Insights from CCW’s 25-Year Journey

by Braden Kelley

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Mario Matulich, President of Customer Management Practice, at Customer Contact Week (CCW) in Nashville. As an organization celebrating its 25th anniversary, CCW has been a critical barometer for the entire customer experience and contact center industry. Our conversation wasn’t just a look back, but a powerful exploration of the strategic mandate facing CX leaders today, particularly how we manage innovation and human-centered change in an era dominated by AI and tightening budgets.

CCW at 25: The Hub for Benchmarking and Breakthroughs

Mario underscored that CCW is far more than just a conference; it’s a living repository of industry knowledge. Professionals attend for actionable takeaways, which primarily fall into three categories: benchmarking performance against industry leaders, learning about new trends (like Generative AI’s impact), and, critically, sourcing the right vendors and capabilities needed to execute their strategies. It’s where leaders come to calibrate their investment strategies and learn how to do more with their finite resources.

This pursuit of excellence is driven by a single, powerful market force: The Amazon Effect. As Mario put it, customers no longer judge your experience solely against your industry peers. They expect every single touchpoint with your company to be as seamless, intuitive, and effective as the best experience they’ve had anywhere. This constantly escalating bar for Customer Effort Score (CES) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) makes a complacent CX investment a near-fatal strategic mistake. The customer experience must always be top-tier, or you simply lose the right to compete.

The Strategic Disconnect: CX vs. The Contact Center

One of the most valuable parts of our discussion centered on the subtle, yet crucial, distinction between a Customer Experience (CX) professional and a Contact Center (CC) professional. While both are dedicated to the customer journey, their scope and focus often differ:

• The CX Professional: Often owns the entire end-to-end customer journey, from marketing to product use to support. Their responsibilities and definition of success are deeply influenced by where CX sits organizationally — is it under Marketing, Operations, or the CEO?
• The CC Professional: Focused on the operational efficiency, quality, and effectiveness of the voice and digital support channels. Their reality is one of doing a lot with a little, constantly asked to manage complex interactions while being, ironically, often looked to as a prime source of cuts in a downturn.

Social media, for instance, is still a relevant customer service channel, not just a marketing one. However, the operational reality is that many companies, looking for cost-effective solutions, outsource social media support to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) providers, highlighting the ongoing tension between strategic experience design and operational efficiency.

“Being a CX leader in your industry is not a temporary investment you can cut and reinstate later. Those who cut, discover quickly that regaining customer trust and market position is exponentially harder than maintaining it.” — Braden Kelley

AI in the Contact Center: From Hypothesis to Hyper-Efficiency

The conversation inevitably turned to the single biggest factor transforming the industry today: Artificial Intelligence. Mario and I agreed that while the promise of AI is vast, the quickest, most immediate win for nearly every organization lies in agent assist.

This is where Generative AI tools empower the human agent in real-time — providing instant knowledge base look-ups, auto-summarizing previous interactions, and drafting responses. It’s a human-centric approach that immediately boosts productivity and confidence, improving Agent Experience (AX) and reducing training time.

However, implementing AI successfully isn’t a “flip-the-switch” deployment. The greatest danger is the wholesale adoption of complex technology without rigor. True AI success, Mario noted, must be implemented via the classic innovation loop: hypothesis, prototyping, and testing. AI isn’t a solution; it’s a tool that must be carefully tuned and validated against human-centered metrics before scaling.

The Mandate for Enduring Investment

A recurring theme was the strategic folly of viewing CX as a cost center. In a downturn, the contact center is often the first place management looks for budgetary reductions. Yet, the evidence is overwhelming: CX leadership is not a temporary investment. When you are leading in your industry in customer experience, that position must be maintained. Cut your investment at your peril, and you risk a long, painful road to recovery when the market turns. The CX team, despite being resource-constrained, often represents the last line of defense for the brand, embodying the human-centered change we preach.

As CCW moves into its next 25 years, the lesson is clear: customer expectations are only rising. The best leaders will leverage AI not just to cut costs, but to augment their people and apply the innovation principles of rigorous testing to truly master the new era of customer orchestration. The commitment to a great customer experience is the single, enduring investment that will future-proof your business.

HALLOWEEN BONUS: Save 30% on the eBook, hardcover or softcover of my latest book Charting Change (now in its second edition) — FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE — using code HAL30 until midnight October 31, 2025

Image credits: Customer Management Practice

Content Authenticity Statement: The topic area, key elements to focus on, etc. were decisions made by Braden Kelley, with a little help from Google Gemini to clean up the article.

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.