Is Google Really Back at the Frontier? Sundar Pichai Tells Us by @kantrowitz dlvr.​it/TW0ygy #Google #SundarPichai

“Fixed bids end in one of two ways. I either hate you or you hate me.” Then AI made time and materials stop adding up, too. Chris Teitzel, founder and CEO of Cellar Door, billed by the hour for years. Now his devs move 10x faster. Stay on T&M, and he’d need 10x the pipeline or a 10th of the team. He and Anita Melendez of KWALL told Dom Nicastro what agencies are changing instead: pricing, platforms, the evolving CMS and the next hire. “It's not that the CMS doesn't matter. It's that the role that the CMS is playing is being reduced in AI.” Agency folks: has AI changed how you price your work yet? Full episode of The Digital Experience 👉 ow.ly/B8RR50ZZMKP

Salesforce agreed to pay about $5.66 billion for Braze, more than double the ExactTarget deal that built Marketing Cloud. What it hasn't shared yet is a roadmap for how Braze and the Marketing Cloud tools it overlaps will coexist. ow.ly/29wV50ZZA8T

Why Do CX Teams Spot Customer Risk too Late? dlvr.​it/TW0JD8 #CustomerExperience #CX

Air Canada already learned that a company answers for what its chatbot says. Now AI agents can issue refunds without a human sign-off. CMSWire Columnist Scott Clark maps where personalization, disclosure and agent permissions break customer trust as new AI rules kick in. ow.ly/R9ZB50ZZcpt

Contact centers don’t have a strategy problem. They have a “now actually do it” problem. CMSWire INSIGHTS and @successkpi benchmarked 400 global contact center leaders across 7 maturity pillars. Strategy came out on top. Execution is where it falls apart, and customers feel every disconnected system even when they can’t see it. 📊 More than 50% of respondents say executives or a cross-functional leadership team own contact center strategy. Alignment isn’t the bottleneck 🤖 More than 90% run at least basic self-service, so human agents are left with the hardest and most emotionally charged cases ⚡ The least mature pillars are CX automation, real-time agent assistance and reporting on value. Add AI agents without measurement and you’re mostly adding tech debt A roadmap can’t hand a customer off between channels. Integration can. Until that’s in place, “omnichannel” mostly means customers repeating themselves in more places. Read more 👉 ow.ly/l2nX50ZXUr5 #SponsoredContent #ContactCenter #AgentExperience #DigitalTransformation

Your Brand Prepared the Answer. AI Shoppers Asked a Different Question. dlvr.​it/TVzPcl #DigitalMarketing #AIShopping

AI is making the "knows the most" marketer a lot less valuable. CMSWire Contributor Kathleen Schaub borrows from investors, navigators, statisticians and ecologists to show marketers how to rebuild their work identity before the job changes around them. ow.ly/4Z5l50ZYOS7

Paying €75 in tokens to automate a €25 job isn’t innovation. It’s an expensive hobby. At @ibexa_co’s Orchestration Day roundtable, the advice on agentic marketing wasn’t “go big.” It was “go boring.” Solve everyday problems first, keep deterministic workflows as the backbone and give agents autonomy the way you’d give it to a new hire: gradually. 🔍 Ibexa CPO Grégory Bécue’s rule: fix the everyday stuff first, like cloning last year’s campaign, before any org-wide overhaul 📊 Upson's Field CTO Guillaume Moigneux runs the tokenomics. If the AI costs more than the human doing the same task, “it’s not worth it” 🛡️ Ibexa’s Jean-Claude Pitcho warns that leaning too hard on US-based LLMs can bring operations “to a complete halt” The agentic era won’t be won by whoever has the biggest model. It’ll go to whoever manages their agents like employees. As Moigneux puts it: “You trust them but you check in.” Read more 👉 ow.ly/cbUU50ZXUnB #SponsoredContent #AgenticAI #MarketingAutomation #MarTech #AIOrchestration

10 AI Marketing Analytics Tools to Consider for 2027 and Beyond by @zimanaanalytics dlvr.​it/TVzF0P #AIMarketing #MarketingAnalytics

AI and Ethics: Navigating the New Frontier for 2027 and Beyond dlvr.​it/TVzCxY #AI #Ethics

A Five9 survey of 3,000 consumers found 92% give an AI agent fewer than 10 minutes before escalating to a human. Yet trust that AI can solve the problem jumps from 26% to 55% when a person is visibly within reach. The exit sign, it turns out, is the selling point. ow.ly/bfEw50ZYjtA

Starbucks stopped buying visits with discounts and started funding baristas. North America transactions rose 4.5% last quarter. CMSWire Columnist Pierre DeBois explains why a brand's most persuasive asset may be a staffing decision made outside the marketing department. ow.ly/NOMG50ZXTmP

Unpacking the State of Contact Center Maturity dlvr.​it/TVw0fc #ContactCenter #CustomerExperience

Voice AI is getting charming. Understanding is lagging behind. CMSWire Columnist Scott Clark explains why timing, confirmation checks and an easy path to a human matter more than a pleasant voice. Hint: a call that never reached an agent isn't proof it worked. ow.ly/R46250ZXtlp

The best AI demo you'll see this year was built on data you don't have. Enterprises are deploying more AI than ever, yet McKinsey finds the share reporting positive financial impact hasn't budged in a year. @AlchemerHQ Chief Customer Officer Ryan Tamminga points to a familiar culprit: buying the tool before defining the job. 🎯 Start with the outcome. Define triggers, inputs, users, baselines and success metrics before any vendor shares their screen 🔍 Ask to see the governance, not just hear about it. Logging, reporting and security answers should exist before the contract does 🧪 Pilot on your real data with clear acceptance criteria, and favor open, cloud-agnostic platforms that keep lock-in off the table Buy the outcome. The demo is just the trailer. Read more 👉 ow.ly/YBn650ZVJ4H #SponsoredContent #AI #EnterpriseAI #AIGovernance #CustomerExperience #CX #MarTech

Contact Center Leaders: You Have About 10 Minutes Before Customers Give Up on AI by @domnicastro dlvr.​it/TVvvkq #CustomerService #ContactCenter

Are You Automating Away the Apprenticeship That Builds Service Experts? by @ricardosgulko dlvr.​it/TVvLqN #Automation #ServiceExperts

In Qualtrics research, AI-handled service interactions scored 4.41 on friendliness but 4.08 on understanding. A pleasant voice won't fix a misheard date. CMSWire Columnist Scott Clark explains how CX leaders can build voicebots that resolve requests instead of just chatting. ow.ly/6ay550ZWIua

A contained ticket and a resolved customer are not the same thing. Your dashboard just can't tell the difference. Most CX teams have automated the easy stuff: password resets, balance checks, order tracking. The real test is complex support, where the stakes are higher and patience is shorter. So @zingtree partnered with CMSWire INSIGHTS to ask 1,000+ U.S. consumers how AI actually holds up, because deflection metrics are a lot like marking your own exam. ⚠️ 68% abandon AI support after two failed attempts, and 44% now actively try to bypass it 🤝 74% would use AI again if a failed interaction ends in a smooth human handoff with context intact 📉 Half of consumers had an issue go unresolved last year. Half of those simply gave up The handoff isn't the failure. The loop is. AI that knows when to tap out earns more trust than AI that never admits it's stuck, and the consumer grace period won't last forever. Read more 👉 ow.ly/82tU50ZVJ4o #SponsoredContent #CustomerExperience #CX #AgenticAI #ContactCenter #CustomerSupport