Author: Mark Atterby

The Australian customer experience (CX) landscape has reached a critical inflection point. The era of speculative AI experimentation is drawing to a close, replaced by an urgent mandate for enterprise-wide integration. While the first half of 2025 saw a staggering 119% surge in AI agent adoption across the country, moving these initiatives out of the incubation lab and into sustainable production remains a critical challenge for CX /IT leadership. CXFocus’s recently published industry report From AI Pilot to Enterprise Strategy: Addressing the Realities of AI-Driven CX, identifies the challenges that organisations must systematically address to transition from disjointed tools into…

Imagine you wake up on a Tuesday morning, grab your phone, and see 14 unread notifications from your email app. You open it up, hoping for an update on a package you’re expecting or a message from a friend. Instead, your inbox looks like a digital shouting match: This is the daily reality of email fatigue. When brands rely on high-frequency, ‘one-size-fits-all’ broadcasting, it quickly turns a helpful communication tool into a source of genuine user frustration. Recognising that this approach was reaching its limits, TravelOnline initiated a comprehensive overhaul of its customer journey. The transition shifted the brand away…

Historically, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform operated as two distinct silos. This separation created swivel-chair syndrome, where agents manually toggled between screens, leading to fragmented data and frustrated customers. Audrey William, Industry Analyst and founder of Crayon IQ, comments, “The convergence of CCaaS and CRM really comes down to two key points. First, there is the evolution of the agent desktop, ensuring people aren’t forced to jump between multiple screens. I completely agree that if the goal is simplicity and reducing stress for agents, eliminating that constant toggling is essential since…

Your business faces increasingly complex regulatory requirements spanning multiple jurisdictions, from data privacy laws to industry-specific standards. Managing contracts manually introduces substantial risk, especially when handling hundreds or thousands of agreements. Contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms embed compliance into every stage, from drafting through renewal, reducing human error and enabling continuous oversight. Understanding the Rising Stakes of Modern Contract Compliance Noncompliance carries tangible consequences. The rising cost of compliance has increased operating expenses by over 60% for various financial institutions. Organizations are facing severe penalties, with some even paying $1.8 billion in fines. Failed audits delay approvals and disrupt operations.…

A pathology test can be a critical moment in a person’s healthcare journey. As Australia’s second-largest pathology provider, Healius processes millions of tests annually. However, behind the clinical precision of the laboratory lies a human experience that begins long before a needle meets a vein. It’s the responsibility of Nathan Kellie, National CX Insights Manager at Healius, to understand the patient experience and to identify the pain points in the patient’s journey. For Kellie, the mission is clear – to bridge the gap between patient sentiment and operational action. “I’m the National CX Insights Manager for Healius… My role focuses…

Anne-Kathrine Nissen, the CX Design Lead for H &M, doesn’t just see a business that sells products to customers. She sees a massive, living web of human interactions. The story of H&M’s transformation, as told by Anne-Kathrine, isn’t about a new app or a flashier website. It is a story about using holistic design to reinvent a brand and how it connects with its customers and their journeys. Nissen reflects, “Throughout my career, I have been fascinated by the intersection of systems and people—specifically, how we perceive, inhabit, and navigate our surroundings. With a background rooted in a Master’s in…

At this week’s Qualtrics Experience Live event in Sydney, the conversation focused on the impact and potential of AI in terms of Voice-of-Customer (VoC) and customer feedback analysis. Despite recent negative sentiment in the VoC market—highlighted by Medallia’s financial challenges and Qualtrics’ own recent funding hurdles—the event presented an optimistic future for the sector, centred on the transformative power of AI integration. The event started in the morning with a series of keynotes and presentations.The first keynote by Raen Lim, Managing Director, APJ Qualtrics, talked about closing the experience gap, “For decades, organsations have been swimming in data. We’ve had…

An audience of over 600 professionals across CX, IT, and operations attended Zendesk’s Future of Service event in Sydney last week. The event focused heavily on how AI has become a core component of high-value customer and employee experiences. As well as showcasing a range of local success stories from brands such as Petstock, MYOB, Netwealth, Our Vacation Centre, Zendesk outlined its future product roadmap and announced a number of new innovations. The keynote sessions featured eight-time Grand Prix winner Daniel Ricciardo, who took the stage with moderator Danica Mason, Australian Sports Journalist. During their session, the former Australian F1…

Transforming customer experience in a large-scale not-for-profit takes both empathy and operational precision, especially when services support people at moments of vulnerability. At Uniting NSW.ACT, that transformation is being accelerated by embedding service design capability and three practical shifts: Uniting NSW.ACT is one of Australia’s largest and most prominent not-for-profit community service organisations. With a mission to ‘inspire people, enliven communities, and confront injustice’, the organisation provides a vast network of support services across NSW and the ACT. Chief Customer Officer Stuart Crabb, comments, “Uniting NSW.ACT is a not-for-profit organisation focusing on three core ‘for-purpose’ pillars: social impact and advocacy,…

Organisations today are unknowingly carrying a potential burden of invisible risk. Most chats, calls, emails and social media interactions are not monitored or evaluated. Erik van Eekelen, Founder and CEO of Icana.AI, advises, “Traditional Quality Assurance (QA) processes typically analyse only a very small fraction of customer interactions, often less than 2%, which means the vast majority of conversations go unseen. Within those unreviewed interactions are missed compliance risks, inconsistent customer experiences and lost opportunities to improve performance”. While organisations have successfully deployed automated agents to handle surging ticket volumes, the infrastructure required to oversee these digital workers—and the humans…