Post by Craig Durr

𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗨𝗽 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗩𝗶𝗻𝗼𝗱 𝗠𝘂𝘁𝗵𝘂𝗸𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗻𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘁 #𝗖𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲. I sat down with Vinod Muthukrishnan, GM and VP of Cisco Customer Experience (Webex), right after his mini-keynote, where he ran his announcements as live on-stage demonstrations. As he put it, if your product is going to work out in the open when you launch it, you should run it in the open. 😃 We walked through the four pillars his team announced: 1️⃣ 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁, the intelligent front door. Omnichannel engagement, connected to enterprise knowledge, able to take action across first and third party systems, orchestrate sub agents, and preserve context to personalize the conversation. 2️⃣ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲, the new CX control plane. The AI memory layer that holds your preferences and history, so the next conversation feels like you already know each other. It powers both the virtual agent and the human agent's real-time assist. 3️⃣ 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, built into the platform. Scheduling, forecasting, intraday, QA. What stood out: the forecasting accounts for AI agents alongside humans, treating the hybrid workforce as one. 4️⃣ 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝟯𝟲𝟬, the security and observability backbone. AI Defense embedded into Agent Studio for red teaming and custom guardrails, plus Splunk observability. His line on it: autonomy without accountability is a liability. His framing stuck with me. In 2026, customer experience is neither connected nor intelligent, and closing that gap is the point. The approach is a partner mindset over a vendor one: not throwing products over the wall, but delivering them in a framework that's deployable, consumable, and drives outcomes. Vinod and his team have been busy, and this one is worth your time. See what Cisco announced across the Webex Customer Experience portfolio: Snorre Kjesbu Jeetu Patel Joely Urton Alison St.Cyr (Parker) Sophie McNeill Manminder (Manu) Parhar

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