Is Agentforce Contact Center the Fix for CX Fragmentation, or a New Risk Layer?

Salesforce’s Agentforce Contact Center launch has split analyst opinion, and this CX Today debate gets straight to why. Host Rob Wilkinson is joined by Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research and Dave Michels of TalkingPointz to unpack what Agentforce actually is, what problem it is trying to solve, and what it could break.

Kerravala frames Agentforce as a serious attempt to reduce “fragmentation hell” by converging CRM, customer interactions, and AI into a single platform layer, so agents stop being the “integration point” between disconnected tools. Michels pushes back hard, arguing the launch is a pivot driven by pressure on CRM’s long-standing model and relevance, especially as generative AI changes how businesses capture and use customer conversation data.

Across the discussion, they dig into the operational impact on contact center leaders and frontline teams, including context switching, data quality, and what becomes the real “source of truth” when AI can surface answers directly from live conversations. The result is a grounded look at the stakes for customer service organizations weighing consolidation, reliability, and speed-to-value as AI moves from feature to foundation.

For more Customer Experience tech news visit https://www.cxtoday.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello and welcome. I'm Rob Wilkinson, and today we're taking a closer look at the recent Salesforce launch of the Agent Force Contact Center. And we're asking what that might mean for the future shape of customer experience. This launch of Agent Force Contact Centre has definitely created a lot of debate. Safe to say there's a wide range of different opinions, often dividing sort of the analysts' commentary online. So on one side, I'm seeing optimists who see this as a genuine shift in how customer service could run with AI moving from an add-on to something closer to a default execution layer. On the other hand, we've got the skeptics who see promise in this as an approach, but actually a lot of risk as well. So, particularly when we look at whether a new approach like this can match the reliability, the maturity operationally, or the depth that contact centers depend on, uh, like we have with a lot of the legacy vendors. So today I'm joined by two analysts. They've both been quoted recently on this story from different sides of the opinion. Um, Zeus Caravalla from ZK Research representing the Optimists. Uh welcome, Zeus and Dave Michaels from Talking Points. That's with a Zed, uh, representing the skeptics. Gentlemen, great to have you one. Thanks very much for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

I think that sums up uh the way we look at life too.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I was I was trying to play uh play that through my head, but I'm not sure I'm a I'm I guess I'm a pessimist in many ways, but as far as uh Contact Center goes, I think it's it's a great time. So I'm not sure I feel uh I should be considered a pessimist regarding the contact center.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Okay. So we'll go with um we'll go with uh considered opinion then rather than that particular one. Um but that's okay. Um I think um to try and get the audience on track in what we're talking about here, just in I mean, unless they've been under a rock, they they're probably gonna know this. But um if you can both uh give us kind of a a sum up uh in one line what Agent Force Contact Center actually is, what is the real market shift of this? And and and Zeus, I'll I'll go to you first on that one, please.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Sure. So Agent Force Contact Center is uh Salesforce is entering into the contact center market. I think they're addressing the issue that most companies have today and that they're trying to improve customer experience, but they're dealing with a lot of fragmented silos of data. And so they brought together, and I think you one could argue it's the first fully converged, like at a platform level, um uh software that brings together CRM, customer interactions, and AI together. And, you know, in data sciences is an axiom where we say good data leads to good insights, but for silos of data leads to fragmented insights. And that's it, that's what I think companies are facing with a lot today. Uh, you know, a lot of the way so I think this, what Salesforce is trying to do is fundamentally redefine customer experience and how you look at it as a single stack versus the coming together as several stacks. That's really concise. Dave, over to you.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Well, I think I understand why being called the pessimist. Um the uh the question was what is Agent Force? Is that what you asked? Is that is that accurate? And what's the market shift? Uh well the yeah, the market shift is exactly the right the right question. Uh uh Agent Force is a desperate attempt uh for Salesforce to both remain relevant and maintain its revenue. And um it might work, it but uh uh there's a fairly significant pivot here. And and the pivot really is that the Salesforce Empire was built around CRM and they've done a fantastic job building the CRM. Uh the CRM is now obsolete and or becoming or rapidly becoming obsolete. And so the problem is trying to pivot. And it's gonna be a tricky battle because where it's pivoting to is not well defined, and there's a lot of competitive forces pivoting to the same place.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Nice. Okay, so we've actually got quite a nice, concise we've got on one hand, we've got a revolution going on, and on the other, we've got a fight to stay relevant. So this is ACE. Let's talk about this then. So um I want to first of all, for the kind of first part of this, I want to kind of look at this through more the kind of the business issues, the human impact of this uh approach. Um we'll come on to technology later. I know you both love talking about technology, but we're gonna have to save that for the second half. Um so so let's let's kick off um with um and then and first going to you, uh Zias. Um where are CX operations or contact centers uh feeling uh the pressure most right now?

