A week ago, Gartner predicted that by 2027, half of companies that cut customer service staff due to automation will end up rehiring for similar roles under different job titles. Only 20% of the 321 service leaders surveyed had actually reduced headcount. Most said staffing held steady — even as interaction volumes grew.
The takeaway for UC buyers is straightforward: the workforce isn’t shrinking, it’s splitting. Human agents and virtual agents are increasingly sharing the same workload, and the operational tools haven’t kept pace.
At Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam this week, Cisco made its clearest pitch yet for what those tools should look like.
How Cisco Is Redesigning Workforce Operations for AI
The centrepiece of Cisco’s announcements is a trio of contact center capabilities that share a common design principle: human and AI agents are a single resource pool.
AI Routing uses real-time context (caller history, intent, and availability) to match each interaction with the best-suited resource, whether that’s a person or an AI agent. AI Forecasting and Scheduling takes that further, modelling AI deflection rates alongside human staffing needs so workforce planners can account for a world where a significant share of interactions never touch a human. And Webex Contact Center for ServiceNow embeds voice, digital channels, and AI assistance natively into the ServiceNow workspace — so whether an AI agent resolves an interaction or escalates it, the case flows through the same operational layer.
According to Snorre Kjesbu, Cisco’s SVP and General Manager of Collaboration:
“What if AI could become an active teammate, handling routine interactions, routing intelligently, and empowering agents to focus on complex, human moments that require empathy and judgment? That’s the power of Connected Customer Experiences: smart, personalised interactions built on trust, context, and human connections.”
These build on foundations laid at WebexOne 2025, where the Webex AI Agent went GA, AI Quality Management (scoring both human and AI agents) was announced for Q1 2026, and a Salesforce integration entered early access.
Collaboration Hardware and AI Features That Extend the Vision
The mixed-workforce theory doesn’t stop at the contact center. Cisco also launched hardware and software designed to bring AI-driven productivity into meeting rooms, huddle spaces, and frontline workflows at Cisco Live EMEA 2026.
The Room Kit Pro G2, powered by NVIDIA, delivers 25x more AI processing power than its predecessor and supports multi-camera intelligence over AV-over-IP with single-click setup. The Desk Pro G2 brings a dual-lens 4K camera system to individual desks and huddle rooms. Both will be orderable Q2 2026 and reflect Cisco’s “Distance Zero” philosophy of intelligence at the edge, not just in the cloud.
On the software side, 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, meetings, and messages, with integrations into Amazon Q Index, Glean, and a bidirectional Microsoft Copilot connector.
Anurag Dhingra, SVP and General Manager of Enterprise Connectivity and Collaboration, tied the announcements together:
“Customers tell us the value isn’t just in what these capabilities can do technically. It’s in how they change what’s possible operationally. Making expert-level troubleshooting available at every site, not just headquarters. Breaking down language barriers in customer service. Turning expertise into infrastructure that organisations can deploy everywhere and supervise centrally.”
What Competitors Are Doing, and What Cisco Is Doing Differently
Cisco isn’t alone in pursuing AI-augmented operations. Verint launched agentic WFM bots at Engage 2025, including an Exact Forecasting Bot and Intraday Spike Bot. Genesys expanded Work Automation and AI Studio at Xperience 2025. NICE has invested in AI forecasting within CXone. But these tools are primarily designed to optimise human scheduling with greater precision. Cisco’s bet is that the mixed workforce — humans and AI agents planned for, routed to, and evaluated together — should be the default assumption, not an edge case.
That aligns with where Gartner says the market is heading. The analyst firm’s finding that companies are rehiring after premature AI-driven cuts suggests the winners won’t be those who replaced humans fastest, but those who built operational infrastructure for coexistence from the start.
Key Questions for UC Leaders Evaluating These Capabilities
The open questions are practical. Can AI forecasting adapt quickly enough as deflection rates shift with model updates and changing customer behaviour? Will the ServiceNow integration feel truly native at scale? And as AI QM scores AI agents alongside humans, who’s accountable when an AI agent underperforms — the contact center manager, the engineering team, or the vendor?
These are operational questions. The fact that they’re now the right ones to ask tells you where the market has moved.
