Contact centers embrace ‘Total Experience’ in AI-driven CX shift: KPMG
AMSTELVEEN, NETHERLANDS — Global enterprises are reshaping their contact centers around “Total Experience” strategies to deliver seamless, always-on customer experience (CX).
According to KPMG’s latest Global Customer Experience Excellence 2025-2026 report, companies leveraging cloud-native platforms and agentic AI are not only improving responsiveness and personalization but also unifying customer, employee, and partner interactions into a single, intelligent experience that drives loyalty and operational efficiency.
The report underscores a growing expectation from customers: service that is not only available 24/7 but also personal, predictive, and effortless.
“Customers increasingly expect experiences that are personal, intuitive, anticipatory, and they expect them every time, everywhere, from every interaction,” KPMG noted, highlighting the pressures faced by organizations running legacy infrastructure.
The shift from legacy systems to Total Experience (TX)
KPMG’s study shows that traditional on-premises contact centers are struggling with scalability, resilience, and integration, prompting a rapid shift toward cloud-based Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions.
Leaders are now designing services around ‘Total Experience’, defined as “the unification of customer, employee, partner, and digital touchpoints into an integrated, intelligent whole that delivers predictable, reliable, and measurable experiences.”
Top-performing organizations follow five principles: customer centricity, data-driven insights, seamless integration, employee empowerment, and technology enablement.
The model establishes contact centers as the core element of CX, which operates through cloud-native systems and agent-based AI to manage operational processes and enhance customer interactions across multiple channels while providing continuous service.
In a report from CX Today, the case studies illustrate the impact. Alinta Energy migrated four contact centers to a cloud platform in 18 weeks, achieving unified customer visibility and driving Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) scores to 90%.
“We’re now able to understand why customers are making contact, how they are being treated and whether their needs are being met — and then to use that information to improve the journey moving forward,” said Kevin Watts, Head of Customer Service Excellence at Alinta Energy.
How agentic AI and automation empower human agents
The report distinguishes agentic AI as a dual force in the modern contact center.
“As an orchestrator, it coordinates across functional teams, channels, and journeys… As a participant, it directly interacts with customers, employees, or partners, answering questions, recommending actions, or completing transactions,” KPMG explained.
This approach reduces effort, accelerates resolution, and ensures service consistency across time zones and channels.
Human roles remain central, with employee empowerment emphasized as a pillar of success.
Organizations provide their employees with AI tools and complete customer data, and the ability to make independent decisions about exception handling while maintaining their ability to create authentic automated customer interactions.
The outsourcing industry experiences strategic changes because of these new developments. Businesses that combine cloud-native CCaaS platforms with agentic AI technology provide their customers with scalable business solutions that deliver permanent CX support continuously.
