Connect Managed Services

12/06/2026

Earlier this week, we hosted AI CX Johannesburg, where a group of C-suite leaders gathered to have honest conversations about the realities of AI in CX.

The conversations did not start with "Which AI tool should we buy?"
Instead, the same priorities consistently emerged.

1. CX and visibility enhancement
2. Proactive customer engagement and demand reduction
3. First contact resolution
4. Smarter operations through automation
5. Revenue growth and decision intelligence

Perhaps the real lesson is that the most valuable AI conversations start with the outcome, not the technology.

The next question organisations should be reflecting on is whether they are truly positioned to effectively map outcomes to technology.

10/06/2026

We're proud to have been named Verint's CX Partner of the Year at the 2026 EMEA Partner Summit.

The award follows a year of growing collaboration between the two companies, as organisations across EMEA look to turn AI investment into measurable and improved operational and customer outcomes.

Read more in the press release: https://tinyurl.com/4f4x3utk

09/06/2026

Martin Cross, CEO at Connect, will join a panel discussion at the Cavell CX Summit in London on 16 June, exploring why customer experience is no longer just a technology conversation.

As CX platforms become more strategic to the enterprise, the role of service providers is changing too. Success increasingly depends on the ability to guide customers through complex journeys.

Martin will be sharing his perspective on how service providers can evolve their business models, develop new capabilities, and create greater value in a market where expertise, outcomes, and customer experience matter more than ever.

If technology alone is no longer the differentiator, what role should service providers play in shaping the future of customer experience?

08/06/2026

Most organisations are asking, "How much AI can we deploy?"

The better question is: "How much AI do we actually need?"

In this article, Sally Hodgin, principal AI consultant at Connect, and Tim North, group vice president of strategy at Connect, explore one of the biggest risks in contact centre AI. Overengineering.

Using frontier LLMs for every interaction can create a hidden tax through increased compute costs, latency, energy consumption, and operational complexity. The smartest AI strategies aren't built on a single model.

The future of contact centre AI belongs to organisations that match the right level of intelligence to the right task.

Read more on pages 54 and 55: https://tinyurl.com/57u3s2d7

05/06/2026

Connect is delighted to announce that it has approved near and long-term science-based emissions reduction targets with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a globally recognised organisation that enables businesses to align emissions reduction strategies with the latest climate science. The SBTi has also verified Connect's net-zero science-based target by 2045.

This milestone forms part of Connect’s broader commitment to responsible business operations, long-term sustainability and measurable environmental accountability across the organisation. It also supports a number of customer and contractual sustainability commitments across the sectors Connect serves.

“Having a verified net-zero science-based target represents an important milestone for Connect. It demonstrates our commitment to setting credible, science-based emissions reduction targets and strengthens the way we manage and measure our environmental impact as a business.” - Fiona Thompson, Compliance Manager at Connect.

The SBTi independently assesses and validates corporate emissions reduction targets against the latest climate science.

04/06/2026

We attended Agentforce World Tour Johannesburg yesterday.

One theme surfaced repeatedly: data alone doesn't create value. Connected, contextualised information does.

Most organisations already have the data they need. The challenge is that it sits across disconnected systems, teams and processes. The most compelling conversations weren't about collecting more information. They were about removing friction.

Breaking down organisational silos, connecting customer conversations with CRM data, linking product, service and operational insight. Creating a single, connected view of the entire customer journey.

Many businesses are drowning in data but starving for insight.

The organisations that will realise the greatest value from AI won’t necessarily be those with the most data. It will be the ones that can connect it, contextualise it and turn it into insight.

03/06/2026

Contact centre agents spend a significant portion of time on repetitive but essential tasks such as customer identification and verification, document requests, and call routing. These interactions increase operational costs and reduce the opportunity to automate the customer journey further downstream.

In financial services, the challenge is even more pronounced. Regulatory requirements, fraud prevention measures, and complex verification processes can add friction to customer interactions and place additional pressure on agents.

AI can significantly reduce this friction, without replacing people.

By implementing a voice-based digital agent, contact centres can automate key customer interactions, streamline authentication processes, enable self-service, and intelligently route customers to the right teams faster.

Read the full use case: https://tinyurl.com/muvfwsk8

As AI capabilities become increasingly commoditised, is there a point where customer understanding becomes the only sustainable differentiator for contact centres deploying AI technology?

The deployment of a voice-based digital agent for inbound customer service, improved customer engagement through intelligent, always-available support. Read more.

02/06/2026

For many contact centres, ID&V may be the single biggest barrier between experimenting with AI and achieving automation at scale.

According to ContactBabel research, 74% of inbound calls require ID&V, yet 91% of these interactions are still handled by human agents.

When a human agent completes ID&V, the rest of the interaction typically remains with them. In practice, this means that a significant portion of customer journeys become ineligible for downstream automation, regardless of how advanced the AI solution may be.

In this article, Sally Hodgin, Principal AI Consultant at Connect, explores why this means that specialised AI micro-models become critical. Rather than relying on a general-purpose model designed for broad conversation, purpose-built models can be trained specifically for high accuracy.

What's often viewed as a small operational process may actually be one of the highest-impact AI opportunities in the customer experience landscape.

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/5n8kmnhn

£3.74 billion. That's what UK contact centres spend every year on Identification and Verification (ID&V) when it is handled by a human-agent.

29/05/2026

Contact centres generate one of the richest sources of business intelligence.

Customer conversations hold the data to create a live intelligence engine that can guide AI investment decisions.

Layering AI on top of broken processes rarely delivers meaningful outcomes. The value usually surfaces when it's built on a clear understanding of customer journeys and pain points.

When organisations analyse contact centre interactions properly, they can uncover an AI investment with high-impact changes to the customer experience and operational efficiency.

Jack Godfrey explores more in this article: https://tinyurl.com/4cbxvdpu

If your customers could influence your next AI investment, what would they prioritise?

Beyond the Script: How Contact Centre Data Becomes Business Gold Contact centre data is one of the most underutilised assets within modern organisations, despite offering a direct window into customer behaviour, sentiment and unmet need. Every interaction, whether a complaint, query or cancellation,...

28/05/2026

For the insurance sector, surpassing the Net Promoter Score (NPS) performance target by 8% is not just a customer service outcome. It’s a long-term competitive advantage because “always available” customer service is the rising expectation.

This requires conversational AI to move beyond simple chatbots into intelligent, empathetic digital agents that can securely authenticate users, handle claims interactions, and reduce friction during high-stress customer moments.

Policy validation, eligibility checks, and vendor location require manual, repetitive, and extensive agent time. With a sophisticated digital agent, the outcomes are tangible.

Read the full Elerian use case here: https://tinyurl.com/mswt6yez

As conversational AI matures and accelerates across insurance, what impact do you expect the digital agent to have on your operations?

The transformation of FNOL processes improved the speed and efficiency of inbound customer service through an omnichannel conversational AI solution.