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Tag: Claritiv

Whisper Report: What are the most effective strategies for ensuring data security and privacy in customer interactions?
Published to clients: August 4, 2025 ID: TBW2080

Published to Readers: August 5, 2025

Published to Email Whispers: TBD

Public and Video Release: TBD

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

“Effective strategies for securing customer data include encryption at rest, in transit, and during compute; cautious AI adoption; and strict access controls. Removing or masking personally identifiable information (PII) and training staff on cybersecurity best practices are essential. Legal compliance, intellectual property protection, and customer trust drive the need for robust privacy measures in customer interactions.”

What are the most effective strategies for ensuring data security and privacy in customer interactions?

We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the technologists gathering at Customer Connect Expo 2025 held at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding What are the most effective strategies for ensuring data security and privacy in customer interactions? There are two reasons security and privacy are critical in this space. As Ford’s Dr. Kalifa Oliver pointed out, “to first really understand the laws..” In fact, all governance program definitions start with legal requirements, then industry regulations and requirements, then internal privacy promises made to customers. The second critical reasons for ensuring data security and privacy as Claritiv’s Sean Gigremoss reminds us, “your knowledge for your business comes from all the conversations that you’re having – that is your IP (intellectual property).”

Figure 1. Four Pillars of Customer Data Protection

Defence in Depth

As Macy’s Siva Kannan Ganesan pointed out, “all those regulation and implementing an regulation it’s a multi-step approach like data and motion data at rest should be encrypted and you have to make sure it’s like the access strict access control and frequent evaluation of the data breach.” With security depth is always valuable. TBW Advisors LLC advises clients to not only use encryption at rest and in transit, but to leverage protections during compute leveraging Confidential Computing. For additional research, enjoy Industry Whispers: Public is Privacy – Confidential Computing in the Cloud available on TBW Advisors YouTube Channel.

Caution with AI technologies

TBW Advisors has frequently warned if you are not being charged for the product, you are the product. If you are the product, you should assume you do not have privacy. Today with many of the advanced AI products, even lower tier paid products do not get privacy; rather they are being used to further train the product. As Ford’s Dr. Kalifa Oliver observed, “you really got to start asking organizations that have AI technologies about their Blackbox about how the data is being trained. You have to ask them about data breaches you have to be conservative about how you implement things because I think the law is going to catch up and the hardest thing to do is trying to go back and fix it.”

Remove or Hide PII

One critical step to ensure privacy is to not send PII or personally identifiable information to tools. Enthu.ai’s Atul Grover denoted, “we also ensure that we deduct the PI information we deduct almost 16 kind of PIs including social security data birth credit card information …. we do that in the recording as well as all the analytics.” While removing the information is a common practice, masking data is also quite common. As Mitrol’s Pedro Lopez Slevin shared, “our banks for example you will probably have on premise data servers. Everything will be with TLS 1.2 two or higher you know and create your data. We’re talking about AI, we usually do rack so you will have to process every information into embeddings and those embeddings are..unreadable if you just put it in a vector database.”

Train your Teams

While the term Human in the Loop has gained popularity with generative AI and agentic solutions, cybersecurity has always known the human in the loop as being a critical risk factor. Thus in order to truly ensure data security and privacy, you must train those humans! Randy Simmons from FaxSipIt shared the common journey towards compliance. “we’ve gone through a HIPPA audit and we’re secure there we just finished the SOC 2 audit and we’re SOC 2 compliant so people have come in they’ve audited our system our policies they’ve come with recommendations or not and we pass the audit for the socks 2 audit so our staff all goes through cyber security training as well we go through a wiser cyber security training and then also we send phishing to our to our employees and see if they’re going to click and if they click on a link then guess what they’re doing they’re doing that training all over Again.” So remember, do not click on that link without checking the link is safe first!

Related playlists and References
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©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
August 4, 2025
Whisper Report: How can we integrate AI-driven customer service solutions with our existing IT infrastructure?
Published to clients: July 3, 2025 ID: 2079

Published to Readers: July 4, 2025

Email Whispers Released: August 11, 2025 8am

Public and Video Edition Released: August 11, 2025 11am

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

“Integrating AI customer service with existing IT systems starts by setting clear business goals. AI should enhance, not disrupt, current workflows and streamline real-time support. Every organization has unique systems, so tailored integration is essential. A major challenge is fragmented data—making robust pipelines and clean, synchronized data critical. Accurate timestamps and system compatibility across platforms are key to ensuring effective AI performance and a smooth digital transformation journey.”

