Deflection Is an Operational Metric, Not a Customer Outcome
Deflection tells you what happened to the contact, not to the customer. Why a 50% AI deflection rate can hide unresolved friction and lost customer signal.
Mona Khan
CX Technology & AI
How AI, CRM platforms, and automation are transforming customer experience operations, agent productivity, and the cost of service.
9 articles in CX Technology
Conversational AI in Healthcare: Use Cases & Limits
Conversational AI in healthcare: what it does across scheduling, triage and clinical notes, the HIPAA and data reality vendors skip, and where it fails.
Edvin Cernov
AI Customer Service Agents: How They Work & Who Builds Them
AI customer service agents resolve tickets end to end, but only when your data can support them. The three-tier model, honest cost, and 2026 vendors.
Edvin Cernov
Conversational AI for Customer Service: Vendor-Neutral Guide
Conversational AI for customer service explained without the vendor pitch: three model families, the 2026 Gartner audit, and an 8-step deployment playbook.
Edvin Cernov
AI Personalization in Customer Interactions
AI personalization only pays when the data behind it is real. The use cases that get there, and the privacy risks that ride along.
Edvin Cernov
Machine Learning for Customer Insights, in Practice
Machine learning finds the customers about to leave and the reasons hiding in their feedback. The model is rarely the hard part; acting on it is.
Edvin Cernov
AI in CX: What Works and What's Theater
AI earns its keep in customer experience on the agent side, long before the customer ever talks to it. Where the ROI is real and where it's theater.
Edvin Cernov
AI Co-Pilots in the Call Center: Where They Pay Back
AI co-pilots pay back in handle time and CSAT before anything else. Knowing where they quietly fail is what separates pilots from rollouts.
Edvin Cernov
The 15 Best Customer Service Software Platforms in 2026
The 15 best customer service software platforms in 2026, compared on pricing model, real weaknesses, and fit by a CX team that has deployed every one.
Edvin Cernov
CX from the buyer's side
An email when there is something genuinely worth reading: what is working in CX and call center operations, and what quietly is not.
More on call centers
BPO Pricing Models Compared: Hourly vs FTE vs Per-Ticket
BPO pricing runs $8-15/hr offshore, $14-22 nearshore, $30-45 onshore, or $1,200-$9,000 per FTE monthly. Compare all six models and normalize quotes on one axis.
What Does FTE Mean in BPO? How One FTE Is Counted
In BPO, an FTE is a block of billable hours, about 38 a week, not a person. The vendor decides who fills those hours unless your contract says otherwise.
Customer Service Outsourcing to the Philippines
The Philippines is still the default for outsourced customer service, but per-seat price isn't the whole story. Real costs and an independent ranking.
What Is Nearshore Outsourcing? Costs, Benefits & Tradeoffs
What is nearshore outsourcing? Real costs, benefits, when it beats offshore, when it doesn't, and how to pick a model, from someone who's run both.
When Should a Startup Outsource Customer Support?
There is a right stage for a startup to outsource support, and before it, doing it yourself is the point. When to delegate and how to vet the first partner.