Short, checked, cited where we can. The announcements, the moves and the things worth a look.
Follow @cxtodaynewsGartner says CIOs should deliberately manage AI value and risk as risk accelerates faster than value. The firm says only 25% of CIOs align technology and business risk, while 71% expect to deploy agentic AI within 12 months and only 21% have governance capabilities in place.
U.K. confidence in deploying AI safely and effectively is slipping, research by Infor. Confidence in managing AI rollouts without disrupting operations fell from 75 percent in April to 66 percent, while only 62 percent of U.K. businesses believe their data is sufficiently mature and well-governed to support reliable AI, the second-lowest result across seven countries.
Everton Football Club has launched Everton Mobile, a SIM-only service offering UK calls, texts and data plans from £15 per month. Supporters can keep their existing handset and number, choose O2 or Vodafone coverage, and access club prizes and experiences.
HubSpot has introduced new pricing options that let customers move budget between seat types or into credits during a contract, while also adding prepaid credit packs, pay-as-you-go billing for extra usage, and default spend caps to help manage AI costs.
Zendesk has launched the Open Service Directory, a public directory that helps AI assistants find a brand’s verified support destination. With customer permission, assistants can connect users to an official AI agent or hand over to human support with history preserved.
Contentsquare has launched an AI-first Experience Platform to help businesses measure customer journeys across websites, apps, conversations, LLMs, and autonomous agents. The platform separates human, LLM, and agent traffic, adds multi-touch attribution for AI-referred traffic, and aims to close gaps in journey measurement.
Tottenham Hotspur has launched Ask Spurs, a multilingual Salesforce Agentforce assistant for ticketing, memberships, retail and stadium-event enquiries. Built on 4.6 million unified fan profiles, the agent has achieved an 86% engagement rate and resolves 20% of interactions independently, then escalates more complex questions to human support.
Liferay’s survey of 800 multilingual US consumers found 56% have abandoned purchases because a website or app felt poorly adapted to their language or culture. While AI speeds translation, consumers value human review, with 43% crediting people’s involvement for localization that feels genuinely relevant.
Verint has been named a Leader in IDC MarketScape’s 2026 Worldwide Conversational Intelligence and Analytics Software assessment. The recognition highlights Verint’s position in the market for technologies that analyze customer conversations and help businesses improve customer experience operations.
A survey of 3,000 consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany found trust in AI more than doubles when a human option is visible. It also found that 92% give AI less than 10 minutes before asking for a person, and 71% say it is very or extremely important to know when they are talking to AI.
In Brief runs on tips. A good nugget is short and specific — a launch, a hire, a funding round, a number, a neat find worth a look — and it lands best with a source link so we can check it and cite it. We read everything and curate what runs; nothing publishes automatically.
File it at the news desk →@cxtodaynews on X ↗Primary source · date · number · named spokesperson. Two of the four and we will usually run it.
