Two airlines.

One flight.

No seat.

Victor Belfor, Global VP, Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at 8x8, recently found himself bouncing between airline agents like a customer service volleyball.

He booked a United flight, but it was operated by Lufthansa. Neither airline managed to actually assign him a seat. Calls were made. Systems were blamed. He spent a full hour negotiating a resolution to something that, in theory, should have been automated.

“AI is really, really good at answering questions and providing information. It's not that great at doing stuff, though.” Belfor says. "We don’t call airlines to book flights anymore. We call them when the chatbot throws up its little digital hands."

This paradox — rising automation alongside rising complexity — was the backbone of a fireside chat between Belfor and Simon Black, COO of Creovai, a leader in conversation intelligence and analytics. The theme?

AI is not a strategy in itself.

The false promise of AI.

"AI can do a lot of things," Black says. "But it cannot be your strategy.”

Global consultancies like McKinsey, Gartner, and Forrester agree: Generative AI models are now widely available, and basic automation is everywhere. As AI adoption becomes widespread, everyone has access to the same tools, models, and APIs. The playing field is level again.

"If you don’t use it, you’ll fall behind," Belfor adds. "But if you do use it, you’re back at parity."

According to Black, your customer experience is still the thing that will truly set your brand apart. That means building "a brand people trust, love, and want to buy from."

Real-time intelligent guidance plays a critical role here: it supports agents by leveraging insights from historical conversation data, delivering contextual prompts that help steer interactions toward better outcomes in the moment.

The companies that win will be those that use AI in ways that make sense for their people, their brand, and their customers.

The age of complex conversations.

Generative AI models are now widely available, and basic automation is everywhere. Yet, for Gen Z and Baby Boomers, live calls remain the preferred way to find answers, simple or complex.

And yet, live phone calls still account for 65% of inbound contact center interactions. "That level has been pretty consistent," Black notes, citing a recent McKinsey report. And those calls? They’ve grown longer and harder. Average call times have increased 20% to 30% over the last two decades.

"Agents used to have a breather," Black explains. "Now, self-service deflects all the simple questions. Agents are left with only the hardest, most urgent, most emotional ones. That burns people out."

AI is not a magic bullet for contact centers—not now, and not anytime soon. The edge lies not in having AI but in integrating it where it matters most: into the contact center workflows that actually move customer relationships forward.

Customer satisfaction scores will make or break you.

So if AI isn’t your differentiator, what is?

"All of these gains in efficiency, cost reductions — they’re great," says Belfor. "But the only thing that matters is whether your customers love their experience with you. CSAT is the super KPI."

Yet the way we measure CSAT today is—let’s be generous —lacking. "It amazes me how outdated surveys still are," says Black. "I only ever fill one out if the service was truly awful. Even when service is great, I forget." Survey response rates hover around 2% to 10%. For smaller companies, this leaves almost no usable data.

It’s sometimes hard to understand what moves the metric, but that doesn’t stop us from chasing it. Applying AI-driven analysis, however, can make that chase more targeted.

Some companies are exploring ways to use these kinds of analytics to listen at scale and uncover patterns that drive customer satisfaction. "You get actual insights," says Black. "You can pinpoint what behaviors are driving dissatisfaction. You can proactively reach out to unhappy customers."

The AI doesn’t just predict a score—it offers analysis and insights. Companies can immediately adjust coaching strategies, refine workflows, and even reach out to customers flagged as having a poor experience. It’s not only about knowing; it’s about doing something with the knowledge.

Human-centric contact centers aren’t going away.

There’s been a lot of talk about AI fully replacing human agents. "I actually believe call center headcount will grow," says Black. "People want immediate answers. If a self-service channel fails, urgency drives them straight to the phone."

In fact, 93% of customers still prefer speaking with a human over automated solutions. Recall Belfor’s experience with United and Lufthansa: Even as chatbots handle the simple stuff, the issues that get forwarded to the contact center are becoming more challenging. And there’s no reprieve for human agents, because they don’t get calls about the quick fixes anymore.

