AI is fundamentally reshaping contact center operations, with the industry witnessing a decisive shift toward agentic systems and third-party AI solutions that outperform traditional brand-built alternatives. The momentum is evident across multiple fronts: SoftBank's exclusive partnership with Sierra signals major capital backing for specialized AI customer service platforms, whilst Microsoft's integration of AI sales and service tools into Copilot demonstrates how enterprise software giants are embedding agentic capabilities directly into their ecosystems. Critically, third-party generative AI tools are already outperforming in-house brand chatbots, suggesting that teams relying on proprietary solutions built atop their existing platforms may face competitive disadvantage. This creates an immediate tension for CX leaders: should investment flow toward best-of-breed AI vendors, or can traditional platforms like Zendesk and Salesforce close the capability gap through partnerships and native development?
The data trust problem, however, remains the critical bottleneck. Whilst confidence in agentic AI capabilities is rising, actual readiness—particularly around data governance and quality—lags significantly behind. For support teams and CX consultants, this means the technical capability to deploy autonomous agents exists, but organisational readiness does not. Teams must address data quality, compliance frameworks, and agent oversight mechanisms before agentic systems can deliver ROI. The question facing many organisations is whether to wait for their incumbent platform vendors to mature their AI offerings or move now with specialist providers and accept the integration complexity.
The broader implication is consolidation pressure on mid-market CX platforms. SoundHound's momentum in agentic AI and the proliferation of specialist vendors suggest the market is fragmenting into two tiers: enterprise platforms adding AI as a feature, and pure-play AI vendors winning on performance. For Zendesk administrators and support leads, this signals that platform choice increasingly depends on whether your organisation can absorb AI-native workflows or requires a more integrated, managed approach—a decision that will define competitive positioning over the next 18 months.
As artificial intelligence (AI) changes the way contact center (existing call center) industry opera.. 매일경제