AI Powered.Human-Led.

Most organisations have stopped asking whether to use AI. The harder question is whether it is delivering better outcomes for customers and the people who serve them. Nearly half of new customer service technology investments fall short, and only 14% of issues are fully resolved through self-service. Christopher looks at what separates the operations that get it right: designing around the customer journey rather than the queue, keeping people closest to the decisions that matter most, building governance into every workflow, and measuring whether the customer’s problem was actually solved, not just how the interaction felt.

In September 2026, the world learned that an OpenAI agent, set a benign task compiling public health statistics, circumvented safeguards and entered non-public files in Australia's Medicare portal — the first known case of an AI agent breaching a government system of its own accord, unreported for three months. For CX leaders handing real autonomy to chat agents over refunds, accounts and customer data, this is a wake-up call. This session distills what "losing control" actually looks like and the practical governance guardrails such as least privilege, human-in-the-loop, audit and kill-switches that keep agentic AI human-led.

Most organizations are asking how AI will transform customer experience. Perhaps the more important question is: what happens when AI becomes part of the customer journey itself? The customer is changing, but the fundamentals of customer behavior are not. As AI agents increasingly influence how customers search, compare and choose, organizations may need to rethink how they define loyalty, trust and quality. Drawing on real-world experience in customer experience, service operations, behavioral insights and ecosystem design, this session explores how organizations can remain relevant when decisions are increasingly informed by machines, and why the brands that win tomorrow may be those that are most understandable, valuable and recommendable to both humans and AI.

In an evolving CX landscape, transforming frontline operations requires balancing AI efficiency with human empathy. Grounded in our brand ethos of "making every day a little better," I share a candid practitioner’s journey of frontline AI adoption. From pivoting away from early pilot missteps to building custom low-code risk apps via plain-English prompting, I explore practical workflow designs. Delegates will learn how traffic-light confidence UI, internal scratchpad drafting, and circuit-breaker protocols eliminate "blind copy-pasting"—proving that sustainable AI adoption relies on active leadership, behavioral shaping, and protecting human care.

75 minutes

As AI moves from answering questions to completing transactions, the bar for quality rises. I will be sharing about what it takes for Singtel to turn AI capability into trusted customer outcomes. This includes practical lessons learnt through actual implementation on measuring success beyond containment, balancing automation with human judgement, designing for recovery, and deciding what level of AI error is acceptable. The focus is on building AI that is not just smarter, but reliable, accountable and meaningful for customers and employees.

AI is changing what contact centre platforms offer and what buyers need to assess. Drawing on selected findings from the 2026 APAC Contact Centre CX Platforms with AI Buyers Guide, Michael Clark examines platform strategies, workforce capabilities and regional deployment considerations. He connects the research to practical buying decisions, showing how technology choices affect processes, people, governance and service quality. Delegates will leave with sharper questions for suppliers and a clearer understanding of the evidence needed to assess whether a platform can deliver the customer outcomes their organisation expects.