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Well, we're likely feeling the pressure, really. Uh, you know, the the reality is that despite all the innovation that we've had, most contacts interaction center interactions still aren't very good. And I think most contact centers are you know getting or are drowning in fragmentation call, right? So I think I read on CX today that only 3% operate on a single unified platform. I'd be surprised if it's that high. Um, while most companies manage four or five different technologies. And so when I talk to contact center leaders, probably a good half of them say that this for the fragmentation they have increases maintenance costs, creates training problems, uh, a lot of data increases consistency, and you wind up making the human the integration point for the technology. And whenever we've done that for in any technology, when the human is the integration point, things fall apart. And so today, with AI being such a key focus, as I mentioned before, right, silos of data lead to uh to fragmented insights. And I think this is where companies have to be very careful. You don't want to have your CRM telling an agent one thing and your contact center telling an agent another thing, and your workforce management tool telling telling them, you know, uh yet a third thing. And so um I think um despite the investments that companies have made in AI, I think a lot of contact center leaders I've talked to say that the conversations have become more challenging uh because the disconnected systems prevent agents from having the context that need to resolve issues quickly. And so you might have a different info. And like I said, you know, if you want to sum up the pain in one word, it's or in one sentence, it's the fact that people are still the integration point for the technology. It needs to become a platform. And I I think that's you know where uh we've always had the pain and we continue to Okay, Dave, over to you.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Well, wait a minute now. I just gotta say, he said not to talk about technology. I heard AI platforms integrations. That was a that was a pretty bad answer, ZS. I don't I don't think you get credit for that one. Uh best partial credit. Your turn then, Dave. You go. All right. So the the base the basic challenge hasn't changed in, you know, since we've since the birth of the customer, since the birth of the business. I don't know what's in first. But the uh uh how do you how do you how do you manage the customer? How do you manage that customer relationship? And how do you build loyalty? How do you build the ability to be proactive? How do you do that in a cost-effective way? How do you do that uh uh in a way that could possibly even increase revenue and so and build loyalty? Um, and so those are the challenges, they haven't changed. What has changed is the options on the menu about which way to go with that. And so that's when we get into the technology shift, and we're seeing uh fairly significant technology shift. And for the past, I don't know, I don't know how old CRM is. The S. You know how CRM goes back, what, 20 years? Uh I don't know. At least 20 years.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Well, SAP was around in 2000, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

So okay, so so the whole idea of CRM was a beautiful vision. You know, use advanced software to manage the customer relationship, put all kinds of data in it, and we will um uh harvest this data in ways that could drive loyalty and drive revenue and do it cost effectively. Well, all that has proven to be untrue. I mean, that they it it it's not good at at managing the data. It hasn't improved the customer relationship, it hasn't done it cost effectively, and and so, but it's all we had. It was the only thing on the menu. And so we built these whole um architectures with the CRM in the middle. And so you've got companies like Salesforce, which is one of the bigger ones, that has that big chunk in the middle, and everybody else kind of connects to it. And they they use terms like source of truth, but that's not really the right term. It's it's a it's a portion of stale truth, is what they have in there. And and and it's become very expensive. So now we have AI, and AI is disrupting everything, everything. And I I I don't know how to make that point more clearly. I keep on saying making that point, and I think it's so obvious, and people say, well, it's not affecting me. It is affecting you, it's affecting everything. I mean, everything, and it's certainly affecting software, and it's certainly affecting business models, it's certainly affecting how we manage data, it's certainly affecting how we integrate data, it's everything. And so one of the things that's happening in the CRM world is that the uh the seat license is going to die. And uh that's a big threat to revenue. And it's a the seat license is effectively a bet against your customer's efficiency. And so you're supposedly giving the customer tools to be more efficient, and if they become more efficient, they're gonna pay less. That's a that's a flawed, broken model. And so and so the CRM companies have a lot to lose. And the main thing they're gonna lose is that CRM centric view of customer relationship. And so that's the that's why I say it's a pivot. That's why I say this is a um uh uh uh yeah, a a pivot or even a panic to become to remain relevant. And so they have to build new solutions.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Okay, so on on one hand we've got existing stuff, existing stacks that are fragmented. Uh and on the other hand, we've got um we've got the you know, the setups are too complicated, but too many options, and these are the challenges right now. So let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

I think the question is what what becomes the system of record, right? And so I do think software changes the way license change, but it doesn't stop the fact that CRM is table primarily a system of record for most companies. And the I I think AI changes the way you view it. Um I do think one of the problems Salesforce had historically, if you look at their initial release of Einstein, AI didn't work very well because the data in Salesforce for a lot of companies isn't very good. I think it's an interesting thing to think about that with AI taking notes now for salespeople, contact center agents, it can actually populate better data into the CRM. And so while AI is the thing that might expose the weakness of the CRM, it's also the thing that could actually populate the data. And so when people say SaaS is dead, I think that's a grossly over-exaggerated concept. I think the interface we use is likely going to change, but the data in it remains important because it's the thing that feeds around.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

