From Reactive to Agentic: What an AI Native Contact Centre Actually Looks Like

What happens when your contact centre moves beyond scripted bots and into AI agents that can reason, understand context, and complete multi-step tasks end to end? In this CX Today interview, Rob Wilkinson speaks with Jonathan Barouch, GM of Contact Center at Zendesk, about what “AI-native” and “agentic” actually mean in practice, where enterprise teams get stuck (data silos, authentication, brittle infrastructure), and how to roll out automation without betting the whole operation on day one.The conversation also challenges a common CX metric: containment. Barouch argues leaders should measure resolution, not deflection, and shares how teams can pilot agentic workflows, run A-B tests, and build a learning loop that turns real interactions into better knowledge, self-service, and agent support.