Nextiva has published Winning the Customer Experience Race, a new guide by Edwin Margulies aimed at helping CX and IT leaders optimise AI adoption. The book provides a decision rubric, cross-industry playbooks, and practical data practices to improve automation, human-AI collaboration, and real-time customer engagement.

The timing is critical: a recent Nextiva study of over 1,000 CX leaders found that while 92% are using AI, only 9% have mature programmes. Teams juggle an average of six tools, and 81% report that centralising customer data would improve CX. The book addresses these gaps, showing leaders where to automate, where to keep humans in the loop, and how to ensure AI and agents perform seamlessly together.

Each chapter follows a structured approach, highlighting top automation targets, business challenges, and industry-specific examples. The guidance is actionable: evaluate volume, complexity, and emotion to determine automation; centralise interaction data to boost AI accuracy and agent effectiveness; and pilot solutions with analytics-driven iteration to scale efficiently.

Industries covered include insurance, where real-time transcription and sentiment analysis speed claims and reduce errors; service providers, where agent-assist technology captures call details while allowing agents to focus on customers; and healthcare, with NLP, RPA, and workflow automation designed to respect privacy and improve operational efficiency.

The book also points to a companion resource, Mastering the Customer Experience, which offers templates, roadmaps, and an eight-step framework to implement AI successfully.

Yaniv Masjedi, Chief Marketing Officer at Nextiva, said the guide reflects the company’s mission to deliver “powerful, easy-to-use customer experience technology” and help teams translate AI investments into measurable business outcomes.

Discover how AI can accelerate customer experience while keeping the human touch.