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Customer Contact Week Las Vegas 2026

Customer Contact Week (CCW) Las Vegas 2026 took over Caesars Forum June 22–25, bringing together thousands of CX leaders for what turned out to be the biggest and busiest CCW yet. With more than 200 vendors packed into the Expo Hall, the energy was nonstop: live demos, rapid-fire meetings, and showcases spanning AI, automation, analytics, communications, workforce tools, and every adjacent acronym you can imagine. You could feel the buzz everywhere, from the booths to the hallways to the coffee lines.

And yes, the theme of the year was unmistakably AI. Some vendors delivered truly differentiated approaches; others struggled to stand out in the noise. I genuinely sympathize with attendees trying to parse what makes one AI solution different from the next.

One of the best parts of CCW is always the people. It was wonderful reconnecting with longtime friends I’ve known for nearly two decades, including Matt Storm, USAN; Roger Lee, Contact Center Advocates, and Lauren Maschio, NiCE. I also caught up with the “newer old-timers” I’ve known for a mere ten years, Juanita Cooley, Solid Rock; Justin Robbins, Metric Sherpa, and Nate Brown, CX Accelerator, who always add fresh energy and fun to the week.

A special shout-out to The Parloa Club, a private lounge reserved for their “Platinum Card Members.” It offered a premium space to recharge, network, and escape the chaos—complete with makeup refresh stations, which were absolutely worth it in the scorching Vegas heat. I’ve never seen anything quite like it at a conference.

Below are just a few of the exhibitors I had the chance to speak with. Keep an eye on the CrmXchange site for more in-depth interviews and insights will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

What I Learned Talking with delight.ai at CCW

When I met with Shailesh Nalawadi, Head of Product for Customer Success & Forward Deployment at delight.ai, he walked me through how their platform is essentially a branded AI concierge designed to make every customer feel recognized and remembered. The big idea is memory: delight.ai builds a living profile of each customer, recalling preferences, past interactions, and intent so every future conversation feels more personal. As the brochure puts it, the platform “remembers who they are, what they love, and what they need next,” which really captures their focus on emotional continuity across touchpoints.

He also emphasized how the platform stays present across every channel, including chat, SMS, email, and voice, carrying context seamlessly so customers never have to repeat themselves. Their architecture is built around trust and control, with tools to build and test agents quickly, observability to catch issues early, and real-time evaluation to keep performance tight. The Agent Memory Platform, Actionbooks for orchestration, and their Trust OS all work together to let brands deploy AI that feels human but operates with enterprise grade reliability.

What stood out most was how established brands are already using it. Norse Atlantic Airways and Hanssem both highlighted accuracy, proactivity, and the sense of partnership they get from Sendbird, the company behind delight.ai. The whole pitch is about creating interactions that feel personal and intentional, turning service moments into loyalty moments. If you want to explore more, their site is delight.ai, but the conversation with Shailesh really brought the product to life.

Beyond Words: How Modulate Is Redefining Voice Intelligence — An Interview with Mike Passas

I sat down with Mike Passas, Co-Founder of Modulate, at CCW to talk about why voice AI procurement has become one of the most misunderstood, and riskiest, categories in the contact center stack. As he explained, buyers are entering 2026 with a procurement problem, not a technology one: token-metered pricing, brittle transcription-plus-LLM pipelines, and surprise invoices have left leaders demanding operational evidence instead of slideware. Modulate’s answer is Velma, a voice-native Ensemble Listening Model built from more than 100 specialized audio models (not an LLM) designed to understand conversations the way humans do by capturing tone, emotion, stress, intent, and acoustic signals that transcription alone discards.

Mike also shared the story of how Modulate began. He and his co-founder, Carter, met at MIT when Mike walked past a hallway whiteboard and casually solved a physics problem Carter had been wrestling with. The two became fast friends, bonded by a shared fascination with how computers shape human interaction. Between research into dark matter and cosmic expansion, they spent their college years prototyping early startup ideas, experiments that ultimately laid the foundation for a company built on deep technical rigor and a belief that voice carries meaning far beyond words.

That philosophy is now embedded in Velma’s capabilities: real-time diarization that actually works, 20+ emotion signals, #1-ranked deepfake detection, and behavior-level understanding across fraud, retention, agent welfare, trust and safety, and compliance. As Mike put it, if a system can’t listen like a human, it can’t understand like a human, and contact centers can’t afford anything less. 

After our conversation, I tried Modulate’s deepfake demo myself, where you have to guess whether the voice on the other end of the call is real or synthetic. I got every single one wrong, which tells you everything about how convincing modern deepfakes have become—and how critical Velma’s detection capabilities are.

