According to McKinsey, engaged and satisfied contact centre agents are 8.5 times more likely to stay than leave within a year. It is well documented that poor experiences lead to customers cutting spend and, according to some research, a single negative contact center interaction can permanently change how up to 78 percent of customers feel about a company. This puts huge pressure on agents who are, in this context, responsible for brand reputation and, ultimately, future revenue.

It is, then, essential for businesses to understand and acknowledge the value agents bring and shift focus from Contact Center as Cost Center to Contact Center as Potential Profit Center. Keeping agents engaged and satisfied is the key to retaining them, is the key to high-quality, consistent service.

In this session, our expert panellists will discuss how to keep agents engaged – and what can go wrong when they're not. We'll delve into the importance of flexibility, learning and development and acknowledgement and explore strategies to execute these successfully.

Attendees will learn:

• The key pillars of keeping agents engaged and satisfied and improving retention
• Where so many businesses go wrong, resulting in high turnover and mounting hiring costs
• Strategies for improved engagement and boosting job satisfaction

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

Research indicates, 31 percent of contact center agents indicated that they are likely to leave their current roles within the next six months, and call center agent turnover remains high at between 30 – 45 percent, depending on where you look. Stress, burnout, lack of development opportunities and outdated systems create a maelstrom of frustration which presents a costly challenge to contact centers seeking to replace lost talent. All of this has dire consequences for CX, with the knock-on impact of poor agent experience (AX) felt keenly by customers via increased wait times and inconsistent service.

While AI and automation has been a priority for leaders in many organizations, benefits are often yet to reach the frontline workers. AI assistance can alleviate pressure on agents by suggesting best next steps in real-time, summarizing call notes and analyzing customer feedback to identify patterns humans might miss.

In this session, we'll assess the real reasons behind high agent turnovers and explore realistic and cost-effective ways for leaders to mitigate this. We'll look at how to collaborate with frontline workers to find the best automation options for each unique contact center team, and how to navigate implementation and integration processes along the way.

Attendees will learn:

• The AI deployments that will actually help agents and reduce burnout and turnover
• How to manage a contact center through AI implementation to ensure smooth integration and consistent service levels
• The right metrics to measure the success of AI assistance implementation

Contact centers are undergoing a fundamental shift in operating model from orchestrating human agents' workflows to orchestrating autonomous AI agents that can make decisions across systems in real-time. Most contact centers have fragmented tech stacks, with IVR, CRM, ticketing, digital messaging and back office platforms all operating across disjointed systems. This leads to frustration for customers and for the human agents trying to deliver seamless experiences without jumping between multiple open pages.

For the first time, CX Network's CX Horizons annual research report found that agentic AI and AI agents are a top 10 CX trend, indicating where the market is headed. AI agent orchestration involves a single, "master agent" coordinating multiple specialized agents to complete tasks and form a kind of "digital workforce" that can resolve multi-step customer issues end-to-end in line with company policy and regulatory requirements. Having several, specialized agents working together makes information retrieval across a fragmented stack faster and more accurate, enabling seamless and personalized customer journeys.

In this session, we'll break down the practicalities of AI-driven CX orchestration, looking at what it takes to successfully implement and taking inspiration from brands that have done it already. We'll explore the change management and regulatory considerations and consider stakeholder management in an AI-orchestrated CX ecosystem.

Attendees will learn:

• The core foundations of CX orchestration and how it fits into existing stacks
• Where you'll see the biggest – and quickest – customer journey improvements
• Change management and stakeholder alignment tips when implementing an orchestration layer

The Federal Communications Commission recently voted for contact centers outsourced by US companies to return to American soil in the name of protecting jobs and data security. The Chair has said that offshore contact centers lead to "confusing service, delayed support and even security risks".

The likely result of this vote, rather than lots of new US-based contact centers opening up, is that US companies will turn more staunchly towards AI-driven automation. There is fierce debate in the CX community about whether this will mean improved – or worsened – customer experiences.

In this session, we will bring together industry experts on opposite sides of the fence to unpack the vote and it's potential consequences for BPOs, contact center leaders, agents and, of course, customers. We'll also explore how businesses can navigate this shift with the minimum possible impact on CX and brand reputation.