"AI is great at answering questions," Belfor says. "It’s terrible at doing things. A bot can’t negotiate with two legacy backend systems built decades ago. People will still do a lot of things for a long time." While there are promising AI models with the ability to be empathetic and reason, complex problems still require humans.

It is not about AI or an agent. It is about finding the right AI solution to empower your agents. Call volumes aren’t going down; so, how do you give your agents what they need?

We’re fixing the agent experience.

Creovai’s focus on the agent experience dramatically improves the performance of the entire contact center by doing two things:

  1. Preventing agent burnout and turnover (and keeping good agents for longer).
  2. Reducing the onboarding and learning curve: New hires become experienced agents faster, and customers get the help they’re looking for.

1. Keep your agents happy.

Burnout is real in the contact center. And it will be felt by customers and in operational costs. Just look at the numbers:

Agents are dealing with intense pressure, escalating emotions, and tight timelines. They’re often forced to juggle five to six systems just to find information mid-call.

Agents only receive feedback on a small fraction of their interactions, so opportunities for meaningful improvement are thin on the ground. Manual QA processes only review about 1–2% of interactions, leaving countless learning opportunities untapped.

Without adequate support, agent performance suffers, customer experience tanks, and churn risk soars. In fact, 73% of customers say they would stop doing business with a brand after just one negative experience.

Sometimes it’s so simple that spelling it out feels like overkill: People who are happy and successful at their jobs don’t quit those jobs.

2. Turn your people into pros.

“Contact centers typically throw new agents out on the floor after a few weeks of training, and they suddenly start getting calls about things they weren’t trained on (or don’t remember they were trained on), and that becomes overwhelming,” says Don Davey, Creovai’s Senior Director of Customer Success and a former contact center leader.

Intelligent guidance can streamline that learning process by embedding best practices from top-performing agents directly into real-time coaching prompts. Newer agents no longer have to feel overwhelmed when faced with unexpected questions or situations they weren’t adequately trained for — they’ve got a live coach helping them along.

"It reduces stress," says Black. "It improves CSAT. And when agents see their scores improve over time, they feel empowered. That reduces attrition."

One case study proves the point. A rural telecommunications provider implemented Creovai to support their 300 agents. The results?

  • Attrition dropped by 32%.
  • Average handling time fell by 42 seconds.
  • QA scores rose by 12%.

"They reinvested the savings into agent bonuses based on customer experience," Black says. "It was a full-circle win."

A partnership built with seamless integration in mind

Momentum is building for integrated platforms. Stacking and taping solutions together sounds good in practice, but makes for an unwieldy experience for the people working on your front lines.

A Metrigy survey found that roughly one in three companies had already unified business communications and contact center capabilities by 2024, and another 43% plan to integrate them soon.

The payoff is tangible: Organizations using the same provider for UC and contact center, combined with AI-driven technologies, report a 56.6% improvement in CX, a 37.4% boost in agent efficiency, and nearly double the revenue growth compared to those using multiple vendors.

So the conversation ends where it began: with collaboration. Most vendors offer open ecosystems. 8x8 chose a different path.

"Our strategic partners are invite-only," says Belfor. "We do the tough evaluation for our customers. Creovai passed our rigorous process and has built the deepest integration we’ve seen."

The result is a native-like experience.

“We make it seamless inside the 8x8 platform,” says Black. “They never know it’s Creovai behind the scenes. They just see better outcomes."

Belfor sums it up this way: "At the end of the day, customers want one bill, one deployment, and one partner. We provision, we deploy, we support. No finger-pointing. That’s what makes it work."

In a world obsessed with AI, sometimes the smartest move is remembering what really matters. "Technology should help you listen better," says Black. "To your customers. To your agents. To what’s really going on."

In a noisy industry, listening may be the most strategic move of all.