Companies are rethinking the contact center to deliver outcomes — and empathy — at scale

Contact center AI transformation is accelerating in financial services as new innovations close the gap between surface-level metrics and genuine customer understanding in high-stakes interactions.

For companies handling deeply personal products — health savings accounts, retirement rollovers, flexible spending plans — the stakes of a poor customer experience go beyond satisfaction scores. These are lifecycle moments for individuals, demanding empathy as much as efficiency, and data-driven AI is now offering the tools to deliver both at scale, according to Dana Kantor (pictured, right), senior director of vendor and technology optimization at Inspira Financial Trust LLC, a benefits and retirement account administrator serving millions of Americans.

“These are really personal choices that people are making every day,” Kantor said. “They’re trying to pay for healthcare. They’re planning for their futures. We’re always focused on providing better health, greater wealth and supporting our account holders that way.”

Kantor and Shashank Verma (left), senior vice president and global head of digital customer experience at EXL Service Holdings Inc., spoke with theCUBE’s Alison Kosik and Rebecca Knight at Google Cloud Next, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed contact center AI transformation, first-call resolution and AI-powered customer journeys. (* Disclosure below.)

Contact center AI transformation drives first-call resolution

EXL, a data and AI services company specializing in business transformation, has built its AI strategy with Inspira around a foundational insight: The reason a customer calls is rarely the whole story. The real question is why that call was necessary at all, and how the underlying need can be resolved without a follow-up. To get there, EXL’s Customer 360 Insights platform uses historical interaction data to surface those underlying intent signals with the intent of building frictionless customer journeys, Verma noted.

“What we are really doing with Inspira is we’re using AI to learn from all the historical interactions that Inspira has been having with their customers, really knowing what are the reasons or the intents customers are reaching out for, building those customer journeys, removing friction — because what we don’t want to do is just automate a broken journey,” Verma said. “We’re trying to reduce and minimize all those friction points for the customers and building those sound journeys for them.”

On the agent side, AI is also changing the work itself. Rather than eliminating human judgment, the model routes complex, empathy-intensive interactions to live agents — equipped in real time with next-best-action guidance so they spend less time searching and more time resolving, Verma explained. Personalized coaching nudges, derived from historical call analysis, are also reducing training lag and improving retention in what are traditionally high-burnout roles.

“You can have insights where you can identify personalized coaching and training needs — and developer needs for agents — to drive continuous improvement for the business,” Verma said. “Those are the kinds of initiatives that we’ve lined up for Inspira to drive for their business.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Google Cloud Next 2026:

(* Disclosure: EXL sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither EXL nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE