In conversation with Adrian Swinscoe: Is your contact center ready for the future of customer experience?

Today, automation is being rapidly replaced by even more powerful tools for businesses – first generative AI (GenAI) and now agentic AI. The speed at which AI is evolving is astounding. Yet, even with all the promise this AI evolution brings, customer expectations continue to rise, agents continue to burn out, and systems remain disconnected. There’s no avoiding the fact that CX leaders need to innovate to stay ahead. 

We recently sat down with Adrian Swinscoe, renowned customer experience thought leader and visionary author, to find out how CX leaders can lead the charge in contact center innovation.

Adrian Swinscoe is no stranger to the good, the bad, and the ugly of customer experience. With a repertoire of over 25 years working with brands such as Shell, Apple, Vonage, and Zoom, he has established himself as a trusted advisor and thought leader in the field. His insights have helped numerous organizations navigate the complex terrain of customer service and experience, making him the perfect guide to understanding the future of contact centers.

Adrian is also the author of the popular paper “Is Your Contact Center Future-Ready?". Commissioned by Zoom, Adrian’s paper explores the transformative potential of contact center innovation with agentic AI in CX, and how success depends on its effective implementation to break down silos and connect your organization.

In our chat, we delved into the key themes of Adrian’s paper, examining what’s broken with CX today and how a combination of cloud contact center technology, unified communications, and AI can create a connected contact center that has the potential to revolutionize the industry. We also got a sneak peek into the strategies and innovations that can help businesses not only meet but exceed customer expectations in the years to come.

Welcome, Adrian! We’re excited to chat with you about your updated paper “Is Your Contact Center Future-Ready?”

Q: Can you start by telling us what inspires you about this topic?

Adrian: Thank you! I’d have to say the rapid evolution of customer expectations we’ve all witnessed, along with the rise of agentic AI and cloud technology, inspired me to explore this transformation and its impact on the contact center.

Contact centers have always been crucial to customer experience, but they’re under immense pressure, now more than ever. CX performance is falling because organizations are adding technology faster than they’re connecting it. Creating space between yourself and competitors is challenging. I wanted to investigate how integrating cloud contact center technology, unified communications, and AI, as well as their implementation, can help businesses not only keep up but truly excel and outpace their industry counterparts.

Q: Your paper mentions that many brands are not meeting customer expectations despite significant efforts. Why do you think this is happening?

Adrian: That’s very true, and the data paints the picture for us. Forrester’s North American 2025 Customer Experience (CX) Index shows that, in the eyes of US and Canadian consumers, perceptions of CX quality have declined again and now sit at an all-time low.

The issue is that many brands focus heavily on the buying part of the customer journey but neglect what happens when things go wrong for customers. This lack of balance leads to frustration when customers need support. The contact center often fails to receive the necessary investment to keep pace with rising consumer expectations, resulting in unmet customer needs.

The agents also suffer. Deloitte reports that 3 in 4 agents are overwhelmed by systems and information. It’s a significant oversight for businesses to prioritize customer service, as it can harm brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and lead to agent attrition.

Q: What do you think is the emotional cost of all this disconnection in contact centers, and how does it impact loyalty?

Adrian: I think customers are getting just as burnt out as agents. In fact, 83% of them feel undervalued by brands and are questioning their loyalty to them. That’s a significant number. Then, on the agent side, companies are dealing with attrition levels of 52%.

But there is hope in all of this. What the data tells us is that CX really does matter. 80% of customers report that the experience a company provides is just as important as its products or services. That shows that businesses have an opportunity to shine in CX, and if they evolve carefully, they have the opportunity to retain their loyal customer base and keep their agents. 

Q: You talk about the emergence of AI in customer service, particularly GenAI and agentic AI, and its impact on contact centers. How do you envision this transformation unfolding?

Adrian: It’s easy to get swept up in the AI hype, but it’s important to plan AI implementation carefully with a short-term and long-term strategy. Tackle the low-hanging fruit to get started, and then prepare a longer-term deployment plan.

