2025 ZKast #170 - The Future of Conversational AI: Agentic AI, CX, and NICE Acquisition of Cognigy

Zeus Kerravala from ZK Research is at the NICE Industry Analyst Conference in Vienna, sitting down with Thys Waanders, VP of AI Transformation for Cognigy, now officially a NICE company!

In this must-watch discussion, Zeus and Thys dive deep into the world of Conversational AI, exploring the strategic move behind NICE's acquisition of Cognigy and what it means for the future of the Contact Center and Customer Experience (CX).

???? What You'll Learn:
Cognigy's Differentiator: How Cognigy carved out a leading role in the crowded Conversational AI space with its low-code platform and strong focus on the Enterprise.

The Power of Agentic AI: The critical shift from simple chatbots to Agentic AI and why this is transformative for customer self-service and agent augmentation.

The NICE Rationale: Why the leading CCaaS vendor, NICE, chose to acquire Cognigy rather than just partner, focusing on the need for best-in-class AI capabilities and data integration.

Real-World Transformation: An incredible case study of Lufthansa Airlines using Cognigy to handle complex, irregular flight operations, achieving 40-60% containment of customer interactions and a massive ROI.

The Transformation Challenge: Why achieving truly complex, autonomous Agentic AI isn't just a technical problem, but also an organizational maturity challenge involving data security, API access, and a "leap of faith."

How to Get Started: Thys' best advice for CX leaders: Don't over-strategize. Start small, get a use case production-ready in weeks, monitor it, and offer a clear escalation path to a human agent.

This conversation provides key insights for anyone working in customer experience, IT, or digital transformation. Find out why the vendor with the best AI strategy—combining orchestration and data—is positioned to win in the new CX landscape, and what's coming next, including a move into back-office workflow automation.

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Guests:

Zeus Kerravala, Founder & Principal Analyst, ZK Research

Thys Waanders, VP of AI Transformation, Cognigy (a NICE company)

#AgenticAI #ConversationalAI #NICE #Cognigy #CustomerExperience #CaaS #DigitalTransformation #ContactCenter #AIStrategy @NICEinContact @NiCECognigy