TAL appoints Alexis Denby as Chief Customer and Health Officer

TAL have announced the appointment of Alexis Denby as Chief Customer and Health Officer, effective 1 October 2026. The appointment reflects TAL’s ongoing focus on strengthening the connection between customer experience, health outcomes and community confidence. Alexis will lead TAL’s Customer and Health strategy, bringing together customer advocacy, health engagement, customer experience, brand and community …

Amplify your strengths not your sins – Sealy on the reality of AI in CX

When Michael Chen joined premium Australian mattress manufacturer Sealy Posturepedic nearly 7 years ago, centralising the fragmented CX function was his first priority. Laying the right foundations with the CX team, before introducing process automation tech, was most important. “People, culture, processes, come first and then and only then the technology. If you have people …

Customer-facing AI needs an escalation promise, Not just a faster answer

Australian customer-service teams are racing toward agentic AI, but speed is becoming the easy part. The harder question is what happens when an automated system cannot resolve a problem, loses context or makes a customer repeat the story from the beginning. CXFocus’s recent coverage of agentic AI in Australian contact centres captures the shift from simple …

Risk, governance and sovereignty – the driving forces behind AI deployments in the contact centre

The contact centre market across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is entering a new operational phase. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with the expansion of hyperscalers and modern customer experience (CX) platforms, are accelerating a transition away from traditional telephony-first and interactive voice response (IVR) operating models. In their place, organisations are deploying AI-enabled …

The next era of customer loyalty – trust, data, and agentic commerce

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 …

Building brand integrity in an AI-Driven world – inside the 2026 CMO Summit

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 …

Why Australian brands must treat product updates as premium CX

Software updates are one of the most valuable customer experience moments that brands keep overlooking. Every update is an opportunity to build or lose trust, but many organisations never test the experience that keeps customers coming back. For digital businesses, updates are one of the few interactions that happen repeatedly throughout the customer relationship. Unlike …

Why Agentic AI and CX orchestration are redefining Australian contact centres

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, …

High volume, tighter windows – Data-backed imperatives for retail’s peak season 2026

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. …