Target Audience Titles:
- Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, VP/Director of IT Operations, Enterprise Architects
- Chief Customer Officer, VP/Director of Customer Services/Success, Contact Center Operation Managers
- Solution Architects, DevOps & IT Administrators, Customer Support Agents, Data Scientists and ML Engineers
Key Takeaways
- Start with clear business goals so AI enhances workflows without causing disruptions.
- Tailor integration to your unique tech environment to avoid inefficiencies.
- Reliable, clean, and synchronized data pipelines are essential for effective AI-driven customer service.
How can we integrate AI-driven customer service solutions with our existing IT infrastructure?

We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the technologists gathering at Customer Connect Expo 2025 held at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding how can we integrate AI-driven customer service solutions with our existing IT infrastructure? As Ford’s Dr. Kalifa Oliver shared, “first we need to break down our needs and our goals and figure out which pieces of AI actually build efficiencies in our IT systems because right now there are too many systems that are fragmented.” With ALL AI projects, it is best to start with the business goal not the technology. We do not want to spend resources to integrate technology that goes unused. Furthermore, the context of the business goal helps guide engineers when they have design choices to make.

Customer Service Workflows

AI in Customer Service is all about optimizing and improving the customer service workflow to lead to maximum customer satisfaction. As Zaon’s Jason Kaufman shared, “using artificial intelligence tools within the organization to actually help drive and make more efficient the processes that go into place in order to support good customer service. For example, leveraging artificial intelligence to actually analyze chats real time community forums real time. Actually monitoring that (the communities) helping to gain insights about what your customers have questions about so that you can leverage the AI to actually generate the knowledge on the fly to actually provide that (information removing confusion) back to them real time as if it’s another person on that community thread.” The nonobvious challenge in achieving this solution is best described by Claritiv’s CEO Sean Gigremoss. “Everybody has workflows. Every company is unique. What tools do they use? What products do they use now? Do we need to build it?” In other words, every organization has a unique, highly mixed environment with varying degrees of maturity both in the technology itself and the organization’s ability to deploy technology.

Verse.ai’s Zac Brooksher recommends focusing on complimenting the current workflows and processing. “We can integrate AI driven customer service solutions using full funnel metrics understanding all of the conversations the timestamps the channels the appropriate team members what next steps are all integrating into existing systems and processes just to complement what the current workflows and data processing is today like.” Any technology not realizing it is complimenting an existing process will instead create process interrupts. The distinction really is a big difference.

The Challenge: Data is everywhere!

As Claritiv’s Sean Gigremoss shared, data is everywhere! “They make it so easy for us to integrate because in the end that’s important because all the data are in this different .. disparate systems. You need information from Salesforce you need information from zoom you need information from slack you need information from your database you need information from your customer’s database so to be able to do that you need to make sure that you’re using the tools or you’re partnering with companies that help you so that you can focus on what you do best.”

But the data isn’t just everywhere, it comes from everywhere. The first obvious location was shared by Enthu.ai’s Atul Grover, “we integrate with the telephony at the dialer.” And the rest such as the web and email communications, “we ingest that using an API driven environment.” Diabolocom specializes in capturing all that occurs between the customer and the organization on mobile devices. As Diabolocom’s Benjamin Shakespeare shared, “with our mobile solution that we are about to release

the market .. So all field reps anybody who is using a cell phone today with every interaction they have on their phone our AI will then score that call transcribe it and push it directly into the CRM So any lack of compliance that you are seeing today in your organization from people that are not sitting behind a computer that will be no longer.”

Where the magic happens!

Now that we understand we are complimenting the existing customer experience workflows for the benefit of the customer experience and that data is everywhere, what can we do? As Macy’s Siva Kannan Ganensan shared, “you need to make sure your data pipeline is very robust when we talk about all this AI integration data is the core so make sure the data is cleansed and always readily available ready to serve with that we’ll be able to integrate an into your existing architecture or in your organization.”

