AI-Driven Agents, Human-Centered Service
July 21 - 22, 2026
| Free CX Network Webinar Series
Day One - July 21
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Panel | Navigating contact centre 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
10:30 am - 11:00 am
Why Voice AI is the future of the contact center
Chatbots are increasingly common and can handle 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. Accuracy, however, is varied but essential, and increased concern around security and compliance can be a barrier to investment for many organizations.
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
11:00 am - 11:30 am
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.
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Using gen AI to transform agent evaluations across 15,000 agents
Allen Crane -
Fractional Chief AI & Analytics Officer,
Former USAA
In many contact centers, supervisors spend up to 80 percent of their time listening back to calls, producing a just handful of evaluations per month that may not be representative. It's a small and context-dependent sample that often says little about actual performance.
In this session, Allen Crane, fractional chief AI and analytics officer | former USAA, will walk us through his experiences transforming AI-driven agent evaluation systems, discussing how, in three months, he rolled out a gen AI evaluation framework across contact centers for 15,000 agents. In doing this, Allen enabled millions of calls to be assessed and gave supervisors a holistic view of agent performance.
We'll discuss how this approach can be fine-tuned, mitigating AI hallucinations and maintaining a commitment to keeping humans in the loop.
Attendees will learn:
- How to move from a small, unrepresentative sample to millions of fully evaluated calls and what a representative picture reveals
- Why human-in-the-loop isn't a compromise and what makes AI evaluation trustworthy enough to act on
- How to responsibly tie AI-driven evaluation to business KPIs and staffing decisions
12:30 pm - 1:00 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
1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Debate | What will the new FCC rules mean for contact centers and CX?
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.
