How NiCE's Rebrand Reflects the New Reality of Customer Experience

The Gist

• From WEM to full-stack CX. NiCE’s rebrand signals a shift from workforce tools to an end-to-end CX platform spanning voice, digital, analytics and AI.
• Service data becomes strategy. Unifying voice, chat, email and bot logs turns frontline interactions into actionable intelligence.
• Agents first, then automation. AI co-pilots, behavior-based coaching and “specialist” roles aim to make humans super-effective on complex cases.
• New KPIs, fairer scoring. AI-driven quality reviews 100% of interactions and focuses on behaviors that actually move CSAT and outcomes.
• What’s next at NiCE. CXone Mpower “fulfillment bots,” a single pane of glass and agentic AI to automate the automation.

Editor's note: This transcript was edited for brevity and clarity

From Workforce Tools to Full-Service CX

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro here, editor of CMSWire, ready for another edition of CX Decoded — all things customer experience, customer support and service. We’ve got the perfect guest for that today: Barry Cooper, president of the CX division at NiCE, one of the major providers in the space. What’s going on, Barry?

Barry Cooper: Hey Dom, great to be with you again. A lot going on, of course — crazy times in our industry at the moment — but great to be here and spend this time with you.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Absolutely. I love catching up with you because you really live and breathe CX. You’re not just producing technology — you’re the president of the CX division. You probably even take it home with you.

Barry Cooper: I do! My kids and my wife would agree. It means whenever they have a bad CX experience, they complain to me, even if it’s not my fault.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Right — if the pizza app runs late, they call you. “Is this NiCE tech?” I love it.

Barry Cooper: Exactly. We went through a major rebrand this year, and yes, that lowercase “i” in NiCE might annoy you as an editor, but it represents transformation. We’ve grown from a niche WEM provider to a global CX leader — from 3,000 employees and $500 million to nearly 10,000 people and approaching $3 billion in revenue. The old brand was tied to workforce management, but now we cover everything in CX: voice, digital, asynchronous, bots, analytics, AI — the full ecosystem.

Barry Cooper: The goal of the rebrand was to reflect that evolution. CX is about making things work — creating a “NiCE world” for customers and employees alike. Our new CEO, Scott, really emphasizes that. So, the new brand is more than a logo — it’s a mindset about how we serve people everywhere.

Related Article: The End of Scoreboard CX: Why Customer Experience Needs Movement, Not Metrics

Customer Service as a Source of Insight

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That makes sense — CX touches everything. I’ve been talking with leaders who say customer service should be elevated because contact centers are where insights actually happen. You can make assumptions about what customers want, but the frontline knows the truth.

Barry Cooper: Exactly. The challenge has been that customer-interaction data is mostly unstructured. Voice calls, chats, emails, and bot logs all sit in silos. Platforms like CXone changed that by unifying all these touchpoints — structured and unstructured — into one data set. It’s a gold mine for improvement. Now, with AI layered on top, you can connect those dots instantly and even automate service in ways we only dreamed of before.

Related Article: How Digital-First Strategies Reshape Customer Support

The Agent Experience Comes First

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: The agent experience feels just as critical as customer experience. I’ve seen agents on Reddit talk about great AI tools rolled out badly — poor implementation, weak training, frustrated staff. How does NiCE tackle agent experience?

Barry Cooper: It’s one of our biggest priorities. Everyone talks about automation and whether AI will replace agents. It will replace some tasks, but mostly it changes jobs. Simpler issues like password resets are already automated. What’s left for humans are complex, emotional cases — insurance claims, mortgage issues, sensitive conversations. These agents are highly trained and more expensive, so every minute of their time matters.

Barry Cooper: We use technology to make agents superhuman. AI co-pilots listen in real time, suggest knowledge, trigger automations, and manage multiple channels — calls, chat, email, WhatsApp — all in one interface. We even measure cognitive load to balance workloads. The CXone agent desktop looks like a command center because it needs to be — it’s about empowering people to solve complex problems faster and better.

