Stop Calling It a Chatbot: Rewriting the Rules of Virtual Agent AI - Diabolocom

Diabolocom’s AI Product Manager Tom Azernour on why orchestration, not automation, is the real future of contact center AI Host Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Tom Azernour, AI Product Manager at Diabolocom, to unpack why the virtual agent category is long overdue for a rethink. As contact centers move beyond legacy voice bots into the agentic era, Tom explains what "orchestration-first" AI actually means in practice and why the architecture decisions made today will define CX performance for years to come. If your virtual agent is still just deflecting calls, this is the conversation you need to watch. Most virtual agents deflect calls. Diabolocom's orchestrates them. Tom Azernour breaks down what separates the new generation of AI-powered virtual agents from legacy bots, and why the difference matters more than most leaders realize. From deflection to orchestration: Why the decision tree model is dead, and how Diabolocom's agentic approach gives virtual agents a goal and the autonomy to achieve it, connecting to CRMs, ERPs, and ticketing tools without overhauling your existing stack. The structured handoff: Why passing a raw transcript isn't enough, and how Diabolocom extracts intent, summaries, flags, and custom data fields to give the next agent, human or virtual, everything they need from the first second. Built for operators, not engineers: How Diabolocom designed a platform that non-technical teams can configure in minutes, without sacrificing the depth that technical users need. The CCaaS + telco advantage: 20+ years of end-to-end infrastructure ownership means Diabolocom optimizes its AI models and telephony stack in harmony, delivering latency that competitors wrapping third-party solutions simply can't match.