The CX industry is in a disruptive state as IT decision-makers and customer contact leaders struggle with prioritizing and procuring budgets and persuading executives to align CX and corporate goals. There is a fear of failure in these uncertain times, making organizations less agile than in previous years. Trust, ease of use, and reliability are the top three compelling factors for selecting a CX provide. Generative AI has dominated technology press and conversations for the past year. Solution providers are incorporating some aspects of it today with caution, primarily conversational AI for now, with translations and transcription summaries top of mind. Agents continue to fear robots. However, voice is still king, with most respondents reporting that the number of voice calls and AHTs have increased or stayed the same over the past year. Call deflection is a key strategy to offset rising costs. Businesses must deliver exceptional CX to achieve significant cost savings when containing them in a self-service channel. Professional/super agents are wanted - whether over voice or chat, live agents will not dwindle, but be upskilled to handle complex inquiries and foster brand loyalty. Walking the floor is no longer effective in hybrid models. Supervisors need new ways to manage and connect with employees. UCC allows employees to collaborate across an organization. Video use is growing in contact centers. Industries such as finance, manufacturing, and healthcare benefit from face-to-face interactions. Video facilitates easier understanding when accents differ, hearing suffers, or emotions are hard to read on an audio call. The workplace now includes four generations (i.e., baby boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z). Solutions used to hire, onboard, train, and retain employees must be evaluated to custom fit the needs of each generation. Customers are also multi-generational and connect with businesses in different ways. Personalization is becoming vital for customer retention. Brand loyalty in a digital world is increasingly difficult to achieve. Now contact center organizations seem to have a seat at the table, enabling CX goals to be aligned across departments and making customer retention more viable. The primary goals of this research are to establish the size of corporate budgets for purchasing channels, applications, and solutions in the contact center environment and to understand purchase trends. It also investigates the factors that influence product selection. A total of 758 decision-makers and purchase decision influencers of contact centers were surveyed across business functions including CXOs, managing directors, and Owners (40%), senior management (34%), middle management (12%), and others (14%). Countries include Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Philippines, the U.K., and the U.S. Industries include Healthcare (18%), Retail (18%), Travel & Hospitality (13%), Energy and Utility (11%), IT/Comm (11%), Manufacturing (11%). Channel, technology, and agent trends as well as AI and analytics, and agent optimization investments are covered in this study. Author: Alpa Shah