As economic volatility pressures Australian households and digital technology reshapes how people shop, traditional loyalty models are facing unprecedented disruption. To unpack what this means for businesses, Mandy Gallie, Head of Sales for Asia Pacific (Vice President) of Customer Acquisition and Engagement at Mastercard, and Rachel Stinear, General Manager – Partnerships & Events at the …
As deepfakes, automated content generation, and algorithmic marketing continue to flood consumer feeds, executive leaders across Australia gathered at Crown Plaza in Surfers Paradise for the 2026 CMO Summit with one core priority on the agenda – Trust. Organised by Marcus Evans, the premier invitation-only forum, held on the 22nd and 23rd July, brought together …
In the past, mention AI to an executive, and they will likely picture a traditional rules-based chatbot or a standard text-completion copilot.The arrival of sophisticated, multi-modal AI frameworks and cognitive computing has shattered those old paradigms, shifting the conversation from simple automation to true operational autonomy. In an insightful industry interview, David Russell, General Manager, …
The traditional blueprint for retail’s golden quarter has officially shattered. For years, eCommerce and retail leaders relied on a predictable cadence, launch promotions early in Q4, cast a wide net with global campaigns, and watch average order values lift bottom-line revenue. Data from Contentsquare’s Peak Season Benchmark Report reveals that consumer behaviour has fundamentally evolved. …
Striking a balance between the continuous pressure for cost efficiency and the undeniable need for empathetic customer care is the defining challenge of 2026. Polling conducted at the Contact Centre Symposium 2026 in May revealed that while AI adoption is accelerating, the friction points are overwhelmingly human and operational rather than purely technological. The poll …
The enterprise contact centre market is undergoing its biggest structural shift in more than a decade, according to the newly released 2026 APAC Contact Centre CX Platforms with AI Buyers Guide from independent research and advisory firm, CrayonIQ. The report finds organisations are no longer simply selecting contact centre platforms. Instead, procurement is increasingly driven …
Three decades ago, the contact centre industry was bound to physical facilities. In these bustling, centralised hubs, rows of agents sat side-by-side, handling simple, straightforward voice calls within rigid brick-and-mortar constraints. Workforce management (WFM) was a rudimentary administrative task, largely limited to basic time-and-attendance tracking and simple shift allocations. The operational landscape was uncomplicated, as …
Dashboards have long been the control tower for customer experience, helping teams see where customers drop off, which journeys convert, and which products or campaigns are performing. But they have one major limitation: they mostly show what has already happened. Customers now move across touchpoints and channels in minutes. By the time a weekly report …
For global travel and hospitality brands, customer experience (CX) is a complex, multinational orchestration of journeys. At Our Vacation Centre—a prominent travel loyalty provider under the global Arrivia umbrella—managing these dynamics involves coordinating a highly distributed, multilingual footprint. In an industry vulnerable to sudden geopolitical shifts and changing consumer habits, the organisation has shifted its …
The Australian customer experience (CX) landscape has reached a critical inflection point. The era of speculative AI experimentation is drawing to a close, replaced by an urgent mandate for enterprise-wide integration. While the first half of 2025 saw a staggering 119% surge in AI agent adoption across the country, moving these initiatives out of the …