NiCE bets the company on AI, data and accountability, and the legacy business buys it time

Every company in the customer experience ecosystem now claims to be an artificial intelligence company. Last week, at NiCE Ltd.’s annual industry analyst summit, the company demonstrated what happens when an AI strategy shifts the organization’s center of gravity. A year after closing the Cognigy acquisition, NiCE is no longer a contact center-as-a-service or CCaaS provider with AI bolted on. It’s an AI platform that happens to include the industry’s deepest CCaaS and workforce engagement stack. Even before the Cognigy purchase, I felt NiCE led the CCaaS industry, and the event only reinforced that view. During his keynote, Chief Executive Scott Russell (pictured) spoke at length about how the deal transformed the company. “Most acquisitions that companies make expand the portfolio and the capability,” he said. “This one changed where we build from. It changed the nature of who we are as a company.” Jeff Comstock, president of CX product and technology, said Cognigy is “now the underlying substrate for all of our conversational and agentic AI across the entire platform.” What I found equally interesting is that NiCE isn’t using Cognigy solely to lock in CXone customers. Philipp Heltewig, Cognigy’s co-founder and now NiCE’s chief AI officer, said that…