Andrew Rios has spent his entire career in customer support. Now leading the contact centre at Cityside Fiber - he's seen the industry shift from every angle. His take on where it's heading is grounded, practical, and refreshingly direct.
Customers Expect More - and They Expect It Now
The most visible change Rios has seen in recent years is speed. Customers aren't just expecting faster responses - they're expecting instant ones. And beyond speed, they expect context.
He told CX Today that
"If they've contacted us before, they really do expect us to know that and build a relationship from there,"
It's a simple expectation with significant implications - agents need to arrive at every conversation already informed, already invested, and ready to move forward rather than start from scratch.
CX Leaders Are Finally Getting Their Seat at the Table
AI is reshaping the contact centre - but Rios sees it doing something else too: elevating the CX leader's voice inside the business.
"When enterprises implement a new AI tool, they go to the CX leader and ask - what do we want to solve?"
That shift in dynamic is significant. For years, customer support was viewed as a reactive, cost-centre function. AI is accelerating a change that was already underway - transforming support teams from problem-solvers into proactive drivers of retention, upselling, and relationship building.
"AI can take all the reactive work away, giving your support team the opportunity to be proactive, It's a bedrock."
Coachability Is the Skill Nobody Is Talking About
Empathy and emotional intelligence are rightly getting attention as AI takes over transactional work. But Rios adds a third skill to the list - coachability.