and CX leaders to become the connectors between these two worlds to drive collaboration that serve customers better.
Attendees will learn:
- Why investing in AI without investing in culture risks a talent crisis and a race to the bottom on differentiation
- How hiring practices and training must evolve now that AI is handling tier-one interactions
- The role CX leaders must play in bridging IT and HR to build the contact center of tomorrow
