From AI contact centers at WebexOne 2025 to who is most likely take the head of the table in CX, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Cisco Doubles Down on AI-Powered Contact Center at WebexOne 2025
San Diego, CA — At WebexOne 2025 this week, Cisco unveiled a series of major enhancements to its customer experience portfolio, pushing deeper into AI-powered quality management, agent assistance, and cross-industry integrations.
The announcements underscore Cisco’s strategy to position Webex Contact Center as a platform where AI agents and human agents work side by side — with supervisors given the tools to oversee both.
AI is the key to delivering amazing customer experiences at scale
Said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. “As AI and human agents increasingly collaborate, businesses need platforms designed to deliver quality experiences while moving faster than ever.”
AI Quality Management: Coaching Humans and Machines
Launching in early 2026, Webex AI Quality Management (QM) gives supervisors a unified view across their workforce — whether it’s people or AI agents.
Unlike traditional tools that focus on compliance, Cisco says AI QM will deliver:
- AI-assisted scoring and real-time insights
- Personalised coaching for human agents
- Performance optimisation recommendations for AI agents (Read on...)
Salesforce Axes Search In Favor of Agentforce, Users Push Back
CRM giant Salesforce is facing criticism from its own customers and community members after it quietly removed the search bar from its online help pages.
The previous search function has been replaced with the AI-powered Agentforce assistant.
The move has sparked a backlash with users calling for the return of the classic search functionality.
Previously, users on the Salesforce Help site could use the search bar to type keywords, filter by topic, and drill down to quickly find documentation, knowledge articles or troubleshooting resources.
That option is now gone. The only way to access information is to interact with the conversational AI assistant that must understand the user’s question, interpret it and generate an answer on the fly.
Complaints quickly sprang up online in response to the change, with users reporting that Agentforce, while promising in theory, is often slower to deliver what index-based search used to serve up instantly. It may misunderstand queries, hallucinate incorrect answers, or require more back-and-forth conversation to narrow down results.
Users on Reddit noted that Salesforce “killed simple access to the case creation form” recently and see this as the next step in its agentic AI push (Read on...)
Accenture Lays Off 11,000 Staff as Part of AI Reskilling Strategy
Accenture has laid off over 11,000 members of staff as part of a restructuring program.
The company’s 791,000 employees has been cut down to 779,000 in the past three months, and Accenture might not be done yet.