Highlights from Overa.ai’s Visit to the Booth

I stopped by the booth to share how their agentic conversational AI platform gets a first use case live in 48 hours, with full rollout typically completed in four to six weeks. They highlighted that their white-glove implementation is included at no cost, though teams can also use their no-code tools for internal control.

They emphasized their 18+ years of contact center leadership experience, which shapes their approach to QA, escalation, compliance, and operational workflows. Their platform supports autonomous AI agents, agent assist, and built-in QA and sentiment dashboards, all designed to give enterprises visibility and control.

They also noted their broad integration ecosystem in which organizations such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Epic, NICE, Genesys, Five9, and more, allow seamless handoff to human agents with full context. Common use cases include patient access, secure account servicing, billing, and outage support, with typical outcomes like reduced call volume, shorter handle times, and improved CSAT.

Riptide at CCW: Impressive Demo & Clear Vision for AI Advocacy

I met with the CEO/Founder of Riptide at CCW for a hands-on demo of their AI Customer Advocacy platform, and I came away genuinely impressed, both with the product and with the clarity of their message.

Riptide positions itself as something fundamentally different from traditional AI agents. Their core idea is that, “escalation is failure… customers want resolution, not escalation” and their entire platform is built around eliminating that handoff. Instead of simply answering questions or completing isolated tasks, their AI Advocate, Ripley, “owns the outcome” and manages one seamless conversation with the customer while orchestrating many conversations behind the scenes across systems, teams, and workflows.

The demo made that real. Ripley didn’t just respond.  It navigated the journey, involved humans only when needed, and adapted to imperfect systems and missing data. The AAA case study was compelling: 30,000+ daily conversations, 95% handled without escalation, and measurable improvements in satisfaction, handle time, and agent retention. Seeing how it worked end-to-end helped me understand why they emphasize “human-in-the-flow” rather than human-in-the-loop.

Overall, I liked their message and the way they framed AI Customer Advocacy as the next evolution beyond self-service and task-based agents. The demo reinforced that they’re not just talking about transformation, they’re already delivering it in production.

What Stood Out in My Chat with Reddy at CCW

Reddy made a strong impression during my conversation with Tom Lewis, Chief Customer Officer, at CCW. What stood out immediately was how intentionally the company has built an AI-powered contact center platform that still keeps humans at the center of performance. Their framework spans the full agent lifecycle; recruiting, training, guiding, optimizing, and automating. The platform’s breadth was clear in the materials they shared, from simulations and live assist to automated QA and personalized coaching plans.

Tom also emphasized that Reddy wasn’t created in a vacuum. The company emerged from years spent inside real support environments, watching traditional training fail to prepare agents for the complexity of modern customer interactions. That frontline experience shaped their belief that performance isn’t built in a classroom, it’s built through continuous, in-the-flow coaching. Their team has spent the past two years embedded in contact center operations, refining a model that helps agents improve before, during, and after every interaction. It’s a philosophy that aligns with the “continuous flywheel of coaching” they’re known for, and it shows in outcomes like a 50% reduction in onboarding time and a 135% increase in call quality.

What impressed me most is how Reddy blends enterprise-grade rigor with a practitioner’s mindset. Their platform is built for complex environments.  It is supported by SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, and PCI compliance. Yet the experience feels grounded, practical, and clearly shaped by real operational pain points. Tom’s perspective reinforced that Reddy isn’t just another AI vendor; it’s a company shaped by people who have lived the challenges of scaling teams, training agents, and delivering consistent CX. That authenticity came through in both the conversation and the product vision.

A Brief Look at Transcom at CCW

Transcom positions itself as a global CX leader focused on transforming every customer interaction into a meaningful, loyalty-building moment. With a people-first culture and AI-driven innovation, they support 350+ brands through omnichannel BPO services, CX strategy, consulting, and revenue-generating customer engagement. Their model blends human empathy with smart technology to streamline operations, elevate satisfaction, and increase Customer Lifetime Value. A featured case study with Dacor highlights measurable impact, including a 60% improvement in first-time fix rate and an 82% CSAT score.

Operating from 85+ delivery centers across 29 countries, Transcom emphasizes scalability, speed, and secure performance, launching programs in as little as 30 days. Their approach is grounded in three principles—empowered people, the right technology, and nimble partnership—supported by 32,500+ agents delivering 1.5 million daily interactions in 33+ languages. They differentiate through flexible, results-driven partnerships, AI-enhanced efficiency, and compliance frameworks that exceed GDPR and HIPAA standards, positioning themselves as a high-impact CX partner for both fast-growing brands and global enterprises.