NASHVILLE — The world is changing beneath our feet and there’s no going back. Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how businesses connect with customers, and there are conversations in every boardroom worldwide about how to keep up.  

At the heart of it all is the experience economy, where customers compare the experiences your enterprise provides with the best experiences they’ve ever had. 

That’s why vendors and point solutions just don’t cut it anymore — companies need true strategic partners to help them succeed. And Tuesday morning at the Xperience conference in Nashville, Tony Bates, Chairman and CEO at Genesys, explained why Genesys is the strategic partner that’s uniquely positioned to unify every experience across the enterprise with AI-Powered Experience Orchestration. 

“This platform was built to evolve with you,” said Bates. “It’s architected for the speed you need, the security you need and the scale you need.” 

“This platform was built to evolve with you. It’s architected for the speed you need, the security you need and the scale you need.” 

– Tony Bates, Chairman and CEO at Genesys 

Agentic AI: The Agent of Unprecedented Transformation 

Bates explained how every wave of transformation follows the same pattern: intense business pressure that’s accelerated by technology disruption and ultimately results in a fundamental shift in how industries operate. 

He noted that he saw the pattern at Cisco with the rise of the internet and later at Microsoft with the rise of cloud computing. Now, he said we’re at another inflection point as the pressure to deliver personalized experiences at scale is converging with the disruptive potential of AI and redefining how businesses engage with customers. 

“This is the biggest transformation of them all,” said Bates. “This is the one that will change how we interact with customers and employees alike.” 

What makes this transformation unlike the previous waves, he said, is that the technology driving it has evolved faster than ever before. AI has progressed from perception to prediction to conversation — and now to creation. 

“We’re now at the next giant leap. We’re at agentic AI,” said Bates. “It moves the way we think about the experience to where we start to think about the orchestration of the experience.” 

In the service economy, success meant workflows, rules and scripts. The tactical use of AI was considered only as an add-on for the contact center. Organizations often chose to focus on operational efficiency or loyalty. 

But in today’s experience economy, it’s about optimizing for both at the same time. That’s where Genesys comes in. 

“We’re now at the next giant leap. We’re at agentic AI.”

– Tony Bates, Chairman and CEO at Genesys  

Unifying the Enterprise with AI-Powered Experience Orchestration 

Bates described how Genesys has undergone a deliberate, multi-year transformation to enable it to become a leading transformation platform for its customers. He said the idea of putting AI at the core of the entire experience economy — not just the contact center — is powerful and informs the Genesys vision to deliver the power of empathy to every experience.  

Orchestrating experiences with AI involves a coordinated system of capabilities happening at once. It’s the broad and deep strategic use of AI to solve problems. This is what distinguishes Genesys Cloud™, a leading AI-Powered Experience Orchestration platform, from point solutions. 

Automation is where it starts for most organizations. That means using AI to help reduce effort and increase speed with faster resolution, self-service and 24/7 availability across channels.  

Augmentation is where AI helps elevate the performance of your employees and the experience for your customers. For employees, it means capabilities like agent copilots, real-time guidance and auto-summarization will handle repetitive tasks so they can focus on high-value interactions. And for customers, it can reduce friction with fewer transfers, faster answers and smarter handoffs. 

With personalization, AI adapts the experience in real time by understanding context, emotional tone and preferences. It’s where empathy meets intelligence, where the delivery should change based on who the customer is and what they need.  

Finally, with optimization, AI doesn’t just react — it learns. Journeys are continuously improved to help drive better outcomes, and better experiences for the customer and business alike. 

The Next Level of Experience  

At last year’s Xperience conference, Bates introduced the Levels of Experience Orchestration, a six-level maturity model that provides a framework for organizations to assess where they are today, envision what’s possible and build a strategy for AI-powered growth. 

Level 4 is where AI starts to act semi-autonomously with human oversight. It plans, adapts and reasons through a situation in real time, but always with human intervention before anything is executed. 

“I’m shocked how quickly we’ve gotten here. This has evolved at light speed,” said Bates. “The progress that’s been made is astonishing — both at an industry level and here at Genesys.” 

Level 5 is where AI becomes fully autonomous; it’s where AI pursues outcomes. Virtual agents, copilots and orchestrators are reasoning, planning and acting on their own — guided by goals, not predefined flows. It’s closed-loop, self-improving orchestration across the enterprise and beyond. 

“Level 5 is bold,” said Bates, “This is what we’re building toward every single day here at Genesys.” 

“Level 5 is bold. This is what we’re building toward every single day here at Genesys.” 

– Tony Bates, Chairman and CEO at Genesys 

Four Shifts Shaping the Future of the Experience Economy 

To move up the maturity model, an organization needs to shift from tactical experimentation to strategic transformation on an AI-Powered Experience Orchestration platform. 

Bates explained how there are four fundamental shifts that every organization needs to make to be successful with AI-Powered Experience Orchestration. 

1. From applications to experiences 

Rather than saying “let’s get a copilot” or “let’s automate routing,” this strategic approach starts by asking what the customer is actually trying to accomplish — and how AI across the enterprise can help them do it in real time.  

“Experiences don’t live inside an app,” said Bates. “They live across the entire journey.” 

2. From metrics to outcomes 

For decades, companies have measured their success with metrics like first-contact resolution, average handle time and average speed of answer. But the reality is that those are operational metrics that “tell you how the machine is running,” not “whether the experience is working.” In the experience economy, we need to think in terms of return on experience — optimizing for both efficiency and loyalty. 

3. From tools to teammates 

This shift is about redefining the relationship between humans and AI. It’s about AI becoming a trusted coworker, working right alongside your people to deliver better outcomes. For consumers, that means greater ease, faster resolution and more transparency. And for employees, AI becomes the teammate that never sleeps, never loses context and always has the next best action ready. 

4. From point solutions to platforms 

AI-powered outcomes don’t come from isolated tools; they come from solutions built to work together. You want all your AI to do four things: automate, augment, personalize and optimize. And you want it to do all of them together — across teams and channels consistently. That takes a platform. 

Transforming Industries with a Strategic Platform 

The Genesys Cloud platform is built to evolve with leading enterprises across industries and geographic regions. It’s open, cloud-native and architected for speed, security and growth.  

Genesys added more than 500 features to Genesys Cloud last fiscal year alone. And the platform powers over 2 billion conversations between our customers and their consumers a month in 2025. 

But even the strongest platform doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Genesys also works within a larger ecosystem with other strategic platforms that are powering the enterprise. To learn more about Genesys quarterly momentum and its strategic partnerships, visit the company Newsroom.   

Xperience continues in Nashville with two full days of interactive sessions ranging from expert-led talks to hands-on workshops to real-world case studies. More than 2,000 attendees are in the Music City to hear about the future of AI-powered experiences. Learn more about Xperience, the CX + AI event of the year.