The shopper-bot called – Your curtains don’t match your carpets

It seems a week can’t go by without people losing their marbles over some new thing: abstract, techy, quasi-predictive, and always, always hyperbolic. Well, here we go again. The LinkedIn bros are hyperventilating about how our personal bots will be shopping for our new car, speaker-system, gumboots, and tampons. “The old commerce world is dead!”, …

The future of CX is proactive and predictive – Interview with Swyftx’s Siân Howatson

In a recent interview with CXFocus’s Michael Gwilliam, at Ashton Media’s CX Retreat, Siân Howatson, Head of Customer Insights & Automation at Swyftx, discussed the evolving trends in CX, emphasising proactive and predictive customer experiences enabled by AI. She stressed the need for a balanced approach to AI implementation, ensuring it complements employee experience and …

Signature moments that generate value – Interview with Lachlan Davidson from Bupa

AI’s true potential lies in disrupting the Australian market by enabling unique customer experiences, according to Lachlan Davidson, GM of Customer Strategy & Performance at Bupa. Davidson also emphasises that AI must be leveraged to enhance ‘signature moments’, not just basic services. Michael Gwilliam from CXFocus recently caught up with Lachlan at Ashton Media’s CX …

Creating student-first experiences: CSU’s Journey to proactive, empathetic support

The student experience at Charles Sturt University (CSU), particularly for those studying online, has recently undergone a fundamental transformation. Moving away from a limited 9-5 phone based support service, CSU has adopted a modern, highly engaged, and student-centric approach. Historically, enquiry services at Charles Sturt University (CSU) were largely phone-only and operated within a rigid …

Why Zendesk predicts contextual intelligence to be the new CX Standard – Interview with Kellie Hackney

Kellie Hackney, ANZ Regional Vice President for Zendesk, identifies ‘contextual Intelligence’ as the dominant trend poised to disrupt both Australian and international markets, projecting that it will set a new CX standard by 2026. This paradigm moves beyond static systems, focusing instead on the real-time infusion of AI, data, and human insight to create experiences …

Ready Maestro! Genesys unveils its strategy for an orchestrated future

Genesys explained its vision for the future of AI and CX at their Xperience event in Sydney today. That vision embraces the concept of universal experience orchestration – the ability to coordinate every customer and employ interaction, across the entire organisation and in real-time. Genesys’s roadmap for experience orchestration centres on advancing the Genesys Cloud …

Is CX in existential crisis? Why 2026 will be an Inflection Point

Customer Experience is not just facing a challenge, but an existential crisis, according to Riccardo Pasto, Principal Analyst on the Customer Experience team at Forrester. In a recent interview, Pasto painted a not so rosy picture for the future of CX, predicting a critical divide where only a few elite teams thrive, leaving the majority …

Voice AI: The future of the contact centre is not automation — it is true conversation

The traditional contact centre is undergoing a profound transformation. Central to  this shift is Voice Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is moving far beyond simple automation to fundamentally reshape how organisations manage both their inbound and outbound call operations. It represents a fusion of different AI technologies to to deliver immediate, intelligent and scalable 27/7 customer …