You almost got that right, Zias. Like I you're so close. I I really, I really appreciate you get making the effort. But but let's clarify something here. You see, the the data in the CRM, as you pointed out, is often stale and it's often incomplete. Most of that comes from customer conversations. And so the way it's been for the past 20 years is the contact center was CRM's bitch, right? So basically, the CRM didn't have access to the conversation. So it had to ask the contacts because it doesn't want to deal with contact. That's hard, that's hard stuff. It's real time's hard stuff. Let's let's outsource that out to the contact center. We'll have them go and key in all these little menu codes. What was the call about? What did the customer want? What what school does the uh uh kid, the client's kid go to? You know, all these little things will capture all that into the CRM. Well, the CRM, and so and so Zias, you made the point, you know, who's gonna be the system of record? The the reality is system of record is a is a misnomer. It's it's singular. There's gonna be lots of systems of records. There's gonna be ERP systems, there's gonna be shipping systems, there's gonna be ticketing systems, there's gonna be all kinds of systems. So what really matters is how you get the various sources, plural, of truth.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Which is why CLC both the world contact center.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And so that half that data in the CRM is coming from conversations with the customer. Probably more than half the data. That's so all of a sudden, generative AI doesn't mean that the contact center has to be uh CRM's bitch anymore. Now the contact center can capture that own their own conversation data. Now, when you want to know why customers are calling, instead of going to a CRM and running a report on stale data that was probably uh inaccurately keyed in, you go to the C the contact center directly and you ask, why are people calling? Why are people calling today? Why are people calling at this moment? And it can give you a fairly accurate presentation of that information.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Let's bring it back to the people that are impacted by the tech. Because I'm really keen to kind of focus on, we've got the leaders to talk about. And I think the people in the operations who are managing the teams that are looking after those customers, uh, who are at the end of the day, the kind of the important guys. Um they're experiencing issues right now with the complicated tech stacks, as you as you pointed out. What what does that pain look like? What what what are we trying to what whatever the uh opinion is around this particular technology, what what do we think the um the attempt to improve is? What are they trying to remove, what are they trying to make better? Because that I think that's really important to see and and and kind of highlight.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Well, that's kind of what I was answering. I mean, if you want to understand why people are calling, what what customers are interested in in solving, or even even uh if it's not real-time data, just trying to understand which customers are are due for a proactive poll or something like that, uh, all that information is basically mining your different data sources. One of those data sources, one of the bigger ones, is of course is of course your interactive conversations with customers, which could be texts, emails, all kinds of stuff. But the other thing, there's, you know, uh, did they do a return recently, maybe check the different systems like that? So getting accurate information. And so the way the CRM has done that is it collect tries to collect this information and it's incomplete, and it's a fancy database, and then you have to run special reports and you have to, you know, hire somebody to make a report for you. And you know, that then we get into the whole uh TPS reports uh um uh cover page and all kinds of stuff like that. So so the the issue is is that generative AI is disrupting all this. So we don't know where this is gonna land. There's a lot of variables here, but the idea that you could just ask in natural language, who do I need to call today? What's the issues going on on the East Coast today? And and get real-time responses that's much more accurate than we've had before. So so what we're finding is that the conversations are becoming much more valuable than they were, and the contact center has those conversations. The contact center doesn't necessarily want to give that data anymore to the CRM because it just gets stale and old there. And and so then and the CRM understands this, which is why they're pivoting to try to become contact centers.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Understood.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Yeah, I think, you know, the term simplified the stacks is an interesting one because a lot of us look at it from the technology point of view. And I I think, you know, from the context of what we're talking about, we really should be talking more about the people issue, right? And so there's the obvious hidden cost of you know, maintaining the software APIs, all the you know, the software costs that we do that. But I think from a people perspective, um the the what Salesforce is trying to address is the overhead that the agents face in having the contact switch all the time. And so, you know, from my research, frontline agents spend at least 20 to 30 percent of their time just switching between applications. Supervisors then can't get that single source street to understand how productive people are. And then there's you know, all the other issues with poor service to customers and things like that. And so I I think you know, what Salesforce done here, this isn't about consolidation, you know, for its own sake. It's about removing the friction that make customer service feel like they're always trying to assemble, you know, you know, like here furniture with instructions in three languages here. So I I think it's um, you know, eventually, you know, I suppose they could have bought somebody or something, but I I think the way we've done this in the past where we try and bring together the different sources of data, you know, through these different APIs and connections and stuff, it's fair to say it's not really ever worked because you know, we all call contact centers, and how often do you leave saying that's it's a great experience? And so, you know, like like I said, when it comes to simplified stack, we always look at it from the technology point of view, but I think it's important to look at it from the people point of view because they're the ones that feel the real pain, and then the customers are the ones that suffer off on the back end of it.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

So it's a great it's a great summary, yeah. I uh it makes sense. Um, I guess we should get into the technology a little bit more then. So um I think I I'm really I I I really liked uh your point, Zius, around uh eliminating what you called the integration tax. Um can you kind of just for our audience explain um what that is and what must be true for that to be something that's happening in the contact sector?

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Yeah, I think the integration gas and thought it was the ongoing costs in you can take them in dollars, time, and opportunity of forcing disparate systems to share data that frankly they were never designed to share natively. So um if you bring all together in a single, in a single platform, you can eliminate that by making voice, digital channels, AI, agents, CRM operating from the same underlying platform. The key there is the unified data model, right? And so you don't have any API in the middle where when one vendor, you know, when you when you have partners working together, when one vendor changes, then you know, there's uh there's always a revision behind because the other vendor needs to go change their APIs and things like that. So um, but I think for this new real three things have to be true, right? And the first is customer data must flow without having to transform it or duplicate it across different interaction types because when you do that, you create the agency. Second, AI and human agents must share identical context without any kind of handoff friction, right? And so we've always struggled to do that and um you know have that single source of truth that whether you want to call it that or not. And then lastly, the platform must eliminate the need for you know for different vendors to provide routing quality management, workforce optimization, analytics. And um, you know, granted Salesforce still has to build some of those things, but that's the goal behind it, right? They're not trying to bolt onto their CRM, they're trying to architect it natively where that system of record data already lives in order to get rid of that that integration tax that's multifaceted, as I said.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