Figure 1. Compliment Workflows & Leverage Robus Data Fabric

It’s all about the data infrastructure! You need robust data pipelines as part of your data fabric to seamlessly integrate any new AI offering as depicted in Figure 1. AND you must ensure data quality. For example, data quality is paramount when dealing with timestamps of customer communications. What time zone is your organizational standard? Do your IT systems work in that time zone, and do you know what systems provide timestamps in other formats or time zones? Is that true for any and all corporate acquisitions feeding data into the system? Is the system designed to handle the variety of daylight savings time scenarios? Are all the clocks adjusted for daylight savings automatically or manually? Finally, are the timestamp clocks aligned? To the second or to the minute? It’s valuable to know if you can look at time as fact or approximation in your organization. If your organization is going through any type of digital transformation, it is critical to get the best advice available to ensure your success. Ensure your success by scheduling your inquiry with a TBW Advisors advisor before starting any critical phase of your digital transformation journey. Get the smartest advice available and leverage our firsthand experience to your advantage.

Related playlists
1. Whisper Report: How can we integrate AI-driven customer service solutions with our existing IT infrastructure
2. Conference Whispers: Customer Connect Expo 2025
Corporate Headquarters

2884 Grand Helios Way

Henderson, NV 89052

©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
July 3, 2025
Conference Whispers: Customer Connect Expo 2025
Las Vegas, NV April 16-April 17

Published to clients: April 22, 2025 ID: TBW2078

Published to readers: April 23, 2025

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

After over 200 minutes of recording, 6 flights of stairs, and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of the rebranded Customer Connect Expo 2025 or CCE25 closes. The event featured over 43 keynotes and seminars and over 200 vendors exhibiting. Keynotes included discussions on customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, data-driven personalization, and AI in customer experience. A seminar focused on enhancing call centers with AI agenst is also included. Exhibits ranged from technology supporting customer experience and call centers, data consolidation and customer 360, to entire platforms and BPO services.

The Conference
- The event featured over 43 keynotes and seminars and over 200 vendors exhibiting.
- Technologies covered include telephony, networking, SIP, call blocking, data, data management, data fabrics, customer 360, AI, LLMs, agentic AI, conversational AI, and bots.
Cautions
- Just because a solution ‘works’ doesn’t mean the product was designed with customer privacy in mind.
- Platforms that combine multiple functions can look like a quick win unless you already have installed components or desire to switch a specific function to a best in class. Ensure any ‘platforms’ leverage standards for any components. By adhering to standards, customers can avoid vendor lock into the platform and keep the door open for maximum architectural flexibility.
Conference Vibe

After over 200 minutes of filming, 6 flights of stairs, over 30 fact checks, our coverage of the rebranded event, Customer Connect Expo 2025, or CCE25, comes to a close. CCE25 opened with a grand ribbon cutting ceremony featuring the Global Voice of Customer Experience, Dennis Wakabayashi. TBW Advisors LLC’s clients and subscribers may recognize Dennis from last year’s AMA Industry Whispers event with Dennis. Admittedly, this event is one we always look forward to having covered it in 2023 and 2024 under its previous branding of CCCLV for Call & Contact Center Expo Las Vegas. The event features 4 stages hosting a total of 43 keynotes and seminars. The theaters for the speakers were mixed amongst over 200 exhibitors in expo hall. The keynotes and seminars were full coming in just under maximum capacity. The last two years, there were notable audio issues for the speakers. This year they had a dual audio set up with headphones and speakers. I only heard one major feedback sound the entire event. In fact, the sound worked so well that it kept the audience enthralled preventing them from walking around as much as in previous years. This led exhibitors to politely describe foot traffic as a “slow”. While the total booth traffic was light, the exhibitors did admit that the leads they obtained were rock solid with most easily covering the expenses. In other words, everyone was there was serious about conducting business with not much fluff. Food was also available within the expo hall itself.

While at CCE25, we conducted research for three additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: CCE25 playlist in its entirety. Once the video edition is available, the playlist will be sited as a pinned comment on the video edition. It is also easy to locate any previous Conference Whispers playlists through TBW Advisors Website under Subscribers research/Conference Whispers.