Agentic AI has the potential to transform self-service capabilities, enabling customers to resolve issues independently. This can free up agents to handle more complex queries. Then, AI can come in to assist agents in real-time during those more complex interactions, providing them with the information they need to resolve issues quickly and effectively, ultimately improving both agent and customer experiences. However, this seamless service can only work if your business is connected to facilitate the transformation.

That’s what I mean when I talk about the “third-wave” of the contact center: unified communication and the contact center coming together with AI at its core to deliver a seamless experience to customers. 

Q: Can you explain a bit more about what the “third wave of customer interaction”, or as we at Zoom describe it, a “Connected Experience”, means to you and why it’s important?

Adrian: The third wave of customer interaction is about the need for a seamless and integrated experience for both customers and employees. It combines the power of AI, a cloud contact center, and unified communications to help make every interaction efficient and personalized. Agents can easily reach back-office subject matter experts, data is shared across departments to gain deeper insights, and everyone plays a role in delivering a complete brand experience for customers. This approach not only has the potential to boost customer satisfaction now and in the future, but also to enhance employee engagement and productivity, ultimately leading to improved overall business outcomes.

Q: How do you think businesses can prepare their organizations for this shift to a connected contact center?

Adrian: Future-ready CX, the third wave, starts behind the scenes — when your people, systems, and data are connected, empathy can finally scale. Let’s take a look at where we’ve come from.

The first wave was largely on-premise. IVRs were the big innovation, and self-service was mainly phone-centric. Then along came the Cloud. That brought us into the second wave. With SaaS, we could do more: work remotely, start creating omnichannel experiences, and begin dabbling in automation. And then we come to today: the third wave. It’s all about having a unified stack with contact center software built in, and a strategy that is driven by the maturation of AI-led self-service. 

My advice to contact center leaders is to start there, with transforming your self-service channel using agentic AI. Remember that AI in customer service isn’t a panacea that will fix all of your problems. It’s essential to be laser-focused on your business and customers, utilizing technology to make life easier for everyone. It’s that simple. AI for AI’s sake can only lead to failure. 

Q: What role do you see Zoom playing in this future of customer experience?

Adrian: From what I can see, Zoom is at the forefront of this transformation with its unified (combined CCaaS and UCaaS) platform approach. This is due to your platform being natively built in the cloud, integrating AI at its core, and offering comprehensive features that support and streamline customer and agent experiences. I believe this makes Zoom an ideal partner for businesses looking to future-proof their contact centers.

Michelle: Yes, I think our customer, Cricut is a good example of how to create a successful connected experience in your contact center. Once the team got up and running with Zoom CX and Zoom Virtual Agent, the impact was dramatic. They saw a 90 percent drop in call abandonment rates, wait times dropped from roughly twenty minutes to under two minutes, and half of all inquiries were resolved by the virtual agent. That freed their human agents to focus on higher-value work and more complex interactions. This is the power of a connected platform: it reduces effort for customers and agents, and it turns every interaction into a learning moment that supports the rest of the business.

Q: What can CX leaders expect to learn from your paper?

Adrian: By reading my paper and catching up on our recent webinar, CX leaders can gain a deep understanding of the current state of customer experience, the challenges facing contact centers, and the transformative potential of agentic AI. They can also learn practical strategies for integrating these technologies to prepare for the third wave of transformation and to create a “Connected Experience,” that goes above and beyond their customer expectations.

Q: Any final thoughts to share?

Adrian: The contact center landscape is rapidly changing, and businesses must adapt to stay competitive. It is crucial to embrace new technologies and rethink the role of the contact center within the broader customer journey. I hope my paper, with its valuable insights, encourages leaders to take bold steps toward a future-ready contact center.

Thank you for sharing your insights with us today, Adrian!

Want to watch Adrian and Michelle’s full conversation? Join the on demand webinar From chaos to connection: How to future-proof your CX strategy with agentic AI

Set your contact center up for future success. Download Adrian’s paper: “Is Your Contact Center Future-Ready?”

Create a Connected Experience for your customers with Zoom Contact Center. 

Reach out to us today and see our innovative and reliable contact center solution in action.