Related Article: Empower Employees, Empower Customers: The CX-EX Connection

Redefining How Agent Performance Is Measured

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: This isn’t always something a provider like NiCE can directly influence, but agent performance metrics are often out of their hands. I read a lot of agent complaints in chat rooms — not about the technology, but about how they’re measured. Average handle time, for instance, feels outdated. So what metrics or KPIs are relevant now? How should we measure agents today?

Barry Cooper: Great question. Up until five years ago, most agent assessment and coaching were done by humans. That brought a personal touch, sure, but also limitations. Supervisors could only review a tiny fraction of an agent’s work — and subjectivity was a problem. Managers rated differently, moods affected evaluations, and the process wasn’t consistent. About three or four years ago, we worked with customers to automate that process using AI-based quality and compliance monitoring.

Barry Cooper: Now, every interaction — voice, digital, synchronous, asynchronous — can be reviewed automatically and consistently. Agents actually like it better because it feels fair and objective. The system can even flag when someone struggles with a specific skill, like asking effective questions, and send them an example from a peer who excelled in that area. It’s data-driven coaching that scales.

Barry Cooper: That brings us to KPIs. We still measure things like CSAT and customer sentiment — those are outcomes. But the way to improve outcomes is through behaviors. So we track six or seven core agent behaviors that correlate directly with performance: effective listening, asking strong questions, empathy, and de-escalation skills, among others. Focusing on behaviors leads to better outcomes across the board.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I’d love to see that list of behaviors. It feels like an article in itself. I like that you emphasize behaviors — they drive results in everything, not just CX. I lost weight earlier this year, and it wasn’t magic — it was behavior change.

Barry Cooper: Exactly. And that’s what’s so fascinating — these behaviors hold up globally. We’ve deployed this framework in 20 or 30 countries, and the same eight behaviors consistently correlate with outcomes. The only variation is in Japan, where two additional behaviors are tracked. Otherwise, the principles of great CX are remarkably universal.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That’s incredible — it challenges the assumption that culture or geography change everything. On the front lines, the fundamentals of great service seem consistent everywhere. I love that approach of learning from others — not “be more like Marsha” because of favoritism, but based on what actually works.

Related Article: Customer Service Metrics That Matter in 2025

AI Quality, Empower Bots, and the Next Wave of Roles

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: And it’s not just about analytics and data, right?

Barry Cooper: Exactly. For example, if I need help improving two behaviors, maybe Masha is the best model for one, but Leon’s a better example for another. We can now show or replay those calls and screen recordings so agents can see exactly how experts handle specific situations — all scored by AI, consistently and fairly.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: So, one big difference between agent experience then versus now is scale and fairness. Instead of “why’d you pick my one bad call,” you can now look at every interaction across a larger, more accurate sample size.

Barry Cooper: Exactly right. We’ve had customers who, before adopting our AI-based quality program, used multiple outsourced vendors to manually score interactions. One company accidentally sent the same recordings to two different vendors — and got wildly different scores back. That’s when they realized the need for consistency and switched to AI-driven scoring. They not only improved fairness but saved millions of dollars.

Inside NiCE’s Interactions Conference: Empower Agents Take the Stage

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That’s incredible. I want to go back to your Interactions conference earlier this year. Agentic AI was a big topic. What would you say was the major innovation from NiCE at that event?

Barry Cooper: We had quite a few. On the main stage, I think someone counted 30-plus new capabilities, but the big one was CXone Mpower. CXone has long been our CCaaS platform, but Empower is the AI layer underneath — powered by our Enlighten models, GenAI, and soon, agentic capabilities. Empower Agents are AI-driven fulfillment bots that can be triggered either by human agents or by self-service systems like Autopilot.

Barry Cooper: These Empower Agents can perform actions such as updating records, processing insurance claims, initiating mortgage approvals, or detecting fraud in retail. Within our AI Studio, you simply describe what you want the bot to do, and CXone builds the workflow automatically using available APIs, knowledge bases, and data sources. Agents can trigger these bots from CoPilot, Autopilot, or third-party systems. Several customers are already using Empower Agents today — and more are coming online soon.

Related Article: NiCE Launches AI Ops Center for Enterprise CX Reliability

The Evolving Roles in Customer Experience

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That’s good to hear. I’ve noticed that the kinds of people using these tools have changed over the years too — I’m seeing titles like “business analyst” or “CX transformation lead” that didn’t always fall under contact center before. Are you seeing similar shifts in who’s attending Interactions or leading these projects?