So and Dave, I'm sure you've got an argument, the a counterpoint or at least for that.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Well, no, I I I uh the integration tax is definitely gonna go away. It's been a big problem. Um in the future, you won't really log into a CRN. Uh you'll interact with an AI agent that lives in your communication stack and and uh uh the data will be uh uh presented to you as necessary when you need it. And uh I I think we all know where we're heading. We don't know quite when we're gonna get there. Um I I I don't think that the um uh I don't think that you know the the argument of you know uh uh I I I said earlier that it's not gonna be a single source of truth. There never has been and never will be. We've been silo busting in IT for you know 30 years, whatever it's been. And they're we we build them faster than. And so we're always going to have data silos of what's going to be what's going to be important is to figure out how to integrate these things. And the way we've integrated in the past hasn't been working. And so we believe that AI will allow us to pull this together a little better. Now, I keep on saying things are moving, things are changing. I mean, the amount of uh innovation occurring in the big models and the big AI story, it's unbelievable how fast things are changing. I do my monthly report, and the monthly report used to be a lot shorter. It's just so much activity is is is um happening right now. Uh the models that we're or the AI that we're using today is radically different than it was six months ago. And it takes six months to implement anything. And so whatever you start implementing today is going to be very different when you finish it. It's and so and so we don't know quite where this is all gonna land. One of the things we don't know, and there's a big assumption, is that the cost of AI is gonna keep going down. Uh, we don't know if that's true anymore. Uh the demand for AI is increasing faster than the capacity is increasing. That means there might be a shortage. Shortages usually mean prices go up. And so uh that's gonna be a problem for anybody doing a perceit license model. Um uh and that's why I think the perceiv license model is gonna have to go away. So there's gonna be there's all kinds of unknowns. We don't know how much better the AI is gonna get, we don't know much faster it's gonna get, we don't know what it's gonna cost, and we don't know quite what it's going to do. But we know it's moving very, very quickly, and we know that software and CRMs in particular are uh a falling knife. And so if you want to try to catch that, you go ahead. And um uh and so it's a great time to be in the contact center space because uh they're not being they are being impacted by by um uh the depth of software, but not nearly as much because uh they're also on the leading edge of this. They're they're gonna have to move from a perceived model, but um they're but managing the real-time network and the conversations and the integrations are a little different than just bytecoding. So um it'll it'll be an interesting journey for sure, though.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

So I think all the software vendors, I don't care what states they're in, have to think about making this HD utilization-based model.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah, let I I I let me, I'm glad, I'm glad you challenged on that, because let me explain that. The uh the the reason why the CCAS vendors are in a better spot is because they can deliver an ROI that eliminates the CRM vendors. They're not quite there yet. Some of them are, some of them aren't quite there yet, but they have to add a little more functionality around customer profiles and stuff like that. But but if they can eliminate the cost of a CRM, their ROI becomes very compelling. The CRM vendors, they're not trying to eliminate the CRM cost. They're trying to add CCAS on top of it. They have an impossible ROI mission ahead of them. And so uh this is why this is why the CCAS vendors are in a much better position. That that might be the worst takeover.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

