Every week in the past, Gartner predicted that by 2027, half of firms that lower customer support employees on account of automation will find yourself rehiring for related roles underneath completely different job titles. Solely 20% of the 321 service leaders surveyed had truly decreased headcount. Most mentioned staffing held regular — at the same time as interplay volumes grew.
The takeaway for UC patrons is easy: the workforce isn’t shrinking, it’s splitting. Human brokers and digital brokers are more and more sharing the identical workload, and the operational instruments haven’t saved tempo.
At Cisco Stay EMEA in Amsterdam this week, Cisco made its clearest pitch but for what these instruments ought to seem like.
How Cisco Is Redesigning Workforce Operations for AI
The centrepiece of Cisco’s bulletins is a trio of contact heart capabilities that share a standard design precept: human and AI brokers are a single useful resource pool.
AI Routing makes use of real-time context (caller historical past, intent, and availability) to match every interplay with the best-suited useful resource, whether or not that’s an individual or an AI agent. AI Forecasting and Scheduling takes that additional, modelling AI deflection charges alongside human staffing wants so workforce planners can account for a world the place a major share of interactions by no means contact a human. And Webex Contact Middle for ServiceNow embeds voice, digital channels, and AI help natively into the ServiceNow workspace — so whether or not an AI agent resolves an interplay or escalates it, the case flows by the identical operational layer.
In response to Snorre Kjesbu, Cisco’s SVP and Common Supervisor of Collaboration:
“What if AI might develop into an lively teammate, dealing with routine interactions, routing intelligently, and empowering brokers to concentrate on complicated, human moments that require empathy and judgment? That’s the ability of Linked Buyer Experiences: sensible, personalised interactions constructed on belief, context, and human connections.”
These construct on foundations laid at WebexOne 2025, the place the Webex AI Agent went GA, AI High quality Administration (scoring each human and AI brokers) was introduced for Q1 2026, and a Salesforce integration entered early entry.
Collaboration {Hardware} and AI Options That Lengthen the Imaginative and prescient
The mixed-workforce concept doesn’t cease on the contact heart. Cisco additionally launched {hardware} and software program designed to carry AI-driven productiveness into assembly rooms, huddle areas, and frontline workflows at Cisco Stay EMEA 2026.
The Room Equipment Professional G2, powered by NVIDIA, delivers 25x extra AI processing energy than its predecessor and helps multi-camera intelligence over AV-over-IP with single-click setup. The Desk Professional G2 brings a dual-lens 4K digital camera system to particular person desks and huddle rooms. Each might be orderable Q2 2026 and mirror Cisco’s “Distance Zero” philosophy of intelligence on the edge, not simply within the cloud.
On the software program facet, the Translator Agent for Webex Suite delivers real-time speech-to-speech translation that preserves tone and emotion: a direct product of Cisco’s November 2025 acquisition of EzDubs. And Ask AI Assistant for Webex Calling now surfaces context from prior calls, conferences, and messages, with integrations into Amazon Q Index, Glean, and a bidirectional Microsoft Copilot connector.
Anurag Dhingra, SVP and Common Supervisor of Enterprise Connectivity and Collaboration, tied the bulletins collectively:
“Prospects inform us the worth isn’t simply in what these capabilities can do technically. It’s in how they modify what’s doable operationally. Making expert-level troubleshooting obtainable at each web site, not simply headquarters. Breaking down language boundaries in customer support. Turning experience into infrastructure that organisations can deploy in all places and supervise centrally.”
What Opponents Are Doing, and What Cisco Is Doing In another way
Cisco isn’t alone in pursuing AI-augmented operations. Verint launched agentic WFM bots at Interact 2025, together with an Actual Forecasting Bot and Intraday Spike Bot. Genesys expanded Work Automation and AI Studio at Xperience 2025. NICE has invested in AI forecasting inside CXone. However these instruments are primarily designed to optimise human scheduling with better precision. Cisco’s guess is that the blended workforce — people and AI brokers deliberate for, routed to, and evaluated collectively — must be the default assumption, not an edge case.
That aligns with the place Gartner says the market is heading. The analyst agency’s discovering that firms are rehiring after untimely AI-driven cuts suggests the winners received’t be those that changed people quickest, however those that constructed operational infrastructure for coexistence from the beginning.
Key Questions for UC Leaders Evaluating These Capabilities
The open questions are sensible. Can AI forecasting adapt shortly sufficient as deflection charges shift with mannequin updates and altering buyer behaviour? Will the ServiceNow integration really feel really native at scale? And as AI QM scores AI brokers alongside people, who’s accountable when an AI agent underperforms — the contact heart supervisor, the engineering group, or the seller?
These are operational questions. The truth that they’re now the proper ones to ask tells you the place the market has moved.