Barry Cooper: Absolutely. We still have the core WFO and WEM leaders, IT, and contact center managers — but the mix has broadened. We’re now seeing chief AI officers, CX transformation leaders, digital experience managers, and more attendees from global system integrators who drive enterprise-wide change. The roles are expanding because CX now spans marketing, digital engagement, and service — so higher-level leaders like VPs and SVPs are getting involved.

Barry Cooper: This aligns with NiCE’s evolution, too. We’ve moved from being purely a contact center company to supporting every customer interaction across an organization. That naturally attracts more strategic and senior decision-makers who see CX as a cross-departmental mission, not just a service function.

Related Article: How to Build a Customer-Centric Enterprise

Digital Experience, Email CX, and What’s Next for NiCE

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Those digital experience roles — what’s happening in that world? Are they more like marketing or website development people?

Barry Cooper: It’s fascinating. Many of these people own customer experience in digital-first companies — businesses that run entirely through apps or online platforms. Early on, these companies often thought, “We don’t need customer service; our app will handle everything.” But once they scale, they realize they must engage with customers more directly. Still, their preference is for asynchronous engagement — email, chat, or messaging like WhatsApp — not traditional phone calls.

Barry Cooper: This shift changes what customer service means. Agents handling asynchronous channels are often performing middle-office work too — researching, troubleshooting, and solving problems before responding. These aren’t front-line reps reading scripts; they’re problem solvers. That insight led us to build new features and even a new persona in CXone called the specialist persona — the “middle office user” who bridges front- and back-office service.

Related Article: The Rise of Asynchronous Service in the Contact Center

Fixing Email Customer Service and AI-Driven Resolution

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: You mentioned email — that’s a big gripe of mine in the CX world. It’s fine as one channel, but when companies make it the only option, it’s frustrating. Some brands literally say, “Email us,” and that’s it. No chat, no social, no number to call.

Barry Cooper: You’re echoing what my wife and kids tell me, Dom — but you can’t blame me for bad email CX! It does tie into your earlier KPI question, though. In voice-based service, you can measure average handle time, first contact resolution, CSAT, and you have control. With asynchronous email, it’s trickier — you can’t always tell when or if a case is resolved.

Barry Cooper: That’s why we use AI to analyze inbound and outbound messages, measure sentiment, and automatically flag unresolved cases for escalation. If a company’s struggling with long delays or missed responses via email, chances are, they’re not using CXone. AI-driven monitoring gives managers visibility again — the same kind of insight they had in the contact center, but now applied across asynchronous channels. 

Automating the Automation: NiCE’s Future Vision

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Let’s talk about the future. NiCE never waits for a conference to innovate. What can we expect for the rest of 2025 and beyond?

Barry Cooper: There are two main things. First, we’re completing what we call the “single pane of glass” — one interface that connects every customer interaction type imaginable: synchronous and asynchronous, voice and digital, attended and unattended, SIP or internet-based — all in one seamless view. Second, we’re expanding automation into fulfillment — solving the more complex middle- and back-office cases that traditional automation couldn’t handle before.

Barry Cooper: On the innovation front, we recently announced our intent to acquire Cognigy. Once finalized, it will give us the most comprehensive conversational and agentic AI technology in the market, fully integrated into CXone. We’ll still support third-party conversational AI through our virtual agent hub, but the real magic is combining NiCE’s Enlighten AI models with Cognigy's conversational AI — creating what I like to call “automating AI automation.”

Barry Cooper: Imagine logging into CXone and seeing exactly where AI can automate tasks — “automate one, two, three, four, five” — based on the behaviors of your best agents. With a single click, it’s deployed. Projects that used to take months will now happen in days. That’s where we’re headed.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That’s exciting — and you’ve got Kristen Bell helping tell that story now, right? She’s a great ambassador. Barry, we appreciate your time once again on CX Decoded and love hearing where the industry and NiCE are going next.

Barry Cooper: Thanks, Dom. Always great to chat — and yes, she’s fantastic. We’ll keep the NiCE discussions going.

Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Perfect. Looking forward to next time!