You can't, you, you can't you can't eliminate the CRM vendors. Well, I mean, the CCAS vendors could if they build their own CRM capabilities. But I mean, that is uh I mean you you talk about the complexity of building the global voice network. It's equally complex to build, you know, a system of record that keeps track of every customer they'll actually understand CRMs aren't just used for service, right? We think of it that way in the context of our space. There's the entire sales and marketing aspect of it, top of funnel all the way to bottom of funnel to customer service, right? CRMs are used from first mouse click through product retirement. And the the CCAT vendors address the very back half of that, but certainly not the front end of that.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Yeah, no, I I I understand and agree with what you're saying. I just think that the model's changing. That the that in fact, as you pointed out, Zia, as you said, most customers interact with contact centers and customer service and some kind, they're not happy with it. The CRM model, the CRM promise of improving that customer relationship really hasn't delivered and it's become very, very expensive. So what's instead going to happen is we're gonna revalue, uh, reevaluate how we do this uh customer relationship management. It's like it's like the cut the customer relationship's not gonna go away. When I say the CRM is gonna go away, it's it's like it's like when the digital camera came out. Um the digital camera replaced the film camera, but it didn't replace pictures, right? So the customer relationship is still going to be there, still gonna be important. Um, but how we photograph it is going to be very different. And the CRM has just become uh an unruly database. It's a very expensive database, and what a large part of its value is around the agent desktop or the desktop UI. And we've already seen, you know, what Salesforce announced headless, which was just, you know, that's a that's a that's a laugh. So they've already they've already announced, well, we'll get rid of part of this part of our value. They didn't say they're gonna get rid of that part of the price, though, but they're gonna get rid of that part of the value. But that's their problem. They have to maintain their revenue. And that and they're not gonna be able to maintain their revenue, which means that they're gonna be in constant mode of layoffs while they're trying to build CCAS. That's gonna be a tough business. Now, some of them, the big ones or the smart ones, might be able to pull that off. A lot of them won't. But CCAS vendors, on the other hand, don't have to do that much more to add a little more customer profile information. I just wrote, and I did a recent post, Amazon already has it, uh, NICE already has it. Um in fact, the the guy leading the Nice effort, he built the dynamics uh uh product at Microsoft. So so they they know they kind of know what they need to build, and they're gonna build it in an AI first new model. Yeah, and uh they're gonna do it at a much lower cost.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

They don't have it across the customer journey. And this is the problem that, well, really every vendor of the customer experience, from Adobe to you know Salesforce to NICE, is nobody really understands customer journey because as I said, that starts at first mouse click and ends at product target. And the uh the the Adobe's the world are very good at the front end of that chain. The CCAS vendors are very good at the back end of it. You know, I think it's arguable that CRM is the only one that looks across both, but you still need the data from all aspects of that. So I don't I don't think sales are finished here. I I think they're they're the ones, you know, you know, they built the CCAS, but you know, they they've got to build along. You know, I'm sure there's more coming from them.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