Sessions

During our coverage at CCE25 we were able to catch 4 keynotes and one seminar. The first keynote we captured was by Pfizer’s Wayne Simmons. Wayne reminded all that customers want companies that are interested in partnering for life when possible. In many domains such as banking, it is very inconvenient and takes significant effort to switch companies. One a customer is lost – it is expensive to reacquire that customer if at all possible.

Ford’s Dr. Kalifa Oliver drove home the obvious but too often overlooked point. If an employee is miserable and being treated horrible, how do you think they will treat your customers? A company should not be worried about an employee being happy but rather ensuring they have the tools and support to do the job. The development of employee satisfaction tools tend to be behind customer satisfaction tools but they need not be separate tools. It’s simple, data shows a satisfied and empowered employee is more likely to provide a positive customer experience.

The second day keynotes kicked off with Macy’s Siva Kannan Ganesan on the power of data. Siva highlighted the importance of capturing customer data including every click. A customer experience must be engineered. The two-tower approach was recommended for one’s digital strategy the achieve the ultimate in personalization.

Ring Central’s John Finch was on the Keynote stage to talk about Agentic AI driving the next generation of customer experience. The presentation went beyond revealing the next generation of customer experience tools. Context for the value contributed by conversational AI, generative AI, bots as well as the power of agents and personalized assistants was also provided. Expanding on that agentic AI theme was a seminar on expanding your call center with AI agents. Mitrol’s Francisco Trojano shared their approach to improve contact center’s impact. This seminar included various success stories.

Solution components

The exhibits had a large variety of vendors including various components of solutions to create the ultimate customer experience. To the surprise of some, fax usage has risen 23%. Faxsipit shared their solution that won’t create a chain of mis transmissions and errors even for 1400-page documents! Perhaps, like many of the exhibitors, you are meeting and speaking with your prospects at a conference and don’t want to miss any of the potential leads. Claritiv shared their solution to capture and enable your ability to analyze these interactions. Need a method to see what the customer is experiencing first hand? With Blitz you can send a quick link that allows them to share their camera view without downloading a mobile application. Perhaps you interact between the physical and digital world and want a vendor that can help you? Put Unified Direct Solution on your radar who specialize in optimizing such a scenario including balancing needs based upon conditions. If you are short of staff and are thinking about outsourcing but not sure you want your customers to deal with outsourced agents, you might want to evaluate Kongusto. Now that you have all this staff, you’ll want them to feel like a team even if they are spread around the world. To that end, Nexgen virtual office shared their next generation of leveraging technology to create the ultimate in virtual office. Regardless of your technology, if you were seeking to market your solution, Greenstar Marketing was there with their services.

Data Centric, Platforms, and BPOs

There were exhibitors with products focused on bringing your data together and providing insights. Maprehend focused on the expertise of your very best employee and empowering all. Likewise, if you wanted to clone your best sales agent, Verse.ai focuses on the best message on the right channel to deliver results. Enthu.ai connects and consumes all your customer interactions with a side of automation to provide useful customer insights. Diabolocom leverages a proprietary AI solution that is trained exclusively on your data for your private model. Zaon’s approach is to start with the problem or use case and connects the subject matter experts to create solutions.

If you are seeking a contact soluton provider beyond the data and perhaps a solution that is actually a carrier, Nobelbiz is a telephony carrier and can assist if your calls are not getting connected correctly. Assembled is a support operations platform with three pillars. One pillar handles AI agents through all forms of contacts, second is vendor management offering including handling billing, and third workforce management to increase productivity. A platform for omni channel communications highly integrated with AI agents is available through Mitrol as described earlier in their seminar. If you are looking for a platform with a side of business process outsourcing (BPO), Etech harnesses the power of AI to drive your customer experience through calls, chats and all customer interactions. The three focus areas include contact center services, Quality and analytics and customer development. ValueLabs leverages its own generative AI platform built leveraging various LLMs. ValueLabs focuses on four areas: outsourced product development, quality engineering, data engineer and process automation. ProntoBPO offers shared services, rental stations, BPO as well as software development. ProntoBPO specializes in verticals such as Pest, Lawn and HVAC services.

Next Year’s Conference

CCE conference will unfortunately move to Atlanta, GA for 2026.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
April 22, 2025