So just to be able to do that. Yeah, so so when you start off with where what is Asian Forest? So they're trying to build a CCAS. It'll take them a couple years to get to the basics. It'll take them a couple more years to get it uh Fed cer Fed ramp certified. It'll take them a couple more years to get it five five nine uh reliable. I mean, and so they got a hell of a journey ahead of them. They'll they'll get there. Yeah, they got the you know, they'll get there. They're gonna have to do that all, of course, while baling water. But that's you know, it's a whole nother conversation, uh, which we've already touched on. So um, but but but you made a really good point there, Zias, which is what we're building, we don't quite know. We don't really understand what we're building yet, and we're building it with uh wet paint, right? I mean, it's like this is all it's all changing very, very quickly. And so I do not bel but we do know a few a few things for sure. We know that AI is getting better and better. We know that conversations are becoming more and more important and that we can mine more data out of them. We know that integrations are becoming much easier with AI. And I don't believe for a second that any enterprise is ever going to have a single source of truth. Never has, never will. Um and uh and so I think we can we could have we're finally in a position to build a solution that doesn't need or assume that.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Dave, you've you've touched on um reliability there specific and you've called out like comparing this to Five Nines reliability, you know, the functional depth that they've got. That's a challenge that you've that you've kind of mentioned previously. I'd like you to kind of go into a bit more detail on that. What what are the what are those non-negotiables that you know have to stack up in order for you know a vendor to be able to provide a proper contact center solution?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Well, then that's all the stuff that the contact center industry, the CCAS providers, the CCAS leaders have been building for years, right? So, you know, we talk about 5.9, there's the 5.9 metric and there's the 5.9 provider. And for a long time, the 5.9 provider did not meet the 5.9 metric, but now they have for years now. And so that but but it was an it was an aspirational goal at first, but it takes time to build this stuff. It's really hard to do. Um, and you can't vibecode it, right? And so, and so it took Amazon. I mean, Amazon built uh Connect, and they actually had uh real-time expertise in-house. They are, they are, they up, they had these capabilities in-house, and it still took them somewhere around two or three years to uh to kind of get that kind of stabilized for the contact center. Uh, Salesforce has none of that. I mean, Salesforce needed to add little video to Slack, and they had to hire Amazon to do that. So um so they're starting from scratch. I I don't really understand why Salesforce didn't acquire somebody, but they chose not to, and that's their toy, that's their decision. So it's gonna take them some time to build reliable network. So, what do they have to build? They have to build Omnichannel, and Omnichannel is keeps on getting more omni, as we say. It just keeps on adding more channels. Well, the latest one is RCFs, but you know, you've got all these things from WhatsApp to uh text messaging to uh to voice, um, all kinds of I don't know how many channels there are down in the modern contact center, 10, something like that. Uh, and they all have to be reliable, they have to be recorded, they have to be uh uh available for uh uh groups. Uh you've got to build the the 5.9 reliability, which is a very hard thing to do. You've got to build um uh distribution model around different countries, which uh and some countries are very restrictive about how you could bring in communication services. You've got to build a partner uh network, you've got to build uh partners that can actually not only sell it, but actually implement it and support it. And this all takes time. I mean, how long will it take Salesforce to do this? A while. It's gonna be a while. Not to mention none of their none of their existing, or a few of their existing partners, know how to do any of this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

And so on that, Z, because I'm just conscious of time. I'd like to get your counter to that. Do can Salesforce do that do any of this? Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

They didn't have the talent, but they actually went and hired a lot of the people from Amazon that book was there. And um, you know, you're uh uh you know, I get they're new in the market, but you're in fact the post you wrote basically said if you're late in a market, you should never enter a market. And you know, Zoom went through this, Amazon went through this. I mean, Zoom built one from zero to you know full-fledged contact center in like three years. And I you look at the path they took, they didn't acquire somebody, they tried to buy five lines that fell apart. But if you ask anybody at Zoom, they're much better off having built their own stack, you know, than trying to buy a legacy one where you'd have to modernize it.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

But the difference there, the the difference there, ZS, is that Zoom is a real-time communications company. They they have experience and capability in doing this. And they knew they know how to do UI, and they already had all these skills. But but but your point is fair. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

But sales folks did go and hire a number of the people from Connect to go do that. I do think uh also a lot of the other things that you need.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Elon Musk hired a bunch of really expensive AI professionals and they lasted for a whole six months until they came up with the But you know it uh it doesn't hiring doesn't solve it. Like you've got to build a team, you've got to build a strategy, you've got to build a vision, you've got to execute. This is not easy and trivial stuff. Yeah, but Salesforce already has a lot of the components you need.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

They they do have most of the channels. Uh they have quality management, morphology optimization. Uh they they they're they they do have conversation intelligence from their own AI. Um, and so you know, the they do have to go build up their telephony network, which I'm not gonna uh, you know, uh uh understate the complexity that that rings. But the the you know, the bigger question, I guess, isn't whether and this is an interesting thing to think about for the industry. What does Salesforce actually have to match the 20-year-old feature list that was built pre-AI, or how many of those features won't matter in the post-AI world where a lot of the tier goal inquiries can be handled without you know routing trees and all your the the the stuff that happens at the back end, right? And so I think here's a case where the all the new entrants, and through Amazon and Zoom and Win Central CX in there as well, aren't as worried about trying to get rid of the phone, like they say the best call you can have is the one that never happens, right? And um you know the new entrants in the space and I throw sales work in there, can be a lot more aggressive in trying to redefine customer experience than the than what is with the big shares today, because they stand to lose a lot, you know, if um you know interactions fall through the floor because you're handling them in a much different way, right? And so that's interesting thing to think about is like if Salesforce comes in this market and just tries to be exactly what everybody else is, I think that's the wrong approach. They got to really rethink interactions and how we can do it in a different way, right? And that's larger what Amazon's done, and they've had a lot of support.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

You know, yeah, yes, you're absolutely right. I've been too critical. The the CRM vendors, they've they've done a fantastic job of building an incredible business and empire around software that doesn't work. And so, and so I I think that you're right, that they we should give them a little bit of credit and patience. I actually have no doubt that they can build this. I want to be clear about that. They actually can build it. The question is, can they do it in a way that preserves the revenue, which is their objective? And I don't believe they can do that. And I think that's where we're gonna see a lot of disruption from other new vendors, not all, not only CCAS providers, but other providers that are moving into that.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

I mean, that's true of every software vendor right now. Is AI gonna, you know, I that's why Wall Street's so you know bearish on software in general. I mean, all the CCAT vendors are way down too.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

So Okay, so I'm afraid we've we can I mean I don't think we're ever gonna agree uh on this, um, but that's okay. Um and we've run out of time very, very nearly. It feels to me that we've got a situation where AI is basically leveling a playing field, isn't it? Uh and everyone's trying to do their best to get on that playing field, however it might look. And people are adapting, people are evolving, people are acquiring, but ultimately it's going to be very interesting to see where everybody ends up uh and and when they get there, I think to your point, Dice.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

And I I want I just want to say, I don't think we disagree as much as you think that we do. I think I think we both, I think in fact Salesforce and most of the CCAS providers have a very similar vision. I think they're all kind of moving toward the same place. The question is, how do you get there? And that's that's where the differences are. How do you get there and and uh and what and what do you charge for it? I think that's that's really where the issues are.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah. I think I think one thing that's been misunderstood though is Salesforce didn't do this to just launch a competitive CCAS product, right? So they are trying to create a an architectural reckoning, if you will, of CX, right? Where CIOs today have to justify pay the integration tax to maintain separate systems. There's a lot of there's a pretty heavy lift on the agents, even still. Uh, we've made it a little bit easier with agent uh you know recommendation tools and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

So they they have they have a lot a lot, they have a lot of money, they have a lot of skill, and they have a business model that's obsolete. So if they're gonna pivot as fast as they can, and they and they're doing it, they're doing a good job of it.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

Wait, but there's a you know, there's a lot of money to be made in um in cutting costs, right? Cutting the cost of agents, but there's more to be made if you can help companies think of new revenue in the models. And I think this is where Salesforce is, you know, they they understand um you know kind of the customer journey better than most C C CAT vendors will. It'll be interesting to see if it forces the hand about the CCAT vendors. I predict that you will see Zoo eventually move to CRM. You know, I think that's the one piece of the stack with their listen.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

So um, you know, I I I think you heard it we heard it here first. I can't lead with that. I can't can't lead with that as a headline when you heard it here first. Unfortunately, that is that is all the all the time. We've got uh gents. Uh Zias, Dave, thanks so much uh for again for joining me and answering all my questions. Um I I think before we close though, just for anyone who's watching this, um who who might be interested in kind of following your thoughts and opinions on on similar or other subjects, what what's the best way for them to find out more, get in touch with you? Dave, do you want to go first?

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Uh you can find me and my content at talkingpoints.com. That's uh with a Z or a Z on the end uh for you, Rob. Um and uh yeah, everything's there, talkingpoints.com.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Yeah, for me, just go to zkresearch.com or ZK, depending if you're in the US or not, or just uh uh follow me on LinkedIn. That uh pretty active feed um every day.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

So awesome. And and don't forget, you can also find a wealth of related resources, stories, and videos at cxttoday.com. Um so that does wrap everything up. I've been Rob Wilkinson from CX Today. Thanks very much for joining us.